The prize jury for this year’s Venice Biennale, the art world’s most important event, resigned on Thursday — just nine days before the show’s opening — after a furor over its decision to exclude artists from countries accused of crimes against humanity from receiving awards.

In a brief statement posted to eFlux, an art publication, the five-person jury led by Solange Farkas, a Brazilian curator, said simply that it had resigned “in acknowledgment” of its April 23 announcement that it would not give awards to artists from countries whose leaders were being investigated by the International Criminal Court.

The jury did not mention any countries by name in either announcement, but the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on accusations of war crimes for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The I.C.C. has also issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on accusations of war crimes in Ukraine, but the uproar over the ban had centered mostly on Israel.

On Sunday, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement on X that excluding Israeli artists had “transformed the Biennale from an open artistic space of free, boundless ideas into a spectacle of false, anti-Israeli political indoctrination.”

Belu-Simion Fainaru, a sculptor who is representing Israel this year, had consulted lawyers about the Biennale jury’s decision. On Wednesday, Italy’s culture minister called Fainaru to express his support for the Israeli artist, according to a news release.

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