Marina Abramovic Attacked by Aspiring Artist in Florence

ROME — Artist Marina Abramovic is no stranger to controversial performances, but she found herself involved in an unscripted spectacle Sunday when an aspiring artist hit her with a painting.

Abramovic was leaving a book signing at the Palazzo Strozzi, in Florence, which is hosting Italy’s first major retrospective of her art, when a man slammed a paper portrait he had made of Abramovic over her head.

The sudden act drew horrified gasps from several people in the crowd that had been following Abramovic through the palazzo. “She was attacked,” one woman is heard saying in a video of the incident published by the Rome daily La Repubblica.

Abramovic said in a statement issued by the museum that she had been stunned by the aggression but was unhurt.

She said a man approached her holding a “rather distorted” portrait of her, according to the statement. “He came forward, staring me straight in the eyes and I smiled thinking that it was a present for me,” Abramovic said. “In a fraction of a second I saw his expression change and become violent. You know, danger always comes very quickly, like death.” That is when he smashed the portrait — with a frame, but no glass — over her head. “Boom,” he appears to be saying in the video.

Reports in the Italian media, which were confirmed by a spokeswoman from the museum, identified the man as Vaclav Pisvejc, a Czech-born aspiring artist who has been involved in past incidents featuring nudity and the occasional denunciation. This year, he was accused of vandalizing with spray paint a statue by Swiss artist Urs Fischer in the central Piazza della Signoria.

After Sunday’s attack, the suspect was immediately wrestled to the ground by museum guards. In the video, the man is seen huddling, hunched over, next to the broken portrait. “Who is it?” a woman asks.

“It’s someone who tries to make trouble at all the exhibits,” a man responds.

Abramovic said in her statement that once she recovered from her shock, she asked to meet her aggressor. “I wanted to know why he did this, why this hatred against me,” she said.

She said that he responded: “I had to do it for my art.”

“You don’t make art through violence against others,” she said she replied. “I was also a young, not famous artist, but I never hurt anyone.

“In the past, I would have been angered by something like this; today I feel compassion,” she added. Abramovic has not pressed charges.

Arturo Galansino, director of the Palazzo Strozzi foundation, said in a statement that he “deeply regretted” the episode.