The contribution offers a rereading of the minutes of the Arte figurativa e arte astratta conference, held in 1954 by the Fondaz one Giorgio Cini, in the light of the contemporary Venetian context. An interesting harmony emerges between the observations brought by artists and critics to the conference and the proposals that could be seen, in the same summer, at the Venice Biennale. The dialectic between figurative and abstract art, though no longer compellingly topical, still ran through the Venetian event and was present in the critical reflections of numerous intellectuals invited to present the artists of that year. The 1954 conference actually called the shots of a debate that had been a burning issue and projected it onto the most recent results of international artistic research, confirming the role of Venice, and of the Biennale in particular, as a crucible in which the leading elements of the most current international art found space.