cecilia rostagni

Gio Ponti's work is of particular interest when analyzing the relationships with the visual arts that characterizes the Italian architectural panorama in the years before and after World War II. Architect, painter and designer himself, as well as an organizer and promoter of Italian taste abroad, since the early days of his career, Ponti aims to overcome the traditional boundaries between different artistic disciplines. During his long and varied activity he is in constant pursuit of a blend among the different creative spheres: from decoration of ceramics to furniture and everyday objects' design; from conception of residential homes to skyscrapers and large-scale buildings construction; from exhibitions to the design of sets and costumes. But it is not just in his design activity that he pursues the synthesis of the arts. The research of the possible relationship between architecture, painting , furniture and applied arts, cinema, literature, music and theatre, is the core of Stile magazine, which he created and directed between 1941 and 1947. Amplifying the action and the original spirit of Domus, the magazine is intended to show the high level of the Italian 'stile', by which he meant not a specific form, but the result of a common expression, of a collective feeling and taste. Stile is therefore a central episode, although little studied, within Ponti's reflection and work. At the same time, it highlights the liveliness of the Italian artistic and architectural debate of the 1940s, on which historiography has rarely focused. The paper aims to reconstruct, through the published writings and the unpublished documents, the synthetic strategies put in place by Ponti in Stile, in the light of the Italian debate of the time, as well as of his project activities.