More than a century later, the Venice Biennale remains a stage for soft power theater, where art and propaganda are inseparable.<\/strong><\/p>\n “Germany, as a conquered country, is almost aggressive in her paintings. There is a desire, no, a firm will, to gain the upper hand.” And her paintings, although sometimes vulgar, are powerful. \u201d This was the assessment of Italian critic Arturo Lancellotti, who saw the works of a group of Bavarian artists representing Germany at the 1909 Venice Biennale. After Belgium pioneered this model in 1907, this exhibition was the second to include separate national pavilions built by the Hungarians, Germans, and British within the Napoleonic Castello Gardens. Without reading between the lines, it can be inferred that Lancellotti’s review was colored by the world beyond the garden. Italy was militarily weak, relatively recently unified, and at the time Germany’s junior partner in the Triple Alliance. Lancellotti, on the other hand, although still disguised as an art critic, seemed to view other imperial European powers with greater admiration. “England, already at the height of its prosperity, appears even higher in her paintings. She is not preoccupied with overtaking others and succeeds with grace and delicacy.”<\/p>\n Not all art should be read through the prism of politics, but it takes even more courage to ignore it when approaching the Venice Biennale. The 19th-century model of expansive group exhibitions is maintained in the central pavilion and the Arsenale (which this year features an exhibition conceived by curator Mitsuhiro Koyo before his death in 2025), but half of the events are now organized around nation-state structures, and the number of participating countries grows each year. year. Armed conflicts are also on the rise globally, at their highest since World War II, and recent hosting of the Biennale has become increasingly contentious, with the Russian, Israeli, and now US pavilions being the focus of particular protest and anger. All three countries have been accused of committing or threatening to commit genocide, and in April a group of 74 artists and curators participating in the Kouou exhibition called for the exclusion of national expressions from these countries, writing: [of aggression] Beyond that, participation in La Biennale should not be normalized. ” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro responded to criticism that Russia was being allowed to return to the event after being absent since 2022, pledging that if the government “propagates through artists and curators, we will be the first to shut down the pavilion.” That’s an irrational statement. Whatever the intentions of the individual artists, for any country, as many others have pointed out, national pavilions in Venice have always been about propaganda and soft power. That may be innocuous in the case of smaller countries and less high-profile art scenes such as Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone and Somalia, which are exhibiting for the first time this year, to name just a few, but there is a reason why the UK Pavilion is co-ordinated by a public agency sponsored by the UK government’s Foreign Office rather than the cultural sector.<\/p>\n Israel and Russia have their own buildings in the Giardini, and the Guggenheim Foundation owns the U.S. Pavilion, but the exhibition is currently being held in conjunction with the U.S. State Department. The United States opened the pavilion under private sponsorship in 1930 after years of unsuccessful lobbying for public funds at home, and its presence in the European showcase was further enhanced by a “joyful luncheon” held the previous year between sculptor Antonio Mariani and art dealer Walter L. Clark. It was not until later that ownership of the Palladian building was transferred from Clark’s commercial cooperative, Grand Central Art Galleries, first to MoMA in 1954 and then to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1986. MoMA’s era was at the height of the Cold War, and it is no coincidence that the building came under the control of a New York institution during that particular period. MoMA has long been the U.S. government’s cultural diplomacy agent. In the same year, 27 paintings and drawings by abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning were installed in the pavilion. Nelson Rockefeller, who had resigned as museum director in 1953, had begun the role of “special assistant” in the Eisenhower administration, coordinating psychological warfare. The pleasant meal that was now still enjoyed hid a more important purpose: to prove to the world that the United States was not the cultural backwater that Russia had often claimed to be: the freedom of Abstract Expressionism, historically driven by a positive contrast with the regime of Soviet socialist realism.<\/p>\n In 1948, America welcomed a new neighbor in what is now the Giardini della Biennale. The State of Israel, declared as such in May, was invited to perform the show. The title of the original presentation was Palestinian artist<\/em> (Palestinian artist), organizer landed Palestinian Jewish artist<\/em> (Palestinian Hebrew artist), before agreeing on the final title. Artist from Erez Israel, Palestine<\/em> (Artist from Eretz Yisrael, Palestine). The gardens filled up, and over the next two decades country participation more than doubled, with Venezuela (1954), Japan and Finland (1956), and Canada (1958) opening pavilions. But Israel, only three years old, arrived there first, designing an international-style pavilion as its permanent home on land behind the U.S. pavilion. It was the work of artists Marcel Janko, Moshe Mokadi, and Reuben Rubin. Opened in time for the 1952 Biennale, the architecture promoted the new nation’s Western Europeanness and “civilized” tendencies. 1923 triptych by Rubin, title first fruit<\/em>held an exhibition. However, as art historian Chelsea Haines pointed out, only the central panel, in which the Romanian-born artist depicts a Jewish family harvesting the bounty of the land, was shown. What was missing from the show for political reasons was the depiction of the Arab Palestinian shepherds and the Bedouin side resting with the camels. In the catalog for that year’s Biennale, Director-General Rodolfo Pallucchini celebrated the inclusion of “non-European” countries in the event. Today, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where Rubin’s work is still on display, describes the Arab subjects depicted on the two side panels as “essentially part of the landscape, supporting characters in this drama; they take no part in the productive work of moving the world.”<\/p>\n Under the Biennale’s current constitution, any country recognized by the Italian government is eligible to organize a national pavilion. For this reason, Palestine will not be invited, but this year, the Palestine Museum of the United States in Connecticut plans to rent space and hold an exhibition as an official accompanying event. The Biennale has found space for them in the Arsenale, although organizers claim this year’s Israel Pavilion is under renovation. The protest artists warn that this move not only goes against Cuo’s concept of “radical solidarity” but, more practically, “will lead to a situation of violence and fear through the accompanying military and police presence at the Israeli Pavilion” after the presence of Italian police outside the Israeli Pavilion in 2024.<\/p>\n The pavilion is obviously not a full-fledged “extraterritorial space” like an embassy or foreign military base with all legal protections, but it has a similar feel and is largely accessible to each country. The countries that own the site will not pay any rent or fees to the Biennale organizers. Russia purchased the land for the garden in time for the 1914 edition, an important insurance policy for Russia at a time when international sanctions have isolated the art market and threatened to disrupt any exhibition. In 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, two artists scheduled to exhibit at the pavilion the following May, Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov, withdrew in protest, and the pavilion remained closed. In 2024, the Russian government handed over the keys to friendly Bolivia for exhibition. The past few years are not the first time the pavilion has been empty. From 1938 to 1954, the Soviet Union under Stalin avoided the program. in the last year of the boycott new york times<\/em> The newspaper’s critic acknowledged that “some of the other Iron Curtain countries go to unusual lengths to display art based on political morality,” but reported with some glee that “the Russia Pavilion, a melancholy Bakstian edifice, is closed and shabby.” After Stalin’s death, the pavilion was unlocked and dusted off in time for its opening in 1956.<\/p>\n After 20 years of exhibitions by artists such as Kiev-born Misha Brusilovsky and Russian-Livonian “Queen of Soviet Sculpture” Vera Mukhina, Russia once again withdrew from the garden after the so-called “Dissident Biennale” in 1977. This special exhibition, covering Nonconformist art, film, and literature, was organized by and ostensibly to commemorate the off-year Biennale at the Arsenale. 60th anniversary of the October Revolution. Those who took part in this provocation were exclusively from the Soviet bloc, and all operated outside of the sphere officially sanctioned by Moscow and other communist regimes. The Biennale’s president at the time, socialist Carlo Ripa di Meana, wrote that the exhibition recognized that the Biennale was embedded in the friction between art and geopolitics. “How society absorbs these tensions, how it deals with the rebellion posed by both art and ideas, these are the questions that have concerned the Venice Biennale.” As the organizers should know, it remains so half a century later.<\/p>\n Read next<\/strong> We will continue to cover the 61st Venice Biennale, which will be held from May 9th to November 22nd, 2026.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/yasbou.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776911992_537_There-has-never-been-an-apolitical-Venice-Biennale.jpg\")
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