EXHIBITIONS

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L'arte negli anni settanta. Giardini di Castello. Padiglione Centrale. 39 Biennale di Venezia. La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, 1980. Curated by Martin Kunz, Achille Bonito Oliva, Harald Szeemann, and Michael Compton.

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This was the first occasion on which Martin Kunz—at the time the young Director of Kunstmuseum Luzern—participated in the preparation of a major international exhibition, and he was principally concerned with the section entitled Arte negli anni ’70 (Art in the 1970s) in the central (ex-Italian) pavilion, of which the spaces were entirely dedicated to individual artists such as Beuys, Merz, Kounellis, Thek, Polke, Raetz, and so forth. In addition to Martin Kunz, the curators of the exhibitions included in L’arte degli anni Settanta were Michael Compton, Achille Bonito Oliva, and Harald Szeemann, and speaking as a single commission they advanced a request to the Directorship of the Biennale for permission to organize an overview of younger international artists of the 1980s at a venue outside of the Biennale Gardens, at the Magazzini del Sale, in the Dorsoduro quarter of the city of Venice. The request was accepted only four months previous to the opening of the Biennale, and this marked the first occasion on which an event collateral to the Biennale was proposed for a space outside of its Gardens. In line with the initial proposal on the part of the four-man commission, the curators of this exhibition—entitled Aperto 80 (Open Spaces, 1980)—were Achille Bonito Oliva and Harald Szeemann. The show enjoyed great success with the general public and confirmed the validity of the commission’s initial intuition. Still today, in fact, this section, on various other themes, continues to be present at the Gardens, at the Arsenale, and throughout the city. The catalogue is also inclusive of all the other sections of the Biennale, curated by its then Director Luigi Carluccio: Balthus, modern Czechoslovakian art, the Bordeaux experience, Mario De Luigi, and August Strindberg.