Fascist Architecture & Art

In 1935 the Venice Biennale organized an atypical exhibition commemorating its 40th anniversary. The “Mostra dei Quarant’anni” was mostly devoted to art from the Triveneto. Yet four rooms showed works by European artists who had exhibited in the Biennale, and were part of the collections of the Gallerie d’Arte Moderna in Rome and Venice. The show reflected on the evolution of modern art and of the Biennale between 1895 and 1935, exemplifying the aesthetic criteria of Italian public collections at the time. It included many artists that are still considered part of the modernist canon but most of them are now all but forgotten. It thus represents an optimal case study to analyze renegotiations of the artistic canon. Furthermore, the “Mostra” played a key role in re-defining the international role of Venice within fascist artistic organization. As the “Mostra” took place in the gap year between two Biennales and received little support from governmental institutions, it is generally overlooked in the literature on the period. Yet, on the basis of unpublished archival documentation and of the digital reconstruction of these rooms, this paper argues that the “Mostra dei Quarant’anni” is crucial for our understanding of the history of the Biennale and of the cultural policies of the fascist state.

Miti delle dittature: arte nel fascismo e nazionalsocialismo — un capitolo avvincente, dinamico, spesso deprimente, talora sorprendente di storia culturale e di storia politica intimamente intrecciate l'una con l'altra. La mostra di Castel Tirolo, tenutasi dall'aprile al giugno del 2019, intendeva indagare a tutto campo — per la prima volta in regione — le interferenze, le sovrapposizioni parziali e le specifiche e particolari contrapposizioni nella sfera estetica e in quella sociopolitica e tra di esse nell'età delle dittature. L'interesse conoscitivo non si appuntava tanto sugli eventuali "comportamenti sbagliati" che potrebbero essere imputati ai protagonisti e alle protagoniste delle arti, anzitutto quelle figurative. La mostra intendeva piuttosto esaminare con spirito aperto la particolare impronta lasciata dalla produzione artistica nell'area trentino-tirolese, evidenziandone il potenziale mitodinamico, ossia di principio direttivo collettivo, scegliendo come esempio gli eventi storici d'impronta autoritaria e totalitaria del Novecento.

Call for Contributions (Edited Volume) and Workshop Announcement
Date and time: 12 November 2021 (Tue.), 10:00-17:00 MET (online).
Interested scholars may submit abstracts (of up to 250 words) to the organizers (rueckej@hhu.de) by 30 September 2021.

We invite contributions to an edited volume titled “Gendering Fascism” and hope for theoretically grounded empirical case studies within the time frame of the 1920s through the 1940s. Taking gender seriously means asking questions about the functions that gendered individuals, institutions and imaginaries fulfil in the emergence and the politics of
fascisms, and how these politics in turn shape ideas and manifestations of gender. This includes but also goes beyond highlighting the presence or absence of women in fascist
movements or regimes. We encourage contributors to trace the sometimes contradictory representations of gender as they appear in imaginaries, media and political strategies, in ways that suit the advancement of power.

Die von Carl Kraus und Hannes Obermair kuratierte Ausstellung auf Schloss Tirol zerpflückt die Mythen des deutschen und des italienischen Faschismus. Hitlers und Mussolinis Unrechtsherrschaft wurde ganz maßgeblich von Künstlern und Künstlerinnen mit Bildern und Narrativen bedient. Auch in Südtirol, in Nord- und Osttirol und im Trentino. Einige wenige stemmten sich dagegen, und ihre Werke wurden als „entartet“ verfemt.
Die systemkonforme Kunst entwarf Heldenbilder, beschwor Blut und Boden, rückte „Führer“ und „duce“ ins rechte Licht und verkitschte die „Heimat“ selbst dann noch, als von den Diktatoren die Aussiedlung der Bevölkerung beschlossen wurde.
Die Schau „Mythen der Diktaturen“ ist eine Wende für die regionale Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte. Viele ihrer Kapitel müssen neu geschrieben werden. Doch die Ausstellung öffnet auch den Blick auf aktuelle autoritäre Verführungen und deren ästhetische Strategien.

La mostra a Castel Tirolo, cuarta da Carl Kraus e Hannes Obermair, esamina accuratamente e decostruisce  i miti del fascismo italiano e tedesco. Il dominio illegittimo di Hitler e Mussolini fu ampiamente servito dagli artisti e dalle loro opere figurative e letterarie. Anche in Tirolo meridionale, settentrionale, orientale e in Trentino. Solo in pochi si opposero ad esso e le loro opere furono bandite e definite “degenerate”.
L’arte conforme al sistema produsse immagini eroiche, evocò sangue e terra, mise il Führer e il Duce nella “giusta” luce e svendette il concetto stesso di “patria” quando i dittatori decisero il reinsediamento della popolazione.
La mostra Miti delle dittature segna un punto di svolta nella storia artistica e culturale dell’intera regione. Molti dei suoi capitoli andrebbero riscritti, ma la mostra offre anche uno sguardo sulle attuali seduzioni autoritarie e sulle loro strategie estetiche.

In PBSR 88 (2020)
Ephemeral architecture was the antithesis of the permanent buildings typical of the 'Fascism of stone', and yet many architects took advantage of this paradox to create an imaginary Rome. A widespread use of ephemeral structures was made around 1938, during the Mostra Augustea della Romanità and Hitler's state visit to Italy, in order to support a political programme that marked the totalitarian turn in the Fascist regime after the foundation of the empire and aimed at strengthening the alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Relying on methodologies of particular relevance to Roman art history and on various sources unknown to date, this paper investigates the relationships between ephemeral architecture and romanità. The case study is a monumental tribune built in via dei Trionfi that inevitably suffered a damnatio memoriae: a combination of classicizing and futuristic decorations, it looked back at ancient Rome and, at the same time, highlighted the Fascist regime's aspirations for might and modernity.

In 1939-1940, Marino Marini was commissioned to create five reliefs for the decoration of one of the most ambitious architectural projects of Fascism in the late Thirties, the Palazzo dell’Arengario in Milan (1938-1956 ca.). Firstly, this paper scrutinizes the sculptor’s renunciation, in 1942. Marino, indeed, decided not to accomplish this task, due to the war and the excessive restraints imposed by the Arengario’s architects. Thus, the only remaining evidence of his involvement can be found in a group of four preliminary plaster reliefs. Against this background, the paper then proceeds to formulate hypotheses as to the fate of the firth lost plaster relief belonging to the original group of his "Glorificazioni milanesi dell’evo moderno" (Milan’s glorifications of modern century). Even if never translated into marble, the reliefs were originally designed as the crucial part of the building’s propagandistic program. The final part of the research aims at providing meaningful insight as to the complex allegorical iconography of the five reliefs. Relying on an analysis of original sketches, contemporary written sources and visual comparisons with other artists, the paper offers an interpretation of the reliefs’ intended themes.

Using previously unpublished material from the LUCE archive and the State Archives in Rome, this
article examines how film-making became part and parcel of the process of ‘taming’ nature in the Pontine
Marshes under Mussolini’s regime. Fascist authorities perceived the undisciplined and unproductive
nature of the ‘death inducing swamps’ as something that had to be extinguished from the face of Italy, to
make way for an ideal fascist nature that would nurture ideal fascist subjects. We argue that the success
of transforming the swamps owed as much to the extensive investment of labour power, capital, and
technology, as it did to the careful staging of every step of the project through cinematographic
representations. Although planning and land reclamation institutions were responsible for the material
production of the reclaimed land, the LUCE institute was instrumental in actively turning this new land
into the ideal fascist landscape. In so doing, the paper offers a new reading on landscape and nationalism
explored through an analysis of the production of landscape in Italy under Mussolini.

This essay is the second preliminary version of a paper that I intend to publish as an article in an architectural-historical journal or a relevant collection of papers.
This article is about the urban project of the ‘Esposizione Universale di Roma’ (also known as EUR or E42), the ‘city’ that was created to stage the World’s fair of 1942 in Rome under the fascist regime of dictator Benito Mussolini. (fig.1) Much has already been written about it, in particular about its architectural style, but I believe that I can contribute some new ideas as to its original urbanistic design. I have three new hypotheses, which are interconneted and rather speculative in character. The first is that the whole layout was oriented on Mussolini’s residence. The second is that it was also oriented on Tunis or the ancient city of Carthage. And the third is that the whole project for the universal exposition was secretly meant for the (symbolical) honouring of the ‘Duce’ and his imperial ambitions, and that under the guise of peaceful international cooperation it was in a sense a trap for the international community to implicitly contribute to these imperial ambitions.
Unfortunately, I am not able to substantiate my arguments with hard evidence, but I wil try to make them plausible by circumstantial evidence and comparison. If there is any truth in my ideas, they demonstrate that the plan for E42 was even more megalomanic than it already appeared to be and that the aspect of personality cult of the leader was even stronger than it already seemed.

Giuseppe Terragni was among the modern Italian architects the most rooted in the European avangarde and the most inclined toward abstraction, deconstructing his building in layers upon layers of materials, architectural elements and strata conjuring to achieve a delicate and unstable equilibrium between plastic values and dissolution of architectural masses.
His buildings as famously testified by Peter Eisenman- are critical texts of the possibilities of decomposition of architectural forms and typologies as well as they are machines for the contextual transformation of the historical urban form in a subtle, unrethoric but contemporary way.
We analyze two unbuilt projects of the late creative season of the Italian master, two projects where the overlay of the sleekest, most dissonant, modernist language ever and the grid, textures and sense of Roman Como reaches a dramatic peak: the restoration of Casa Vietti and the Cortesella building (both 1940).

Este artigo visa contextualizar e caracterizar a arquitetura do Estado Novo português no âmbito do seu propagandeado programa de “renascimento nacional”. Pese embora o tradicionalismo e conservadorismo do regime, procura-se demonstrar que a campanha de obras públicas constitui uma das suas vertentes de maior modernidade. Evidencia-se o caráter inclusivo da política cultural que o Estado Novo, à semelhança de outros fascismos, cultivou. Nesse sentido, analisa-se a relação entre arquitetos e Governo, o sistema de condicionamento artístico implementado, bem como a lógica de compromisso que a arquitetura do regime revela em torno da busca e da construção de um «moderno nacional».
This paper aims to frame and characterize the architecture of the Portuguese “Estado Novo” in the context of its propaganded “national rebirth” program. Albeit the regime’s traditional and conservative features, it is argued that the public works campaign constitutes one of its aspects of greater modernity. The inclusive nature of the cultural policy developed by “Estado Novo”, like other fascisms, is highlighted. In order to demonstrate it, this paper analyses the relationship between architects and Government, the system of artistic conditioning, as well as the logic of compromise that the regime's architecture reveals in the search for a "modern national".

The article announces the rediscovery of a series of objects that were part of Mussolini’s own collection of propaganda art, seized by the Italian authorities after WW2. They were originally held in Mussolini's hilltop retreat near his hometown of Predappio, the small fortress of the Rocca delle Caminate, and in the nearby Villa Carpena located on the outskirts of the city of Forlì. They were found in the storage room of the Archivio di Stato of Forlì and the author was able to identify them on the basis of unpublished documents from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome.

Between the forties and the fifties the debate on the “Synthesis of the Arts” represented a dilemma for artists, architects and critics all across Europe and especially in Italy. This essay tries to go deep inside this issue through the lens of survey: a way of inquiry that seems to be strictly related to this debate through the old tradition of “Paragone delle arti” in the Italian Renaissance which demonstrates the permanence of some rhetorical aspects that continue to represent the Synthesis of the Arts itself.

Released in September 2014, the dvd L'arte della comunicazione. Il cinema di animazione di Luigi Liberio Pensuti (1930 - 1940), presents the restored films of Pensuti on project of Fondazione Cineteca Italiana with the collaboration of Istituto Luce Cinecittà and Archivio Cinema d'Impresa (Ivrea) - Csc centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
The films are part of the anti-tuberculosis campaign launched in the thirties by the fascist regime. The use of animation and experimental language make this film the real little gems of italian animation cinema.

Thanks to archival and material evidences this paper shows that mosaic pavements reused in 1938 in the church of S. Balbina are not specimen of ancient roman art, but  modern copies of those mosaics found in the same year during the construction of the so called Via Imperiale.

Da Casa Littoria a sede del Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale, il più che trentennale cantiere del Palazzo della Farnesina è qui ripercorso nei suoi aspetti più inediti:
dal dibattito critico che, dagli anni trenta, ha accompagnato progetto ed esecuzione dei lavori, fino all’intervento degli artisti che, fra gli anni cinquanta e sessanta, ne hanno ridisegnato gli ambienti interni. Studi, progetti, bozzetti e materiali d’archivio concorrono così a spiegare alcuni passaggi cruciali, fugando luoghi comuni e consentendo di rileggere l’intera vicenda alla luce del tema, tipico del modernismo architettonico, della progettazione integrale e della sintesi delle arti.
Negli stessi anni della nascita dell’Unione Europea, il cantiere della Farnesina fu protagonista di un parallelo processo di unificazione, politica e culturale, in cui le ragioni di una ritrovata comunità internazionale si riflettevano in un progetto che univa architettura, arte e buona amministrazione.

“Phantom heritage”, that is the long-term impact of landscapes altered by manipulation and lies, is discussed using the example of Thingstätten, huge open-air theatres built in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1937. They hosted quasi-religious rituals and highly stylized theatre productions, called Thingspiele, using cutting edge mass theatre technology. At Goebbels behest and following a concept designe invented by the Nazi´s star architect  Albert Speer, around 40 of these venues, which were based on a “Völkisch” concept  developed by right wing ideologs at the end of the 19th century, were built and “consecrated” between 1934 and 1937. They hosted religiously charged mass events involving literally casts of thousands, including marching and singing actors, armatures and involved spectators. The architecture of these arenas, their “sacred” positions in a mystical “Germanic” landscapes, their coupling with war memorials and the spectacles shown in them were designed to heroize the “martyrs” of past wars and rally the population for the Nazi´s ideology and martial goals. Ambitious designs embedded them into vast “sacred” landscapes celebrating the Nazis’ concept of blood and soil. Although these vast venues only flourished for 3 years before Goebbels abandoned the somewhat anarchic Thingspiel concept for more easily managed propaganda events, most of them still exist and many are still in use, particularly to host pageants and rock concerts. In a few  cases, there has been a clear continuity in their function as venues for political  agitation and  memorials to war heroes up to this day.
This paper focusses on typical and spectacular examples which include the seminal „Reich´s Thanksgiving Site” on the Bückeberg in Lower Saxony, the spectacular Thingstätte on the  Heiligenberg which towers over Heidelberg, the Wakldbühne embedded in the Olympic “Reichssportfeld” in Berlin and the Upper Silesian Thingstätte on the Góra Świętej Anny. 
As Thingstätten, which are now increasingly threatened by development and decay, are coming into the focus of heritage management, they are also being rediscovered and used as rallying points by radical right-wing movements. Once deserted and forgotten these  phantoms are threatening to awake.

In the early-1930s Italy, monumental sculptors were commissioned to create reliefs to be situated within architecture. In the eyes of Marcello Piacentini, the leading voice of the stile littorio (“lictor style”), the constraints inherent to the relief as a sculptural form would lead to an ideal synergy between artists and architects. Already acclaimed for his free-standing sculptures, Marino Marini first presented reliefs at two major exhibitions curated by Mario Sironi: in 1932, at the Mostra della rivoluzione fascista; and in 1933, for the Milan Triennale. For an artist inclined to sculpt in the round, thinking “in relief” involved different problems. This essay aims to investigate Marini’s complex study of the fixed point of view of the relief in the works dominated by the presence of female figures. In 1939, he admitted that his main concern in the full-length figure was to analyze “the natural play of volumes” in space. Thus, transferring that figure to a surface forced him to rethink its sculptural significance. This essay specifically considers Marini’s public commissions in the 1930s, including his attempts to combine the free-standing Pomona with a fixed point of view, as well as his expressionistic turn in the 1940s, starting with his variations on the theme of the Three Graces. The traditional representation of the latter myth, at the core of the sculptor’s interests in the war years, helped Marini to investigate the relation of figures to their background. However, in his reliefs the myth was distorted in its dramatic application to modern-day content, probably looking at the contemporary work of Mario Mafai and Giacomo Manzù. In summary, this group of works helps to define the versatility with which Marini approached the sculptural theme of the female nude in relief.

This article considers questions of agency, materiality and identity through a focus on a landscape largely shaped by the German National Socialists in the 1930s: the former Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. It looks at Nazi ideas about architecture and the agency of buildings as ‘words in stone’ and the Nazi intention that the built heritage would endure and continue to ‘speak’ over time. It then goes on to discuss some of the post-war struggle with the Nazi heritage (and more specifically the Zeppelin Building) and the ways in which agency has been variously attributed. This highlights contests and changes in the attribution of agency, and shows how such attributions are embedded in wider understandings and politics of identity (including processes of ‘de-Nazification’ and ‘facing the past’), as well as being coshaped by the connotations and ‘suggestiveness’ of material forms.

This volume explores how Italian institutions, dealers, critics, and artists constructed a modern national identity for Italy by exporting-literally and figuratively-contemporary art to the United States in key moments between 1929 and 1969. From artist Fortunato Depero opening his Futurist House in New York City to critic Germano Celant launching Arte Povera in the United States, Raffaele Bedarida examines the thick web of individuals and cultural environments beyond the two more canonical movements that shaped this project. By interrogating standard narratives of Italian Fascist propaganda on the one hand and American Cold War imperialism on the other, this book establishes a more nuanced transnational approach. The central thesis is that, beyond the immediate aims of political propaganda and conquering a new market for Italian art, these art exhibitions, publications, and the critical discourse aimed at American audiences all reflected back on their makers: they forced and helped Italians define their own modernity in relation to the world's new dominant cultural and economic power. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, social history, exhibition history, and Italian studies.