Art and the Fascist Regime in Italy

KATE FLINT

" I do not know", said Mussolini in a speech of May

1924, "if one could separate the two names of Italy
and Art." II Duce was personally indifferent towards
the visual arts. Hitler remarked on his evident bore-
dom when visiting the Uffizi and Pitti galleries, and
complained in Naples that when Mussolini "had
looked at three pictures, he could not bear any more.
Consequently I saw nothing of them myself." Musso-
lini realised, however, that Italy was nationally
proud of and internationally famous for its painting,

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sculpture and architecture, and that to encourage the
arts was to reinforce the Fascist ideal of recreating
the country's historic importance (Fig. 1).
In the years following 1923, the formal date of the
inception of the regime, the Fascist administration
gradually assumed at least nominal control over all
Italian state apparatuses, whether functional in the
public or private domain. Artists had, essentially, a
three-fold choice. The could support the regime
openly: executing murals or canvases extolling
Mussolini and Fascist organisations; designing and
decorating the rooms of the Party's spectacular ex-
hibitions; appending their names to Fascist pro-
nouncements on artistic matters and entering contests
whose prescribed subject matter amounted to state
commissions. Even if the content of their work was
not specifically Fascist, the style of the regime's artists
rested on Mussolini's principle of a "return to Fig. 1. 'Dialogo con le Masse' (Dialogue with the Masses),
order". The ex-Futurist Carra summarised this ten- 1939, artist and whereabouts unknown. Catalogue of the
dency: Premio Cremona, 1939.

"We want Italian art to return to being orderly, methodi-

cal, disciplined, seeking to adopt definite, bodily form —
form which both resembles and, because of the demands of
the modern spirit, is different from that of the old masters.
Secondly, a painter could attempt to avoid direct
contact with the regime through painting supposedly
neutral subjects — landscapes (though these could
often be interpreted by catalogue composers as works
in praise of Italy's natural beauties), still-lifes and
portraits. This art of evasion was necessarily a politi-
cal action in itself, if not always perceived as such by
its practitioners. Its negative aspect as a political
gesture is shown not only by the lack of supportive
theory or artistic groupings, but in its lack of vitality
and its increasing retreat into the provincialism which
many Italian painters had spent thirty years trying to
discard.
Thirdly, an artist could attempt deliberate opposi-
tion to the regime and to the style of art it particularly
promoted. But it should be stressed that until the
late 1930s abstract art was not regarded by the
majority of Fascist officials as dissident, "degener-
ate" art, as in Nazi Germany. There was this little
scope for attacking the regime through the employ-
ment of avant-garde stylistic techniques: such
apparent rebellion is only found in the moves towards
expressionism which occurred from about 1929 in the
small cicle around Scipione and Mafai in Rome, in
the Francophile exhibiting policies of the timid,
intimiste Gruppo dei Sei around the same time,
and, more interestingly, since it was joined to deli-
berately provocative subject matter (die shooting of
the Astrurian miners, the death of Lorca) in the again
expressionistic emphasis of the Corrente group in
the late 1930s. In particular, the Marinetti-
influenced, frequently non-figurative Secondo
Futurismo can be counted as official art. A close
friend of Mussolini, Marinetti was himself respon-
sible for many of the sentiments, sometimes even
the words of II Duce's observations on artistic
matters. He continually emphasised what he saw to
be a necessary link between Fascist politics and

THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL — October 1980 49

Futurist culture. A modern, revolutionary system —
as represented to him by Fascism — should, he be-
lieved, be supported by a revolutionary art form.
Despite his strictures elsewhere on the Futurists'
schoolboyish immaturity, Gramsci, in an article of
1921 entitled 'Marinetti a revolutionary?' shows the
potential breadth of the application of Marinetti's
ideas, recognising that the Futurists
"have had the clear and precise conception that our age, the
age of large scale industry, of large working-class cities, of
busy, intense life, must have new forms of art, of philo-
sophy, of ways of life, of language".
The application of this language, however, turned the
pre-war Futurist enthusiasm for urban life and for
the power of the machine into a glorification of the
Fascist ideals of organised power. Later, in the 1930s,
die avant-garde interest in geometrically based art,
heavily influenced by Russian constructivism, was
also encouraged rather than suppressed, and used, in
its largest format, to decorate the rectangular, flat
surfaces which typified the work of the Rationalist
architects. Their buildings — such as Terragni's
Casa del Fascio at Como, or Pagano's pavilions for
the 1933 and 1936 Milan Triennale exhibitions —
were for a time adopted enthusiastically by the Fas-
cist authorities, who approved of their ability to com-
bine unmistakable modernity with a system of con-
struction based on order of the most precise, mathe-
matical kind.
In this article, however, I wish to examine not this
interesting if expeditious attempt to adopt avant-
garde art forms to the service of the regime, but to
return to the work of the first group of artists men-
tioned — those who overtly, deliberately supported
Fascism through their painting — and to the forms of
organisation which Mussolini and his ministers
attempted to impose on artistic production. II Duce
recognised the potential of visual means for com-
municating propaganda. The outside observer could
be reached through architectural showpieces and
international exhibitions: more importantly, the
Italians themselves, it was hoped, would respond to a
transformation in the content of popular art, whether
this transmission of ideology was effected through
works shown at the well-attended local art exhibi-
tions, or, increasingly, through posters, through
magazine and newspaper illustrations, and by means
of frescoes decorating both new and existing public
buildings. Alfieri, Minister of the Arts in 1939,
summed up die artistic policies of the regime when he
spoke of the importance tff reaching the public:
"Art must be, in these times of noticeable social better-
ment, art for the people and by the people: such art as shall
exalt the people and which the people, advancing towards
higher aims, will understand."
Fascist art was dominated by monumentality
and myth. "In Italy today," Mussolini had said in
50
1922, "it is not the age of history. Nothing is yet
finalised. It is the age of myths." Myth, in the sense
of popularly held and repetitively fostered beliefs,
was consciously used as an integral element of Fascist
propaganda. Visual symbolism was used to help
simplify and reinforce these beliefs.
The original principal exponents of the new Fascist
style were members of the Milanese Novecento
(Twentieth Century) group, a loosely-based organi-
sation which grew up in the early 1920s, with
its most committed protagonists — Bucci, Dudreville,
Sironi, Funi, Oppi, Marussig and Malerba — speak-
ing enthusiastically of a return to large scale com-
positional and figure painting, stylistically derivative
of the firmly modelled forms of the early Renaissance.
112 artists in all exhibited under the umbrella of the
First Exhibition of the Novecento Italiano in Milan,
from February to March 1926. The introduc-
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tion to the catalogue speaks of the artists in a way
which involves them directly with the creation of the
Fascist myth. Whether they are "mature and
proven" or "still young, and taking up arms for the
first time", they are showing their "noble and
vigorous" qualities in opposing the ambiguity and
tumultuous chaos of the present day. Mussolini,
opening the exhibition, added to this rhetoric when he
claimed that the works shown shared the marks of the
two great wars that everyone present had lived
through: the World War and the war for Fascism. This
was apparent not so much in the content of the paint-
ings, on this occasion, as in the stylistic elements
which they held in common: "the decisiveness and
the precision of the thing signified; the clarity and
richness of colour, the plastic solidity of things and
figures"; the simplicity, and the sacrifice of useless
ornamentation were all seen as desirable elements of
Fascist thought for which aesthetic analogues could
easily be found.
II Duce prepared the way for the gradual official
incorporation of the artist into the Fascist state by
asking his audience:
"What connection can lie between politics and art? What
between the politician and the artist? Is it possible to esta-
blish a political structure between these two manifestations
of the human spirit?"
A Sindicato Nazionale Fascista Belle Arti (Fascist
National Organisation for the Fine Arts) was formed
in 1927, its administrative posts filled by Novecento
leaders. Together with its corresponding regional
tommittees, this body became responsible for repre-
senting its member artists in all public state
apparatuses and in the Italian Academy. In addition,
a government Department of Contemporary Art was
established in 1940. The massive bureaucracy which
surrounded painters was partly a reflection of Musso-
lini's suspicion of the arts as tending to foster indivi-
duality. The pages of die magazine Le Arti (1938-
1943) — "the direct expression of the artistic policy
of the regime", as its opening Directive, signed by
the Education Minister, Bottai, proclaimed — indi-
T H E OXFORD ART JOURNAL — October 1980
cate the extent of this organisation: committees at all Secondo Futurismo group in particular, inter-
levels, prizes, statutes for the organisation of art acted continually with the regime, and a denuncia-
schools and exhibitions, and official proclamations on tion of such painting and sculpture as "degenerate"
every subject. The Venice Biennale was reorganised, would in effect have meant a self-condemnation by
and the Rome Quadriennale exhibition founded in part of the Fascist movement. Bottai, writing in the
1931. Critica Fascista in December 1938, at the height of the
The Department's statement of its function indi- debate on the Italianity of Italian art, put forward the
cates the amount of control the regime wished to exert official position. Whereas he recognises that there are
over artistic life. It saw itself as, indeed artists who go to Paris, laying themselves open
to the attacks of those who claim "that all modern
"simply, the means by which the State proposes to protect Italian art has the French disease, hence it is Jewish,
the artistic patrimony of contemporary art and to explain and for that reason not Italian, that it is international,
all its useful, educative content to the nation''. anti-traditional and so on", this tendency must be
put alongside the strength of native Italian good
Understandably, sense, intelligence, and artistic traditions of the last
two thousand years.
"the technical and administrative procedures differ: for If Italian Fascist art looked towards any other
ancient art, it is only a case of conservation; for modern country, it was towards Germany. Paintings from the

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art, it means promoting worthwhile production and multi- official art competition, the Premio Cremona, in-
plying the volume of artistic energy which contributes to
defining the physiognomy of contemporary Italian civili- stituted in 1938 by Farinacci, always sold well in that
sation." country. The restriction of entrants to set topics was a
manifestation of the increasing State desire to dictate
There could be, in Fascist terms, no doubt about how the content of art as well as to bestow official approval
this civilisation should be interpreted. Whilst, as on certain styles of execution. At the first exhibition,
Bottai said when opening the third Quadriennale early in 1939, could be seen works by contestants
exhibition in Rome, the notion that Fascist doc- corresponding to the themes "Listening to a Speech
trine — and hence the regime's art — did not admit of II Duce's on the Radio" and — distantly recall-
differing opinions might shock the few remaining ing Futurist nomenclature — "States of Mind
devotees of democracy, these people were occupying Created by Fascism" (Fig. 2). Mussolini himself set
a false position, for there could be no disagreement the subject for the following years: in 1940, "The
about how to interpret a certainty, a historical fact. Battle for Grain" and, in 1941, "Italian Fascist
The clarity of the lines, the emphasised modelling Youth" (Fig. 3). At the 1941 exhibition — partly to
and the clean colours which had been re-introduced flatter the representative of Farinacci whom he had
into Italy by the Novecentisti helped fulfil the demand welcomed to the occasion — Farinacci announced
that art should not remain a bourgeois privilege, but that German artists would also be entitled to enter the
should be easily comprehensible to all. competition, taking the topical theme — again pro-
The notion that Italian art should be entirely posed by Mussolini — "Out of Blood, the New
Italian, that, like any ideal Fascist family circle, it Europe". Almost without exception, the entrants for
should be racially pure, grew throughout the 1930s. the Premio Cremona practised a hard-edged realism,
Some critics, notably Telesio Interlandi and the con- incorporating, to varying degrees, allegorical over-
sistently pro-Nazi Roberto Farinacci, editor of the tones, in accordance with the competition organisers'
magazine Regime Fascista, denounced all extra-Italian stated ambitions: "to make a contribution to the
modern influences as Jewish, applying this term in- attempt to orientate Italian pictorial art towards a
discriminately to anything which seemed to their eyes Fascist-political conception."
unnatural, distorted and worthy of extermination. The mythic content of Fascist art rested, above all,
Particularly after Mussolini, seeking Hitler's appro- on concepts of devotion and heroism, put to the ser-
val, had passed racist laws in 1938, the regime's vice of Italy. When assuming control of the state
iconographers drew on freaks of nature — two- apparatuses, Mussolini realised that there was, in
headed babies, men with faces in their chests and Catholicism, a formidable, unquestioning propa-
heads of wolves — from medieval bestiaries and ganda apparatus already in existence. Despite the
woodcuts in chapbooks to put alongside, for example, violent anti-clericalism of the early Fascists, Musso-
Epstein's statues, in order to suggest the perverted lini realised the value of a tactical alliance between
nature of Judaism. Even as early as 1928, physical State and Vatican, especially when taking the
deformity had been seen as typifying the foreign reactionary nature of the Catholic Workers' Associa-
degeneracy of those who were infecting Italian art. In tions into consideration. After the official reconcilia-
his Voyage Through Art: A Call To Order, Soffici, in a tion between regime and Vatican in 1925, relations
chapter entitled 'Decadence of French Art', con- remained relatively cordial almost until the Second
demned Van Gogh for his insanity, and Toulouse- World War, despite the blatantly heretical assump-
Lautrec for being a dwarf. Yet a thorough purging of tion of religious terminology and symbolism by the
modern art within Italy itself would have been im- Fascist party. Like the Pope, "Mussolini", ran the
possible, since, as already mentioned, Marinetti's slogan, "is always right." The identification, at a

THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL — October 1980 51

 fice, runs through the growing number of works in-
tended to glorify the violent scenes of war, and hence
help convince the audience of their necessity. Musso-
lini supervised the erection and inauguration of many
large war memorials, constructed according to his
principle that "a people-which deifies its fallen is a
people which can never be beaten".
Central to Catholic mythology is the idealisation
of the Virgin Mary. The notion of mariolatory, con-
tinual throughout Italian art, became linked under
Fascism to Mussolini's schemes for the expansion of
the family. Motherhood was worshipped as an ideal
condition of womanhood, encouraged in practical
terms by higher wages for the fathers of numerous
families, Fascist honours for prolific childbearers, and
discrimination against the employment of bachelor
males — all women were, both because of the "battle
for births" and because of high unemployment, ex-

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pected to take up their traditional and proper position
in the home. With little symbolic subtlety, artists
showed pregnant women happily sunbathing in fields
of ripe and recently stacked corn, mothers suckling
their babies within the secure confines of the nuclear
family — sometimes, evidently, absorbing the voice
of Mussolini along with their mothers' milk — and
holding out their children to the future of Italy —
either through the act of seeing or hearing II Duce or
through pointing them towards the African lands
which the optimistic parents are setting out to
colonise. Motherhood was continually identified with
Fig. 2. 'Ascoltanti il Parole del Duce' (Three pictures of the generous fertility of nature. Magazine graphics
listening to Mussolini in the radio), top left and right, artists show budding oak trees, ribbons tied to their trunks
and whereabouts unknown; below, Luciano Ricchetti's win- as though to a newly-born baby's front door. The
ning picture, whereabouts unknown, 1939. Catalogue of the
cover of Interlandi's La Difesa della Razza for the 20th
Premio Cremona.
of April 1940 is a drawing with, in one semi-circle, a
virile young man digging at the roots of half a laden
apple tree; in the other, a skeleton sitting at the foot
popular level, which Mussolini at times sought to of its dead, bare-branched counterpart, the two seg-
establish between himself and Christ — " I feel that I ments being linked by Mussolini's popular slogan:
belong to you, flesh of your flesh, spirit of your "A Strong People are a Fecund People: vice versa, a
spirit" — was continually supported by the icono- Sterile Population is Weak." The closeness to
graphy of the regime. The Premio Cremona paint- natural rhythms which this parallelism suggests is
ings which show groups of people listening to Musso- part of the general glorification in Fascist art of an
lini's broadcasts frequently present them with their archaic pre-capitalism. Ignoring the continuing prob-
heads bowed in thoughtful reverence. In many of lem of rural poverty the idealisation of peasantry
these pictures, a crucifix shares the pride of place seems designed to signify simultaneously not just
with that miracle of modern technology, the radio, the value and virility of the ordinary man, and the
with its ability to convey II Duce's words simul- existence of stability in the country's rural origins at a
taneously across the country into the intimacy of the time of growing urban unemployment, but the desir-
home, so that the assembled family group, in itself able intimacy and security which exists in a feudal
illustrative of the Fascist ideal of social cohesion, society organised according to an unquestioned
appears to be engaged in a dual act of worship. hierarchic structure (Fig. 4) .
Occasionally, as in The Voice Among the Fields, Musso-
lini is accompanied by a winged guardian angel. In The motifs of pagan heroism, derived from pre-
various paintings of The Day of Faith (the 18th of Christian Rome, mingle with those of Catholicism
December 1937, the date on which the Italian people in Fascist art. The grandeur suggested by ancient
were asked to donate their gold to the regime), the tradition is paralleled in the Germany love for the
women who are shown willingly stripping off their Hellenic on which Nazi aesthetics played. Roman
wedding rings place them in an object resembling a history supplied the fasces and the lictor — the totems
church collecting box, on an altar to their country. of the regime which appear again and again in its
The Catholic sense of martyrdom, of the need for graphic art. More practically, a large scale investi-
shedding blood and young lives in a gesture of sacri- gation of the Roman forums — at the expense of

52 T H E OXFORD ART JOURNAL — October 1980


Fig. 3. 'Gioventit italiana del littorio', artists and where-
abouts unknown. Catalogue of the Premio Cremona, 1941.
Christian and medieval remains — was begun in
1924. The myth of Imperial Rome went perfectly
with the taste for monumentality, defined by Sironi in
an article of 1934 as "the expression of Faith ... in-
tending to give a clear, visible sensation and embodi-
ment of this faith, of its force, its size and its power."
The same monumentality is to be found in the
regime's hugh relief wall maps of Italy and of the
Roman Empire and in the square-blocked lettering of
the many posters, extensive photomontages and pub-
licity displays: a style which reached its apotheosis
in the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in
Rome.
Inevitably, the figure of Mussolini takes the place
of a pagan god as an individual hero and figure for
veneration. Frequently portrayed from below, the
angles accentuated the desired aura of grandeur. The
ritual separation of tribal deity from his subjects is
effected through placing him on horseback, or in a
jeep or powerful car, as he progresses through wor-
shipping crowds. Almost invariably, Mussolini is
shown riding a white horse: this, like the mere bulk of
animal or vehicle, emphasises his position at the for-
mal centre of a picture. In addition, the choice of the
horse's colour, especially when the Italian wears a
flowing cloak, recalls David or Meynier's portrayals
of Napoleon, the most recent of Imperial heroic
figures. Occasionally, Mussolini was portrayed as
THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL — October 1980
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Fig. 4. 'Matemita' (Motherhood), artist and whereabouts
unknown. Reproduced from Umberto Silva, Ideologia e
arte del fascismo, (Milan, 1973).
riding alone through ruin-filled countryside, yet as
the pillars and arches in no way tower over him, as do
the antique fragments over the figures in Meta-
physical painting, the situation reflects not only his
omnipotence over the country, as represented by
easily-identifiable motifs, but the ownership and con-
trol of symbols of time, of historical process itself
(Fig. 5).
The sense of scale given by the edifices of ancient
Rome was adopted for official buildings in the latter
years of the Fascist period, the Imperial style replac-
ing Pagano and Terragni's "rational architecture".
This development, particularly in evidence in Rome,
where it emphasised not only the strength of the
centre of power, but the link between the city of the
Caesars and that of Mussolini, was typified by Mar-
cello Piacenti's work in the Foro Italico, and in some
of the buildings at EUR, the site for the planned
Esposizione Universale Reale of 1942. In their heavy
monumentality, their archways, their colonnades and
incorporation of statuary they suggest a predominendy
Mediterranean influence. "Our race, our culture,
our ancient and most recent civilisation are mediter-
ranean: in this 'Mediterranean spirit', therefore, we
must look for the characteristic of Italianity which is
as yet lacking in our young rational architecture, be-
cause without doubt this spirit will guarantee the
regaining of pre-eminence", wrote Carlo Rava in the

Fig. 5. The artists and whereabouts are unknown for all these triumphal pictures of Mussolini. Reproduced from Umberto
Silva, Ideologia e arte del facsismo, (Milan, 1973).
magazine Domus, January 1931, when inaugurating
the demand for a return to ancient precedent. In the
substitution of a sun-based tradition for what was said
to be cold, gothic, northern influences, the Fascist
stress on outdoor healthiness, on the importance of
cleanliness and purity re-emerges. The Roman
atmosphere of the palestra and the swimming pool is
that which is inhabited by the Fascist Youth of the
1941 Premio Cremona .
Modern Italian architecture, the most public of
permanent art forms, was frequently internally
decorated with frescoes: a medium with strong
historic precedent, calculated to overcome artistic
elitism through the potential number of corporate
viewers. The choice of local heroes — as in Antonio
Santagata's portrayal of the aviator Antonio Locatelli
in the Casa Littoria of his native Bergamo; of patrio-
tic scenes — the same artist executed episodes from
the First World War in the Home for the War
Wounded in Rome; and of such generalised subjects
as the Arts and the Sciences, or Agricultural Labour,
deliberately emphasised the supposed commonly held
emotions and experience of their viewers. The Fas-
cist critic C.E. Oppo, writing in LeArti of the impor-
tance of the third Quadriennale in Rome, spoke of
this exhibition's incorporation of frescoes, and
54
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praised those artists who had put their talents to the
exaltation of the regime in practising an art form
which should be "like open books to the masses".
As had been their earlier function within the Catholic
church, frescoes served both to teach and to make
memorable myth.
There was no concealment in the way in which
the Fascist administration made art serve their state
apparatuses. The Fascist fresco embodies all the
qualities which most strongly characterise the art of
the regime: inseparability of painting and propa-
ganda; reliance on national tradition in form and
style, and a deliberately public function. The overt
use of myth, an essential component in the trans-
mission of values through any cultural means, was
exploited by the Fascists to its fullest extent.
Bibliographic Note
E. Crispolti, B. Hinz, Z. Birolli Arte e Fascism in Italia e in Ger-
mania, Milan, 1974
F. Sapori L'arteeilduce, Milan, 1932
F. Sapori Ilfascismoearte, Milan, 1934
U. Silva Ideologia e arte delfascism), Milan, 1973
F. Tempesti Arte dell 'Italia Fasdsta, Milan, 1976
T H E OXFORD ART JOURNAL — October 1980