Oskar Kokoschka at the 24th Venice Art Biennale: “un atto di riparazione morale”

As the first edition held after the Second World War, the 24th Venice Art Biennale represents a significant turning point. Acknowledging the impact of recent tragic historical events, members of the Commission for Figurative Art distanced their curatorial approaches from the largely nationalistic practices previously promoted. In this context, they dedicated a solo exhibition to Oskar Kokoschka, a project rich in implications, as the painter had opposed the Nazi regime since the 1930s and was among the artists whose works, labelled as «degenerate», were confiscated from German museums. This research examines how Kokoschka’s solo exhibition serves not only its primary educational purpose but also as an «act of moral redress» and a «statement of freedom» for a cultural institution of a nation that had not fully confronted its fascist past. Given that, this tribute preceded the release of the first Italian monograph on the painter and his series of American postwar retrospectives, the exhibition project is analysed in light of the factors that allowed visitors to formulate their own judgement on the Entartete Kunst operation: the presence of specific artworks, relationships with other «degenerate painters» featured at the 24th Biennale, and the geography of the foreign pavilions in the Giardini.