The Diplomat
Spain will once again have a Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition, better known as the Venice Biennale, which will open its doors next Saturday, April 23 and will conclude on November 27.
The director of Cultural and Scientific Relations of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), Guzmán Palacios Fernández, presented on April 7 the project that will represent Spain at the Venice Art Biennale. The presentation, held in the auditorium of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was also attended by the president of Acción Cultural Española (A/CE), José Andrés Torres Mora; the designer of the Pavilion, artist Ignasi Aballi; and the curator of the exhibition, Bea Espejo, who gave a detailed explanation of the project, called Corrección (Correction).
On the other hand, the Spanish Pavilion celebrates this year its 100th anniversary as an exhibition space. Although Spain has participated in the Venice Biennale since its beginnings in 1895, it was not until 1922 that the Spanish Pavilion opened its doors for the first time, making it one of the 37 historic pavilions with its own headquarters in I Giardini.
The original pavilion was the work of Javier de Luque, although the façade was restored by Joaquín Vaquero Palacios in 1952. Since then, the Spanish Pavilion has been hosting both the proposals of the Spanish artists participating in the Biennial of Art and those included in the International Biennial of Architecture, which follow one after the other. Among the hundred or so invited artists are Chillida, Tàpies, Susana Solano and Santiago Sierra, along with the most recent proposals by Barceló, Dora García and Lara Almárcegui.
On the occasion of this important date, the Directorate of Cultural and Scientific Relations of the AECID, responsible for Spain’s participation in the Venice Biennale, has promoted the publication of a commemorative book on the pavilion’s 100-year history. The book is the result of a previous research work in archives and has texts by important personalities of the Spanish contemporary art world who have had an important link with the Venice Biennale and the Spanish Pavilion: Rosa Martínez, curator of the Spanish Pavilion in 2003 and general curator of the Venice Biennale in 2005; Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego, curator of the Spanish Pavilion in 2007; Martí Manen curator of the Spanish Pavilion in 2015; and Atxu Amann, curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 2018 Architecture Biennale.
