Gli artisti veneziani alla Biennale (1895-1905)

Venice Biennale, created by the will and the organizational skills of the Venetian artists, was actually managed exclusively by Antonio Fradeletto. The new figure of the “General Secretary” has distinguished for the first time the role of artists, interrupting the tradition of ‘self-rule’ of painters and sculptors used to managing any artistic event. This essay analyses this important moment of transition, reporting events that took place in its administration during the first years of the Biennale. Through magazines periodicals of the time we report the critical fortune that these works of art had in the local and national press, in an attempt to verify if the creators of the Biennale succeeded in the difficult task of emerging and getting noticed in such a vast and international artistic context.

La Spagna nelle prime Biennali veneziane del secondo dopoguerra

This essay aims to analyse the Spanish Pavilion at Venice Biennale in the years from 1948 to 1956. Rosalía Torrent calls this chronological arc años de travesía: from 1948 precisely because within the Biennales under Francoism (1938-76) it marks the passage to the commissioner of Luis González Robles, who materializes and exports a ‘modern’ image of Spain that justifies on a political level the tacit acceptance of the regime among the Western powers in defence of the ‘red danger’. The period shows the weakness of liberal hopes and the exploitation of art by the dictatorship.

Breve storia di una liberazione

The essay offers a specific recollection of the participation of Spain at the Venice Biennale since 1976 to 1999. The starting date has a particular relevance both for historical and artistic reasons. 1976 coincides in fact with a democratic beginning for the Country, which has just witnessed Franco’s death. This meant the end of a long period of isolation and the recovery from years of repression and dictatorship. Through that time, artistically, Spain was not left behind, thanks to the strength of many artists who kept contact with other countries, always up to date on what was new. However, they had been forced to choose between being artist of the regime or stay hidden in an interior exile. With the Biennale edition of 1976, the special project, promoted by the institution and two of the most renowned art critics at the time, Valeriano Bozal and Tomàs Llorens, called España, Vanguardia artistica y realidad social. 1936-1976, tried to draw a critical and historical view on the Spanish artistic languages consumed and silenced by censorship. Through the 80s and the 90s Spain has experienced a renewed awareness of its internationally artistic role and that has reflected on the choices made for Venice Biennale. Although seeing the evolution of Spanish art in the last decades through the Biennale is limited and incomplete, it has an undeniable interest and relevance worth being investigated.

Retelling the History of the Mexico Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia

This chapter presents a revised history of the Mexico Pavilions in La Biennale di Venezia. Official discourse on Mexican Pavilions published in the twenty-first century contain significant inconsistencies and omissions about Mexico’s twentieth century participations. These inaccuracies have been repeatedly published in the press, effectively rewriting history. I argue that a more complete historical narrative is necessary for a richer understanding of Mexico’s contribution to the international art scene. First, I examine historical inconsistencies in exhibition publications from 2007-17. Next, I construct a narrative history of the Mexico Pavilions in three stages, in accordance with their aesthetics and contexts of production: post-revolutionary (1950, 1952, 1958, 1968), rupture (1986), and transnational (2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2017, 2019). Finally, I offer some concluding remarks and suggestions for further research.

Narcissus Garden for Sale: «one piece 2 dollars»

Things that do not exist or should not exist and ‘ghetto exhibitions’ mark some counterpoints on the presence of female artists and on first performance actions at Venice Biennale in the 1960s and the 1970s. Yayoi Kusama, who created Narcissus Garden without being invited in 1966; Marina Abramović and Ulay, invited for the first time in 1976 but in an external venue; and Paula Claire’s action, between others, at the exhibition Materializzazioni del Linguaggio curated in 1978 by Mirella Bentivoglio, mark two crucial decades of increasingly contemporary trend at the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte of Venice. This essay connects new relationships between Yayoi Kusama presence, art galleries in New York City, Milan, Venice and other main characters in the art system of the 1960s.

Arte relazionale alla Biennale di Venezia dal 1999 al 2017

This essay traces the presence of Relational Art at Venice Biennale, considering ten editions from 1999 to 2017, immediately following the publication of Esthétique relationelle by the critic Nicolas Bourriaud in 1998 and covers the most recent experiences. Analysing the past two decades, a variety of approaches relations are revealed, from the theme of human to the growing interest for involving people in artistic actions. Performances, installations, multimedia projects, workshops involve a heterogeneous public.

Jeff Koons alla XLIV Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte La Biennale di Venezia (1990)

In 1990, the thirty-five-year-old Jeff Koons (York, Pennsylvania, USA, 1955) officially debuted in Italy as participant artist of the 44th edition of Venice Biennale. He was invited to take part of the section called Aperto, which was dedicated to those young artists who had never exhibited at the Biennale. At that time Koons was not so famous and decided to present a disrespectful complex of works created in collaboration with the famous pornstar Cicciolina. Koons’ choice grants him the attention of critics and press. Despite the critical rejections, Koons’ participation at Venice Biennale and the interest of the media contributed to launch him on a successful international career.

1914. Galileo Chini a Venezia

Antonio Fradeletto, in his role as General Secretary of the Biennale, made agreements with Galileo Chini to set up a personal exhibition at Venice Biennale in 1914. In that exhibition he would summarise his newly concluded human and professional experience in Siam, not so much in terms of a celebration of his vast decorative interventions, as in those of his very personal reinterpretation of what had been the perception of a reality that appeared, and was, very far from the imagination of the public of the Venetian event. Alongside this sort of visual summary of that little-known East, Chini had had the opportunity to create the decoration of the International Hall destined to host the works of Ivan Mestrovic, and at that juncture, despite the winds of war were now blowing impetuously over the whole of Europe or perhaps just for that reason, he had proposed a soothing reading, all focused on the themes of Spring.

Padiglioni che denunciano, riflettono e astraggono

Studying the national participations at the Venice Biennale means studying part of the spine of the exhibition as the creation of national pavilions is generated at a time when the Biennale was still defining its structure. Through an in-depth analysis of national participations it is possible to study the foreign cultural policy of the various countries, the evolution of a supposedly national art and the local-global contradictions of the contemporary art system. This essay aims to present and analyze some of the projects exhibited in the Spanish pavilion in the first editions of 21 century to demonstrate its utility to discuss the obsolescence or topicality of the national pavilions in Venice and also to treat the ‘biennial phenomenon’, its apparent unstoppability and the trend of the ‘discursive biennials’.

I pittori veneti alle ‘Biennali di Pallucchini’ (1948-1956)

Venice Biennale was created to magnify this wonderful city also through the encreasing of arts, so a participation of painters born or living in the Veneto region – who originally ‘invented’, with politicians and intellectuals, the Biennale – at the beginning was always considerable. This essay focuses on the analysis of their presence at the Biennale between 1948 and 1956, when Rodolfo Pallucchini was General Secretary of the institution. It is examined through a statistical method that allows a more complete view of this mapping. Another topic is the reception on the press, that highlights the diatribe between artists and critics.