Italy, too, experienced the events of 1968—a year marked by protests against the establishment and its institutions. Against this background, the student movement attacked the Biennale aiming to bring down a pillar of the Italian art establishment which, in their eyes, combined art and money in an unholy alliance. The malaise surrounding the Venice exhibition not only reflected a general discontent with finances but was part of a larger re-evaluation of the Biennale Art Exhibition and took account of the demands of many seeking a change in the statute of 1930.1
Journalists and artists in the days leading up to the public opening were faced with a highly charged atmosphere and long delays in the setting up of the national pavilions and the main exhibitions Retrospettiva Futurista and Linee dell’Informale 1950-1965.
Organizational problems,2 together with the threats of the student sit-in of the Accademia di Belle Arti supporting the many artists in the “boycott the Biennale” movement, led foreign countries taking part to seek reassurances from the mayor of Venice and president of the Biennale, Favaretto Fisca, on the smooth running of the exhibition.
The decision to open “at all costs” under the protection of a significant police presence3 served only to fuel discontent among the artists and others involved who, in their criticism and articles, were quick to denounce the “barracks-like” atmosphere in those bizarre vernissage days.
Despite the massive police presence, a small and good-natured group of protestors carrying colorful banners decided to hold a spontaneous demonstration in St. Mark’s Square. The marchers were faced by the riot squad in full tilt and by numerous ID checks with some arrests for resistance. In the wake of this and other acts of repression, along with consequent police cordoning-off of the area surrounding the Giardini, most of the artists decided to protest in an unequivocal and powerful way: by closing the exhibition halls and withdrawing their works from the exhibition.
Outside the French Pavilion, Nicolas Schoffer wrote “CHIUSO” (closed) on a plain piece of paper and accompanied it with an unambiguous photo of police charges during the May protests in France.4
The Swedish Pavilion was also closed and a notice posted outside made clear the intention to not open to the public as long as the police were present in the exhibition area. The note, ending with the Italian phrase “la Biennale è morta!” (the Biennale is dead!), was promptly removed by a public official.5
Achille Perilli and Gastone Novelli were the first to protest in the Italian Pavilion, a dissent immediately echoed by the painter Ernesto Treccani who announced to the still half-empty halls “The Biennale is not the site of an art exhibition but a barracks!”6 The “Biennale-Barracks” slogan became popular among journalists in the headlines of their articles, and made the exhibition front page news.
Besides Achille Perilli and Gastone Novelli, the first artists to sign a formal protest were Mirko, Leoncillo, Luciano Gaspari, Gino Morandis, Mino Guerrini, Guido Strazza, Rodolfo Aricò, Gianni Colombo and Mario Deluigi, who in a saddened letter justified their decision to reverse their canvases and to not open their rooms: “We have no wish to be made use of by either external forces or by the Biennale. […] We do not accept exhibiting under police protection from a protest against institutions and not against artists or their works.”7
The large police presence not only averted a much dreaded occupation of the pavilions, but also prevented journalists and official visitors from enjoying the preview, thus causing immeasurable damage to the reputation of the Biennale and its organizers. Journalists described the security checkpoints in key points of the city around the museums and having to continually show their passes while walking around the exhibition.8
An emblematic protest took place when many exhibitors and international artists signed an agreement whereby the French (with the exception of Arman), Canadians, Swedes, Germans, Venezuelans and Japanese stated their intention to not exhibit and to withdraw all their works if the police did not leave the Biennale. The number of Italians involved in the protest rose from twelve to eighteen and finally twenty who, ignoring protesters and police, declared the right to exhibit peacefully in the temple of international art.
Following a scandalous police attack on some Swedish journalists, the art critics, up to then silent in their comments about the tough measures adopted and instead more focused on proposing the need for a new statute, sent a telegram clearly stating: “We are against all forms of coercion and violence. These events at the Biennale are only one aspect of an obvious problem. […] Stop this art and this criticism which are of no use to anyone.”9
Gastone Novelli, after supporting the closure of the pavilion, decided to protest in a way that symbolizes the spirit of those few days. Every painting in his hall was packed away and covered with phrases like “NO to any form of violence”, and in a gesture on the borderline between an iconoclastic art performance and an act of protest, reversed some of his large canvases and wrote on the back in black paint the famous phrase “The Biennale is fascist!”—a phrase that not only embodies the discontent for an event lacking in real freedom of movement for artists and public alike, but also the aspirations of those committed to a reform of the charter of the Organization, a charter clearly rooted in the Fascist era.
After yet another clash and an attempt to reach agreement with the port workers, the majority of students, realizing the protest would soon end, started to leave Venice. By June 22, the official opening day for the public, the demonstrators were no more than a small group outside the entrance to the Giardini.
In the Italian Pavilion only Mirko, Mario Deluigi and Marcello Morandini exhibited. Giovanni Korompay, who had initially confirmed his participation, withdrew after one of his works was vandalized with a swastika. The French artists Jean Dewasne and Nicolas Schoffer, after the scuffles between students and police had died down, also decided to re-open their rooms.
The Biennale was opened by the Undersecretary to the Treasury, Eugenio Gatti, in the desolation of unfinished and half-empty pavilions. Gradually the situation returned to normal and after a few days writer Dino Buzzati recalls it was possible to take children along to the Biennale. Once the police presence had gone from the Giardini, most artists thought it right to stop the protest which, after all, had only begun because of the excessive security measures. Indeed when the jury passed through the pavilions, all the artists had uncovered their canvases and re-opened the rooms.
The incidents of June 1968 clearly highlighted how the exhibition had been used by the artists in order to add their voice of protest to the events of those days.
In itself, the refusal to hang works in an exhibition space as the extreme act of an artist illustrates the convulsions of political and social conflict of that particular historical period. But it also stimulates a very contemporary reflection on the power of display and of its use to communicate concepts and ideologies. In the same way and in the same year Carlo Scarpa, when planning the external design for what was then the Italian Pavilion, concealed the columns of its Fascist past behind black panels thus implicitly negating its historical and social validity.
[Originally published as “The 1968 Biennale. Boycotting the exhibition: An account of three extraordinary days” in Starting from Venice: Studies on the Biennale, edited by Clarissa Ricci (Milan: et al. Edizioni, 2010). Reproduced here through kind permission of the author.—Ed.]
Notes: