Mieczysław Porębski, “The 28th Biennale,” translated from Polish by Joanna Wolańska, originally published as “XXVIII Biennale”, Nowa Kultura 43 (1956); reprinted in Mieczysław Porębski, Pożegnanie z krytyką (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1966), 102–104

Mieczyslaw Porebski was a leading art historian and critic of modern art, appointed professor of art history at Jagiellonian University in Krakow in 1970. The review of the American section at the 1956 Venice Biennale includes insightful and for that time rare formal analysis of works by de Kooning and Pollock. The United States is the only country to have a thematic exhibition at this year’s Biennale. The process of mixing painterly media on Pollock’s canvas does not express anything. Its monstrous dimensions and astronomical complexity usher one into an atmosphere of a stupefying nightmare with no firm points, no possibility of being anchored to anything, no way of escape for the eye, thought or imagination. The problem of the juxtaposition of abstract art and realism practically does not exist in the American paintings presented in this year’s Biennale.