The Venice Biennale is an international
art biennial exhibition held in
Venice, Italy. Often described as "the Olympics of the
art world", participation in the Biennale is a prestigious event for contemporary artists. The festival has become a constellation of shows: a central exhibition curated by that year's artistic director, national pavilions hosted by individual nations, and independent exhibitions throughout Venice. The Biennale parent organization also hosts regular festivals in other arts: architecture, dance, film, music, and theater.[1]
Outside of the central, international exhibition, individual nations produce their own shows, known as pavilions, as their national representation. Nations that own their pavilion buildings, such as the 30 housed on the Giardini, are responsible for their own upkeep and construction costs as well. Nations without dedicated buildings create pavilions in venues throughout the city.[1]
Organization and building
The pavilion was designed by Brenno Del Giudice in 1932 and built by 1938 as part of a complex on the Giardini's
Sant'Elena Island. The buildings, originally allocated to Sweden and Greece, were respectively transferred to Yugoslavia and Romania.[2]
The interior was planned under the attention of
Nicolae Iorga. It was initially designed as an art salon with three rooms (the main, tall show room being flanked by two smaller ones) and it stayed like that until 1962, when the walls were demolished, uniting the three rooms into one single salon. The initial architecture was recreated in 2015, albeit temporarily, by architect Attila Kim for
Adrian Ghenie's Darwin's Room. Since 1997, the Romanian Institute for Culture and Research in Humanities (also known as Casa Romena di Venezia, based in Palazzo Correr) has hosted intermittently parallel exhibitions representing Romania at the Venice Biennale.[citation needed]
1964 — Group exhibition. Paintings by
Ion Bițan,
Ion Gheorghiu,
Ion Pacea. Sculptures by
Boris Caragea. Commissioner:
Mircea Deac (Secretary of the Council for Arts from the State Committee for Culture and Arts of the Popular Republic of Romania).[3]
2003 — Alteridem.exe.2 (new media exhibition) by
Kinema Ikon group. Commissioner and curator:
Călin Man. Deputy curators: Raluca Velisar, Adela Văetiși. Organized by the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (MNAC).
2009 —
Ștefan Constantinescu,
Andrea Faciu,
Ciprian Mureșan, The Seductiveness of the Interval (curator:
Alina Șerban; assistant curator: Livia Pancu; collaborators: Alex Axinte, Cristi Borcan, Livia Andreea Ivanovici; project manager: Mirela Duculescu)
2011 —
Ion Grigorescu,
Anetta Mona Chișa &
Lucia Tkáčová, Performing History (curator: Maria Rus Bojan,
Ami Barak; special collaboration:
Bogdan Ghiu and
Timotei Nădășan). A parallel Romanian exhibition was hosted by The New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Research in Humanities (Palazzo Correr): Romanian Cultural Resolution (curators: Adrian Bojenoiu, Alex. Niculescu)
^
abcdefghijklmnopqRuxandra Juvara-Minea, Participarea României la Bienala de la Veneția (Romanian Participations at the Venice Art Biennale), Editura Vremea, Bucharest, 2000
^1980-present: Catalogues of the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Art BiennaleGeneral Catalogues of the Venice Art Biennale
Volpi, Cristiana (2013). "Romania". In Re Rebaudengo, Adele (ed.). Pavilions and Garden of Venice Biennale. Rome: Contrasto. p. 178.
ISBN978-88-6965-440-4.