Anita Orzes

Anita Orzes is PhD candidate at the Department of Art History of the Grenoble Alpes University and the University of Barcelona and part of the International Research Platform Decentralized Modernities – MoDe(s). She researches the transformation of the biennial model and the transnational networks between biennials in Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe.

She participated in the Theoretical Event of the 14th Havana Biennial and worked as cultural mediator at the 53rd Venice Biennial. She was documentalist for the exhibition Caso de estudio. España. Vanguardia artística y realidad social: 1936-1976 (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern).

She graduated cum laude in Conservation of Cultural Heritage (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 2010), and holds a MA in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture (Complutense University of Madrid, 2011).

Subject of the research at Villa Medici – Academy of France in Rome: The New Venice Biennale: a critical analysis of the transformation of the exhibition model from the perspective of curatorial practice and art criticism (1974-1977)

 In 1973 the Senate of the Italian Republic approved the new statute of the Venice Biennale. In the following four-year period (1974-1977), under the direction of the socialist Carlo Ripa di Meana, the New Biennale was transformed into a permanent cultural institute that left behind the festival character and abandoned the competitive system. The New Biennale organized events of international interest and transformed the exhibition model adopted until that time.

The Board of Directors then analyzed recent experiences (Giornate del Cinema Italiano, 1972-1973 and Festival de L’Unità, 1973), organized meetings with the participating countries and contacted critics and art historians. In addition, between 1974 and 1977 exhibitions of different nature (Libertà al Cile, 1974, Proposte per il Mulino Stucky, 1975 or Ambiente, partecipazione, strutture culturali, 1976) took place, through which the transformation of the biennial model was addressed. Both Italian (V. Gregotti, E. Crispolti, G.C. Argan) and foreigners (G. Forty or P. Restany) took part in them, either from the curatorial practice or from a more critical and theoretical approach.

The aim of this research stay is to study exhibition projects and theoretical contributions that promoted the exhibition revolution of the Biennale. First, it seeks to analyze the influence that previous experiences had on the theoretical elaboration of the Biennale. Second, it aims to situate the role and contribution of art historians and critics Enrico Crispolti and Giulio Cargo Argan in the transformation of the model. Thirdly, it intends to contextualize the exhibition revolution in the national artistic and political context, also framing it within the biennialist reality of the 1970s.

Although the New Biennale was held in Venice, part of the history of this quadrennial is kept in the archives and libraries of Rome. The access to these documentary collections will provide a new approach to the history of the Biennale, which, up until now, has been reconstructed and analyzed mainly based on the documentation preserved in Venice.

© Anita Orzes