Ninety years after the end of the first world war, this exhibition shows the peculiar situation of Venice at the time of this conflict through paintings, images and original documents.
Curated by Camillo Tonini and Claudio Franzini, the exhibition is open to the public from the 16th of December 2008 until the 20th of April 2009 in the Venice seat of Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia, in Campo San Luca, at normal opening hours to the public (*).
It has been realised thanks to the joint efforts of Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia and Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia that has made available all the exhibited pieces that come from their vast historical and photographic funds and from the Museum collections. There is also an wealth of activities for schools, which are organised by Artemisia.
The exhibition is divided into four sections.
The first section is dedicated to /Venice, a city in arms/. On the one hand it describes the specific, mainly anti air-raid, defence strategies implemented after the war was declared: the city’s rooftop terraces (altane) transformed to become sighting posts, the lives of the lookouts in the attics who took turns mounting guard with the refrain « Per l’aria - buona guardia » (For the air – take good care); the anti air-raid artillery on the ships and along the coast; the spotlights whose beams sought to discover and follow the routes of enemy planes; the weighted air balloons that were released at the first sound of an alarm to disturb the air space above Venice. On the other hand it depicts the hardships and difficulties of everyday life during the war: the blackouts, the refuges, the bread rationing, the hospitals and even the “race” to get hold of bank deposits – and more specifically those held in the Cassa di Risparmio- to withdraw any money in the panic caused by Caporetto.
The second section is entitled /Venice, a city to be saved/ and documents the complex and lengthy work to preventively protect the monuments: the wooden beams to completely seal off the façade of the Basilica, the sandbags and the stone and wooden walls erected to protect the Ducal Palace, the dismantling of the equestrian statue of Colleoni and the four horses at St. Mark’s.
The third section is significantly called /Venice, the wounded city/. It is indeed surprising to see the frequency and the rapidity of the bombardments on the city, that despite the recognition as world heritage city was also a crucial strategic and logistics centre: the first bombing took place on the first day of the war, on the 24th of May 1915. Another forty-one followed with a total of 1029 bombs launched (300 alone during the bombing in the night between the 26th and 27th of February 1918), 52 dead and 84 injured. There is a particularly striking map that shows the pervasiveness of the bombings and there are also a series of photographs documenting one of the masterpieces that were irremediably lost: the ceiling of the Scalzi Church (struck in the attempt to bomb the nearby railway station) with frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo. The bombing is also impressed in a dramatic drawing by Maurice Bompard that is shown here for the first time.
The fourth section /Venice and the victory/ entrusts the description of the end of the hostilities and the celebrations for the satisfactory end of the war to three intense paintings by Emma Ciardi, in addition to a number of medals. Throughout the exhibition, it is particularly interesting to see how the events are witnessed by art: some pieces are exhibited here for the first time, including paintings and drawings by artists such as Guido Marussig, Guido Cadorin, Emanuele Brugnoli, Anselmo Bucci and Emma Ciardi, who are ‘excellent reporters of the war days in the city and who have the merit of providing, possibly more than any other documentary sources, a solid collective memory of those dramatic times.
