The pavilions of the Biennale. Historical landmarks

International news

text: Daniela Puia

Venice is the unique place where, every two years, art and architecture bring together dozens of countries and hundreds of thousands of visitors, one of the landmarks of world artistic culture for over 120 years. Art and architecture have been together every year, although the International Biennale of Architecture was only officially inaugurated in 1980, 85 years after the first edition of the Art Biennale. The exhibition spaces have never been mere shelters for works of art, but have from day one assumed the role of representing the participating nations.
The aim of this text is to trace the history of the Giardini pavilions from 1895 to the present day, briefly presenting the evolution of the exhibition complex and the principles and concepts behind the construction of the national pavilions. The main source of information is the book by architect and professor of architectural history Marco Mulazzani, "Guide to the pavilions of the Venice Biennale since 1887".
On 19 April 1893, the Venice City Council decided to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the marriage of King Umberto I to Margaret of Savoy by organizing a biennial art exhibition. The exhibition, which was to become the oldest art institution of international standing, was organized two years later, in 1895, at the instigation of the city's then mayor, the poet Riccardo Selvatico.
The venue chosen by the city council in 1894 was the Giardini del Castello in the western part of the city, a park laid out for walks at the beginning of the 19th century on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte, much appreciated by the city's inhabitants, which had hosted the National Art Exhibition a few years earlier, in 1886.
A pavilion (today called the Central Pavilion) was built in the Giardini. By decision of the city council, Venetian, Italian and foreign artists were invited, each of whom could exhibit a maximum of two unpublished works. The organizing committee was made up of artists from all over the world: for example, for the French committee, painters Carolus-Duran, Jean-Jacques Henner, Gustave Moreau, painter, engraver and sculptor, painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes; for the English committee, Dutch-born painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, genre painter Edmund Blair Leighton and Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator John Everett Millais; for the Italian committee, Giovanni Boldini, renowned portrait painter, Francesco Paolo Michetti, painter and photographer, Alberto Pasini, painter, or the Swedish artist Anders Zorn, painter, engraver and sculptor, Charles Van der Stappen, Belgian sculptor and others.
The initiation of such an event should be seen in the more general context of similar events in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, such as the "Salon des Indépendants" founded by the Society of Independent Artists in France in 1884, the "Group of XX" of avant-garde artists in Brussels also in 1884 or the Secession Association in Munich in 1892, universal exhibitions which all contributed to the circulation of ideas. An exemplary organization was put in place from the very first exhibition. A secretary-general, a patronage committee and a jury took charge of operations, and the rules adopted at that time have long been a model of logistics for the organization of major exhibitions. In practice, the Biennale had a system of national pavilions managed by commissioners selected by each country.
The first international art exhibition in Venice (Prima esposizione internazionale d'arte della città di Venezia) took place from April 22 to October 22, 1895 and was visited by more than 200,000 people.
The second exhibition, the first to be called the 'Biennale', was held in 1897 on the initiative of the mayor Filippo Grimani. The artist who designed the poster for this edition, Augusto Sezanne, became the official graphic designer of the exhibition.
One of the co-founders of the Venice Biennale was the Francophile art critic Vittorio Pica, chief editor of the magazine "Emporium, rivista mensile illustrata d'arte, litteratura scienze e varietà", the first Italian magazine devoted exclusively to modern art, founded in Bergamo in 1895 and disappeared in 1964, chief curator of the exhibition from 1901 to 1907 and its secretary general until the end of the 1920s.
In order not to interfere with the Universal Exhibition in Turin, the Biennale did not take place in 1911, but a year earlier in 1910 and a year later in 1912.
In 1914, during the 11th edition, the First World War broke out in Europe. The Biennale was interrupted and only resumed in 1920.

In 1932, the members of the Biennale, presided over by Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, an entrepreneur and politician, launched the first edition of the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, dedicated to the cinema.
Starting with the 19th Biennale in 1934, the exhibition was to be called "de arte contemporane", and in 1938 "la Biennale di Venezia", without further specification; in 1940, the exhibition was held during wartime; in 1942, the 23rd edition celebrated 20 years of Italian fascism.
The 24th Biennale was not held until 1948, from May to September.
Since 1999, the Biennale's exhibition area has been massively expanded with the transfer to the Ministry of Culture of part of the Italian Navy's military domain: the Corderie, Artiglierie, Gaggiandre, Tese Cinquecentesche and Tese delle Vergini, in short "l'Arsenale", 50,000 square meters of which 25,000 square meters indoors. The Corderie, the factory for ropes, ropes and cables for ships, built in 1303 and rebuilt between 1579 and 1585 according to the design of Antonio Da Ponte - the sculptor and architect of the Rialto Bridge, had already hosted the first international architectural exhibition in 1980, the first space on the site to be used for the exhibition.
Countries that did not have pavilions in the Giardini found exhibition spaces in other buildings in the city, in palaces, churches and art galleries. Some of the venues have become permanent: Armenia, in Ca' Zenobio degli Armeni, which belongs to the Armenian Mekitarist Congregation; Luxembourg, in the Ca' del Duca palace; China and Italy, in the Arsenale; Taiwan, in Piombi, the old prison in the Doge's palace. Palazzo Malipiero regularly hosts national pavilions (Iran in 2009, Cyprus in 2011).

National pavilions in the Giardini

The pavilion built for the international exhibition of 1895 was originally called Palazzo Pro Arte (later Palazzo Centrale or Padiglione Italia) and included 11 exhibition rooms, a salon, offices and various facilities for the public, all separated by small gardens. This central pavilion became the nucleus of the Biennale for more than 120 years, during which time it underwent numerous extensions, reconfigurations and remodeling by Italian architects such as Guido Cirilli in 1914, Brenno Del Giudice and Gio Ponti in 1928, Duilio Torres in 1932 and Carlo Scarpa in 1962 and 1968. As the prestige of the exhibition grew and its international character increased, from 1907 onwards special pavilions were successively set up for the participating countries. The first pavilions were those of Belgium in 1907, Hungary, England and the Bavarian artists (later the German Pavilion) in 1909, France and Sweden (later allocated to the Netherlands) in 1912 and Russia in 1914. It is worth noting the involvement of the municipality in the early years, by financially supporting the construction of the pavilions and requiring the countries to which they were destined to buy them.

The Belgium Pavilion was built in 1907 by the Belgian architect Léon Sneyers, influenced by the principles of the Viennese Secession and the famous Stoclet Palace, then under construction in Brussels. The pavilion occupied by the Netherlands between 1914-1953 was originally intended for Sweden and was built by the Swedish architect Gustav Ferdinand Boberg. He adopted a geometric composition of the main volume and facade, with modern decorative elements of a strong graphic character. For the Hungarian pavilion, the architect Géza Maróti chose a vocabulary derived from Hungarian vernacular architecture, with the facade decorations reproducing symbolic motifs of local tradition. The Russian pavilion, for its part, takes motifs from the repertoire of national sacred and secular architecture of the 16th-18th centuries in a simplified manner. The pavilions of Germany, England and France follow neoclassical principles in the organization of the exhibition spaces and the main facade, always symmetrical, with a monumental portico. In the Giardini, the ensemble created by these pavilions gave the exhibition a noble and romantic atmosphere.

In the inter-war period, pavilions were built for Spain (1922), Czechoslovakia (1926), the United States (1930) and Denmark (1932). In 1934, the Biennale space was extended to the island of Sant Elena, where the Venetian architect Brenno del Giudice designed a single building initially intended to include three pavilions: in the centre, the Venice pavilion, flanked by the Polish and Swedish pavilions (in 1952, the pavilion was assigned to Egypt). Later the pavilions of Yugoslavia (now Serbia) and Romania, completed in 1938, were also included in the same building. The Greek and Austrian pavilions were also built at the same time, along with the five pavilions on the island of St Helena.

The classical organization of the pavilions was based on a representative central hall preceded by an entrance hall, to which secondary exhibition spaces and gardens were attached; the facades included a symmetrical composition of a monumental entrance and decorative elements often inspired by national motifs. Most of the pavilions built in the inter-war period still follow the neoclassical line traced by those built in the early years of the Biennale, in terms of the planimetric organization and the plasticity of the facades.
The Spanish pavilion was designed by Francisco Javier de Luque in a neoclassical style inspired by Spanish architecture, with the imposing main facade made up of elements typical of Castilian Baroque from the late 17th century. The United States pavilion, designed by architects Chester Aldrich and William Delano in a Colonial Neoclassical style with elements typical of the residential architecture of 17th-century American settlers, is also classical. The Pavilion of Greece, designed by M. Papandreou, denotes a neo-Byzantine vocabulary with elements of ecclesiastical architecture. The Denmark Pavilion, designed by Carl Brummer in a Nordic neoclassical style, simplified and sober, is also a tribute to classical Italian architecture.
While all these pavilions complete the romantic atmosphere of the Giardini ensemble, the Czechoslovakian pavilion by Czech avant-garde architect Otakar Novotný and the Austrian pavilion by Josef Hoffman introduce elements of modernism in spaces, forms and details representative of the evolution of architecture of the period, which begin to shape the fundamental role of architecture at the Biennale. During the same period and in the same modern spirit, the Belgian pavilion is also rebuilt by Virgilio Vallot.
After the Second World War, pavilions were built for Switzerland and Israel (1952), the Netherlands (1954), Venezuela, Japan and Finland (1956), Canada (1958), Uruguay (1960), the Nordic countries (1962) and Brazil (1964).

None of these pavilions follows the classical line imposed in the early years, opening up new spatial and plastic themes that introduce architecture as a distinct character in the content and the unfolding of the events of the Venice Biennale. The Israel Pavilion, designed by Zeev Rechter, consists of a single volume with exterior walls high above the ground and the main access extracted from the compact volume of the building. The interior spaces are spread over three levels, each with a particular relationship to the outside. The Swiss Pavilion, by Bruno Giacometti, is made up of a series of rooms and galleries, closed or open, each with its own distinct ambience. Carlo Scarpa, who had designed several exhibition spaces in the Giardini, such as the ticket kiosk in front of the current main entrance, also designed the pavilion of Venezuela: a composition of three volumes, offset and rotated, in which the exhibition spaces have a direct and wide opening to the outside, with the sky and landscape always visible. The building is also distinguished by a plastic composition of textures - concrete, stone, metal and wood. Designed by Alvar Aalto, the Finnish Pavilion is inspired by Nordic tents and ancient shrines, consisting of a single irregular prismatic volume made of wood. All wooden elements were manufactured in Finland and assembled in Giardini.
Takamasa Yoshizaka's pavilion for Japan brings together and interprets the principles of traditional Japanese architecture and modernism, but the fundamental organizing principle of the space is the relationship of the building to the landscape. The slope of the Giardini's terrain is taken into the pavilion's interior, the unique prismatic volume of the building is raised from the ground on stilts and opened up to ground level to unify the interior and exterior spaces into a single exhibition space. The Nordic Pavilion also speculates on the direct relationship with nature, with architect Sverre Fehn creating a large open exhibition space with multiple and flexible design possibilities, in which the massive concrete structural elements of the ceiling ceiling levitate and interweave with the trees rising from within the pavilion.

Since the 1970s, architecture has gradually become an exhibition theme in its own right at the Biennale, with various exhibitions and dedicated events, as well as the construction of numerous installations in the Giardini and other parts of the city. In 1980, the first International Architecture Exhibition is held with the theme 'Presence of the Past'. In the same year, the exhibition was extended to other areas of Venice, occupying primarily the Arsenale. A newer generation of pavilions have been built since the 1980s for Australia (1988) and South Korea (1996).
Australia's first pavilion was built by Philip Cox in 1988, but has been replaced by the current one, designed by the Australian firm Denton Corker Marshall (John Denton, Bill Corker, Barrie Marshall). The new construction, composed of two interlocking prisms - an inner, white, flexible prism that molds to the required exhibition spaces - and an outer, black prism that envelops and protects the inner structure - was designed to be placed in any space, from the rugged Australian terrain to the Giardini park. The Korea Pavilion consists of an old, refurbished brick building and a new, transparent construction that offers an in-depth view of the exhibition space from the outside and a panoramic view of the park and lagoon from the inside.
Today, the Biennale includes 29 national pavilions seamlessly integrated into the Giardini, constituting a unique public space, both open and closed, dedicated to a permanent dialog between art and architecture.

Summary of ARCHITECTURE Magazine, NR.2-3/2018
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