AMARCORD

Fragments of Memory from the Historical Archives of la Biennale

Venice, Ca’ Giustinian (Portego)

Organized by laBiennale di Venezia and curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Visual Art Department.

Following a timeline that runs from 1895 to 1999, the selection does not claim to exhaust the long and complex history of the institution but simply recounts several episodes on the life, the organization and the participation of artists and curators in the International Art Exhibition.

Associations, images and memories can be seen in a lively collection of, telegrams, loans forms, newspaper articles, photographs and artists’ hand-written letters all of which are displayed with the freshness of trouvailles, giving the impression of a history that could have been found only by accident. In short, the exhibition is about amarcord (remembering) and was conceived as a way of preventing the archives from becoming a vault: to make it a friendly place that piques the curiosity of visitors, and demonstrate that its value and importance extends beyond  its appeal to scholars and historians.

The exhibition is also enriched by drawings, prints, photographs and posters commissioned by la Biennale and donated by artists, some of which were created by Augusto Sezanne, Alexander Archipenko, Carlo Carrà, Georges Braque, Jean Fautrier, Osvaldo Licini, Jacques Villon, Giorgio Morandi, Hans Hartung, Carlo Scarpa, Alberto Biasi, Man Ray, Sol LeWitt and Ado Hamelrijck, among others.

Photo: 1897, Il Palazzo della Esposizione detto “Pro Arte” progettato da Marius De Maria e Bartolomeo Bezzi. Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia