The First Venice Biennale

The art world was in ferment in the late 19th century. In Paris and Vienna radical ideas were everywhere. But in the newly founded kingdom of Italy things were different. ‘Who ever in Italy spoke or wrote about any type of artistic venture was tolling a death bell’, the young art critic Ugo Ojetti said.

True, there had been a successful one-off exhibition in Venice in 1887. But Riccardo Selvatico, the city’s mayor, had a bigger idea: a biennial event to give the city a permanent place on the international art scene. It took eight years of talk – six over coffees in Caffè Florian and two in the city’s council chambers – to make it a reality.

Doors opened on 30 April 1895 in the presence of Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy. There were 285 artists and 516 works; 186 were sold. Some 225,000 people visited. A scandal helped. One painting, Supreme Encounter by Giacomo Grosso, featured five naked young women posed around a corpse in a coffin. The Catholic Church protested. The painting was removed to a side room. Visitors had to ask where to find it. Ask they did: Grosso’s work won the public vote by some margin.

As for the Biennale, it was so successful that Venice donated some profits to help the city’s poor.