The Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Abstract

This is the first extensive publication dedicated to the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, originally built in 1958 by Enrico Peressutti from the Milanese architect collective BBPR, and restored in 2018 by Alberico Belgiojoso, son of another of BBPR’s founders. This book is a welcome addition to the bibliography on the ‘open-air museum’ of national pavilions in the Castello gardens, in which there are still important gaps. It is handsomely illustrated and contains authoritative contributions and a wealth of archival material. The book mainly focuses on the architectural history of the Canada pavilion from early conceptual designs to its recent restoration. However, it goes beyond important architectural discussions to encompass the relationship between visual art and architecture, and finally in the complex organisation presiding over national representation at the Venice Biennale. While the Venice Biennale started in 1895, Canada was a comparatively new participant. Its first national presence there dates to 1952, two years after Mexico, and two decades after the USA built their own pavilion in 1930. The post-war period was one of major change and expansion at the Biennale. 1948 and the display – in the Greek pavilion – of Peggy Guggenheim’s iconic collection of Surrealist artists and young Abstract Expressionist artists heralded a new era in its history. Turning its back on its prewar hesitance towards artistic innovation and on its fascist years, the post-war Biennale resolutely embraced the display of avant-garde movements, and the growing internationalisation of the art world. Reflecting and amplifying these shifts, the 1950s saw the third wave of pavilion construction in the Castello gardens, after the first wave started in 1907 with Belgium, and the second wave took place during the interwar period. The post-war constructions embodied the Biennale’s openness and filled its gardens with pavilions belonging not only to European neighbours such as Switzerland (1951) and Holland (1953–1954), but also to overseas countries such as Israel (1951), Venezuela (1953– 1956), Japan (1955–56) and Canada. Prestigious architects such as Josef Hoffman, Bruno Giacometti, Carlo Scarpa, Alvar and Elissa Aalto, Takamasa Yoshizaka and Gerrit Rietveld contributed their own interpretation of modernist architecture which visually underlined the aesthetic shift taking place at the Biennale. The