“There is no Fascism in art. And in Fascism there is no art." This is the motto that was the basis of the conference held last Monday 29 June at Villa Bertelli, in Forte dei Marmi, and which inspired the exhibition itinerary dedicated to the art of the twenty years underway in Rovereto al Mart, by the exhibition “Arte and fascism”, open to visitors until September 1st.
There are dozens of exhibitions we have witnessed in recent years that have had as their central focus the art included in the twenty years of fascism.
The exhibition at the Mart in Rovereto turns Fascism from a historical background into a dominant motif, being considered no longer as a stage on which artists found themselves acting, but as a system capable of becoming an incubator of diversified vital tendencies, at least the only case in Europe in the history of totalitarian regimes.
“Art and fascism – explains one of its curators, Beatrice Avanzi – intends to present the artistic production of the twenty years of fascism in all its complexity and variety, without denial or reticence, with the awareness that our history should not be erased. We know without a doubt that Fascism represents the darkest period in our recent history, but Fascism does not mean regime art.
The exhibition Arte e Fascismo analyzes the various and complex ways in which the fascist regime influences Italian figurative production, using the languages of art and architecture for propaganda purposes. The return to the ancient, to the functional, to the affirmation of Italian tradition, found various declinations, from the renewed look at the ancient masters of the protagonists of the twentieth century up to the more radical affirmations of an art of propaganda aimed at building consensus. The model of a rediscovered harmony between tradition and modernity enjoys support from the regime, in search of the definition of an organized system of the arts. The new places of power are transformed into instruments of affirmation through a language open to both classicism and rationalism, capable of involving mural art, sculpture, architecture, all reborn under the impulse of a renewed celebratory desire.
The visitor is introduced to this exhibition by the youthful portrait of Margherita Sarfatti, dating back to the years 1916-1917, created by Mario Sironi; not yet in line with the artist's typical style, it appears as an immature, unfinished test, almost symbolizing the germ of all the extraordinary developments that national Italian art will experience in the following years.
Next to it we continue with a mature masterpiece by Sironi, entitled "Novecento" from the mid-1920s.
Sarfatti and Sironi are synonymous with the twentieth century movement, which proposed a tendency to recover the ancient, alongside which multiple offshoots proliferated from second Futurism to magical realism, from geometric abstractionism to the first antagonistic movements such as "current" or the Roman". If the tendency to recover the ancient was the privileged and official perspective of this movement, the offshoots that developed would have been very different.
The exhibition is divided into various sections and includes 400 works, starting from the works inspired by the cult of classicism and Italianity typical of the twentieth century. In addition to Sironi, Achille Funi emerges with the 'Terra' of 1921, Giorgio Morandi with a 'Still Life' in brown and ocher tones from 1929, Massimo Campigli with 'Passeggiate delle educande' (1929-1930), and Felice Casorati with 'Beethoven ' (1928).
The next section is dedicated to the Duce, it is entitled "The image of power" and has aroused the greatest controversy, exciting the hypersensitivity of the representatives of cancel culture. The duce's jaw and skull, unlike those of his Teutonic counterpart, seemed made specifically to be spread in archaic sculptural forms, as in the Condottiero by Ernesto Michahelles, known as Thayaht, or in the multiple examples of Profilo continua by Renato Bertelli. There is also the figure of Mussolini on horseback in a Napoleonic version, as he appears in "The first wave" of 1930 by Primo Conti.
Another section examines the role of the second Futurism and the exaltation of action and in this case, what dominates is the genius loci, the eponymous artist of Rovereto, Depero. Alongside his works, Sironi's large compositions and the bronze sketches for the monument to the Duke of Aosta, from 1934, by Arturo Martini dominate. There is also an in-depth analysis of architecture and its relationship with the arts, in particular in consideration of the creations of the major architects of the time, such as Marcello Piacentini, Giuseppe Terragni, Francesco Mansutti, Figini and Pollini, Adalberto Libera. The followers of abstract art in Italy are also taken into consideration, such as Manlio Rho or Mario Radice, of whom a significant study for Mussolini dating back to 1935 is preserved.
In the New Myths section, the main themes that fascist ideology suggests to artists are examined. On the one hand they evoke an Olympus of athletes and great heroes, on the other family fathers and workers who provide their contribution to lay the economic foundations of the State.
Personal mythologies are those proposed by De Chirico and Alberto Savinio. The former is incubating the motifs of his Second Metaphysics, the latter has created Le poète.
“The artists – explains the second curator Daniela Ferrari – were in a certain sense directed and helped by a government that organized a series of numerous exhibitions through the fascist Syndicate of Fine Arts and made sure that they were brought together in a system”.
The epilogue of the exhibition is dedicated to the “Fall of the Dictatorship”, including works such as Mario Mafai's Fantasies or the corrosive images of Mino Maccari's Dux series, executed in the early 1940s, capable of revealing the side.
