Novecento Italiano () was an Italian artistic movement founded in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
in 1922 to create an art based on the rhetoric of the
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
of
Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
.
History
Novecento Italiano was founded by
Anselmo Bucci
Anselmo Bucci (25 May 1887 – 19 November 1955) was an Italian painter and printmaker.
Biography
Bucci was born in Fossombrone. Having attended the Brera Academy in Milan from 1904 to 1905, he moved to Paris with Leonardo Dudreville in 1906. ...
(1887–1955),
Leonardo Dudreville
Leonardo Dudreville (4 April 1885 – 13 January 1975) was a Venetian-born Italian painter. He was one of the founders of the ''Nuove tendenze'' as well as of '' Novecento'' Italian art movements.
Biography
His family of Belgian origin moved to M ...
(1885–1975),
Achille Funi
Achille Funi (26 February 1890 – 26 July 1972) was an Italian painter who painted in a neoclassical style.
Biography
Funi was born in Ferrara. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts from 1906 to 1910 and joined the Nuove Tendenze movemen ...
,
Gian Emilio Malerba
Gian Emilio Malerba (1880–1926) was an Italian painter and illustrator, one of the founders of the Novecento Italiano in Milan. He initially created works in a ''Liberty'' or Art Nouveau style.
Biography
Malerba was born in Milan and studied at ...
(1880–1926),
Pietro Marussig
Pietro Marussig (16 May 1879 – 13 October 1937) was an Italian painter.
Biography
He was born in Trieste, and initially took lessons there from Eugenio Scomparini. He worked in Trieste from 1898 until 1918, and in Milan from 1919 until 1937 ...
,
Ubaldo Oppi
Ubaldo Oppi (25 July 1889 – 1942) was an Italian painter, one of the founders of the Novecento Italiano in Milan. He painted in a neo-quattrocento realist style.
Biography
He was born in Bologna, but by the age of 4 years, his father, a shoe s ...
, and
Mario Sironi
Mario Sironi (May 12, 1885 – August 13, 1961) was an Italian modernist artist who was active as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, and designer. His typically somber paintings are characterized by massive, immobile forms.
Biography
He was bor ...
. Motivated by a post-war "
call to order", they were brought together by Lino Pesaro, a gallery owner interested in modern art, and
Margherita Sarfatti
Margherita Sarfatti (née Grassini; 8 April 1880 – 30 October 1961) was an Italian journalist, art critic, patron, collector, socialite, and prominent propaganda adviser of the National Fascist Party. She was Benito Mussolini's biographer as we ...
, a writer and art critic who worked on Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini's newspaper, ''
The People of Italy'' (''
Il Popolo d'Italia
''Il Popolo d'Italia'' ("The People of Italy") was an Italian newspaper published from 15 November 1914 until 24 July 1943. It was founded by Benito Mussolini as a pro-war newspaper during World War I, and it later became the main newspaper of ...
''). Sarfatti was also Mussolini's mistress.
The movement was officially launched in 1923 at an exhibition in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
, with Mussolini as one of the speakers. The group was represented at the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
of 1924 in a gallery of its own, with the exception of Oppi, who exhibited in a separate gallery. Oppi's defection caused him to be ejected from the group, which subsequently split and was reformed. The new Novecento Italiano staged its first group exhibition in Milan in 1926.
Several of the artists were
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
veterans; Sarfatti had lost a son in the war. The group wished to take on the Italian establishment and create an art associated with the rhetoric of
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
. The artists supported the fascist regime and their work became associated with the state propaganda department, although Mussolini reprimanded Sarfatti for using his name and the name of fascism to promote Novecento.
The name of the movement (which means 1900s) was a deliberate reference to great periods of Italian art in the past, the Quattrocento and Cinquecento (1400s and 1500s). The group rejected European avant garde art and wished to revive the tradition of large format history painting in the
classical manner. It lacked a precise artistic programme and included artists of different styles and temperament, for example,
Carrà and
Marini
Marini (last name) is a surname of Roman/Italian Catholic origin; closely associated with the last names: Marino and Mariani with the three patronymic forms emerging from the same region at approximately the same time. Migrations branching from Ita ...
. It aimed to promote a renewed yet traditional Italian art. Sironi said, “if we look at the painters of the second half of the 19th century, we find that only the revolutionary were great and that the greatest were the most revolutionary”; the artists of Novecento Italiano “would not imitate the world created by God but would be inspired by it”.
Despite official patronage, Novecento art did not always have an easy ride in Fascist Italy. Mussolini was personally uninterested in art and divided official support among various groups so as to keep artists on the side of the regime. Opening the exhibition of Novecento art in 1923 he declared that “it is far from my idea to encourage anything like a state art. Art belongs to the domain of the individual. The state has only one duty: not to undermine art, to provide humane conditions for artists, to encourage them from the artistic and national point of view."
[Braun, E., ''Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism'', Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.1] The movement was in competition with other pro-Fascist movements, especially
Futurism
Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such ...
and the regionalist Strapaese movement. Novecento Italiano also met outright opposition.
Achille Starace
Achille Starace (; 18 August 1889 – 29 April 1945) was a prominent leader of Fascist Italy before and during World War II.
Early life and career
Starace was born in Sannicola, province of Lecce, in southern Apulia. His father was a wine and oi ...
, the General Secretary of the Fascist Party, attacked it in the Fascist daily press and there was virulent criticism of its “un-Italian" qualities by artists and critics.
In the 1930s, a group of professors and students at the
Accademia di Brera
The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera ("academy of fine arts of Brera"), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, ca ...
established an opposition group to Novecento Italiano. Among them was the director of the academy
Aldo Carpi
Aldo Carpi (6 October 1886 – 27 March 1973) was an Italian artist, painter and writer, author of a collection of memoirs concerning his imprisonment in the infamous Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.
Biography
Born in Milan, early in his you ...
, and students
Afro
The afro is a hair type created by natural growth of kinky hair, or specifically styled with chemical curling products by individuals with naturally curly or straight hair.Garland, Phyl"Is The Afro On Its Way Out?" ''Ebony'', February 1973. ...
,
Aldo Badoli
Aldo may refer to:
* Aldo (given name), male given name
** Aldo (footballer, born 1977)
** Aldo (footballer, born 1988)
* Aldo Group, a worldwide chain of shoe stores
* Aldosterone in shorthand
* Aldo Bonzi
Aldo Bonzi is a town in La Matanza P ...
,
,
Renato Birolli
Renato Birolli (10 December 1905 – 3 May 1959) was an Italian painter.
Biography
Birolli was born at Verona to a family of industrial workers. In 1923 he moved to Milan where he formed an avantguardist group with artists such as Renato Guttuso ...
,
Bruno Cassinari
Bruno Cassinari (29 October 1912 – 26 March 1992) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked in a style that mixed cubist and expressionist elements.
Biography
Cassinari was born in Piacenza. He attended the local art school but eventuall ...
, Cherchi,
Alfredo Chighine
Alfredo (, ) is a cognate of the Anglo-Saxon name Alfred and a common Italian, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish language personal name.
People with the given name include:
*Alfredo (born 1946), Brazilian footballer born as Alfredo Mostarda Filho ...
, Grosso,
Renato Guttuso
Renato Guttuso (26 December 1911 – 18 January 1987) was an Italian painter and politician. His best-known works include ''Flight from Etna'' (1938–39), ''Crucifixion'' (1941) and ''La Vucciria'' (1974). Guttuso also designed for the theatre ( ...
,
Dino Lanaro
Dino Lanaro (1909 - 1998) was an Italian painter of the ''Corrente de Vita'' movement started in Milan as a counterpoint to nationalistic Futurism and the Novecento Italiano movements. He often painted bright landscapes with houses.
Biography
Din ...
,
Giuseppe Migneco
Giuseppe Migneco (1908–1997) was an Italian painter of the Novecento Italiano. He often painted scenes of laborers at work in a naïve and expressionist style.
Biography
Migneco was born in Messina. His father was a train station master and his ...
, Mantica,
Ennio Morlotti
Ennio Morlotti (21 September 1910 – 15 December 1992) was an Italian painter of the ''Corrente de Vita'' movement started in Milan as a counterpoint to nationalistic Futurism and the Novecento Italiano movements. His figures show an affinity to t ...
,
Aligi Sassu
Aligi Sassu (17 July 1912 – 17 July 2000) was an Italian painter and sculptor.
Biography
Aligi Sassu was born in Milan, Lombardy. He was the son of Lina Pedretti (from Parma, Emilia) and Antonio Sassu (from Sassari, Sardinia). His father ...
,
Ernesto Treccani
Ernesto Treccani (Milan, 26 August 1920 – Milan, 27 November 2009) was a visual artist, writer and political activist.
Biography
Treccani was born in Milan. He joined very early on the art avant-garde groups and movements opposed to Fascist c ...
,
Italo Valenti, and
Emilio Vedova
Emilio Vedova (9 August 1919 – 25 October 2006) was a modern Italian painter. He is considered one of the most important artists to emerge from Italy's artistic scene, Arte Informale.
Early life
Vedova was born in Venice into a working-c ...
(and later
Giuseppe Ajmone and
Ibrahim Kodra
Ibrahim Likmetaj Kodra (22 April 1918 – 7 February 2006) was an Albanian painter.
Biography
Kodra was born in Ishëm (Ishmi), Albania, son of Murat and Xhixhe.[Trento Longaretti
Trento Longaretti (27 September 1916 – 7 June 2017) was an Italian painter. He studied at the Brera Academy in the 1930s, where he was taught by renowned artists, including painters Aldo Carpi and Pompeo Borra, and sculptors Francesco Messina ...](_blan ...<br></span></div>), with participation from <div class=)
, who wasn't involved in the foundational discussions because he returned to his hometown
Treviglio
Treviglio (, Bergamasque: ) is a town and ''comune'' (i.e. municipality) in the province of Bergamo, in Lombardy, Northern Italy. It lies south of the province capital, in the lower territory called "Bassa Bergamasca".
It's also part of the geog ...
by train after classes.
This movement became known as ''
Corrente
The ''courante'', ''corrente'', ''coranto'' and ''corant'' are some of the names given to a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era. In a Baroque dance suite an Italian or French courante is typically paired ...
'', which also published a magazine by that name.
By 1939, a famous editorial in the magazine stated the group's opposition to fascism, Novecento Italiano, and Futurism.
The unity of the group depended much on Sarfatti and it weakened in her absence from Milan. When she was distanced from Mussolini, in part due to the anti-Semitic ordinances of 1938, the group fell apart and was formally disbanded in 1943.
Artists of the Novecento
*
Giacomo Balla
Giacomo Balla (18 July 1871 – 1 March 1958) was an Italian painter, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. In his paintings he depicted light, movement and speed. He was concerned with expressing movement in his works, ...
*
Anselmo Bucci
Anselmo Bucci (25 May 1887 – 19 November 1955) was an Italian painter and printmaker.
Biography
Bucci was born in Fossombrone. Having attended the Brera Academy in Milan from 1904 to 1905, he moved to Paris with Leonardo Dudreville in 1906. ...
*
Pompeo Borra
Pompeo Borra (1898 – 1973) was an Italian painter.
Biography
Pompeo Borra was born in Milan His studies were varied: first he attended technical schools and then, briefly, the course in decoration at the Scuola degli Artefici at the Brera Acade ...
*
Aldo Carpi
Aldo Carpi (6 October 1886 – 27 March 1973) was an Italian artist, painter and writer, author of a collection of memoirs concerning his imprisonment in the infamous Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.
Biography
Born in Milan, early in his you ...
*
Carlo Carrà
Carlo Carrà (; February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number ...
*
Felice Casorati
Felice Casorati (December 4, 1883 – March 1, 1963) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. The paintings for which he is most noted include figure compositions, portraits and still lifes, which are often distinguished by unusua ...
*
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian
artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...
*
Raffaele De Grada
Raffaele De Grada (Milan, 1885–1957) was an Italian painter.
Biography
Initially trained by his father, a decorator, in Argentina and then from 1899 in Zurich, De Grada attended the academies of Dresden and Karlsruhe over the period 1902–05 ...
*
Fortunato Depero
Fortunato Depero (30 March 1892 – 29 November 1960) was an Italian futurist painter, writer, sculptor, and graphic designer.
Biography
Although born in Fondo or in the neighboring village of Malosco, according to other sources (in the It ...
*
Antonio Donghi
Antonio Donghi (March 16, 1897 – July 16, 1963) was an Italian painter of scenes of popular life, landscapes, and still life.
Biography
Born in Rome, he studied painting at the Instituto di Belle Arti from 1908 to 1916.Gale, Oxford Art On ...
*
Ercole Drei
Ercole Drei (28 September 1886 – 1 October 1973) was an Italian sculptor. His work was part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics
The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad a ...
*
Leonardo Dudreville
Leonardo Dudreville (4 April 1885 – 13 January 1975) was a Venetian-born Italian painter. He was one of the founders of the ''Nuove tendenze'' as well as of '' Novecento'' Italian art movements.
Biography
His family of Belgian origin moved to M ...
*
Achille Funi
Achille Funi (26 February 1890 – 26 July 1972) was an Italian painter who painted in a neoclassical style.
Biography
Funi was born in Ferrara. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts from 1906 to 1910 and joined the Nuove Tendenze movemen ...
*
Virgilio Guidi
Virgilio Guidi (April 4, 1891 – January 7, 1984) was an Italian artist and writer.
He was born in Rome into an artistic family. His father was a sculptor.Cowling & Mundy 1990, p. 124. Guidi received his early training at the Scuola Libera ...
*
Achille Lega
Achille Lega (21 April 1899 – 28 January 1934) was an Italian painter. His early work was in the futurist style and he later became a cubist.
Lega was born in Brisighella but lived in Florence from the age of ten. He first studied painting wit ...
*
Gian Emilio Malerba
Gian Emilio Malerba (1880–1926) was an Italian painter and illustrator, one of the founders of the Novecento Italiano in Milan. He initially created works in a ''Liberty'' or Art Nouveau style.
Biography
Malerba was born in Milan and studied at ...
*
Arturo Martini
Arturo Martini (1889–1947) was a leading Italian sculptor between World War I and II. He moved between a very vigorous (almost ancient Roman) classicism and modernism. He was associated with public sculpture in fascist Italy, but later renounc ...
*
Pietro Marussig
Pietro Marussig (16 May 1879 – 13 October 1937) was an Italian painter.
Biography
He was born in Trieste, and initially took lessons there from Eugenio Scomparini. He worked in Trieste from 1898 until 1918, and in Milan from 1919 until 1937 ...
*
Francesco Messina
Francesco Messina (15 December 1900 – 13 September 1995) was an Italian sculptor of the 20th century.
Biography and career
Francesco Messina was born at Linguaglossa in the Province of Catania from a very poor family. Growing up in Genoa, where ...
*
Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, b ...
*
Ubaldo Oppi
Ubaldo Oppi (25 July 1889 – 1942) was an Italian painter, one of the founders of the Novecento Italiano in Milan. He painted in a neo-quattrocento realist style.
Biography
He was born in Bologna, but by the age of 4 years, his father, a shoe s ...
*
Renato Paresce
Renatus is a first name of Latin origin which means "born again" (natus = born). In Italian language, Italian, Portuguese language, Portuguese and Spanish language, Spanish it exists in masculine and feminine forms: Renato and Renata. In French t ...
*
Siro Penagini
*
Gio Ponti
Giovanni "Gio" Ponti ( ͡ʒo18 November 1891 – 16 September 1979) was an Italian architect, industrial designer, furniture designer, artist, teacher, writer and publisher.
During his career, which spanned six decades, Ponti built more tha ...
*
Gino Severini
Gino Severini (7 April 1883 – 26 February 1966) was an Italian Painting, painter and a leading member of the Futurism (art), Futurist movement. For much of his life he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with neo-classici ...
*
Mario Sironi
Mario Sironi (May 12, 1885 – August 13, 1961) was an Italian modernist artist who was active as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, and designer. His typically somber paintings are characterized by massive, immobile forms.
Biography
He was bor ...
*
Mario Tozzi
Mario Tozzi (30 October 1895 – 8 September 1979) was an Italian painter. He was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government.
Biography
Tozzi studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna in Italy where he met Giorgio Morandi ...
*
Francesco Trombadori
Francesco, the Italian (and original) version of the personal name "Francis", is the most common given name among males in Italy. Notable persons with that name include:
People with the given name Francesco
* Francesco I (disambiguation), sever ...
*
Adolfo Wildt
Adolfo Wildt (March 1, 1868 – March 12, 1931) was an Italian sculptor. He is mostly known for his marble sculptures, which blend simplicity and sophistication, and paved the way for numerous modernist sculptors.http://translate.googleusercont ...
See also
*''
Corrente di Vita ''Corrente di Vita'' was a biweekly Italian culture magazine published between 1938 and 1940.
The Corrente Magazine
In 1938 artist Ernesto Treccani founded the magazine ''Vita Giovanile'' with the financial backing of his father, Senator Giovanni ...
''
*''
Valori plastici
''Valori plastici'' (meaning ''Plastic Values'' in English) was an Italian magazine published in Rome in Italian and French. The magazines existed between 1918 and 1921.
History and profile
''Valori plastici'' was established in Rome by the paint ...
''
*
Return to order
The return to order ( French: ''retour à l'ordre'') was a European art movement that followed the First World War, rejecting the extreme avant-garde art of the years up to 1918 and taking its inspiration from classical art instead. The movement ...
*
Scuola Romana
Scuola romana or Scuola di via Cavour was a 20th-century art movement defined by a group of painters within Expressionism and active in Rome between 1928 and 1945, and with a second phase in the mid-1950s.
Birth of the movement
In November 192 ...
Notes
References
* Braun, E. (Editor): ''Italian Art in the 20th Century'', Prestel-Verlag, Munich, 1989.
* Cannistraro, P.V. and Sullivan, B.R.: ''Il Duce’s Other Woman'', Wm. Morrow, New York,1933.
* Correnti, C.: ''Cento Opere d'Arte Italiana. Dal Futurismo a Oggi'', Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma, 1968.
* Della Porta, A.F.: ''Polemica sul “900”'', Risorgimento Artistico Italiano, Milano, 1930.
* Formaggio D. et al.: ''Il Novecento Italiano'', 1923 - 1933. Gabriele Mazzotta, Milano, 1983.
* Hulten P. and Celant, G. (Editors): ''Arte Italiana, Presenze 1900 - 1945'', Bompiani, Milano, 1989.
* Roh, Franz, Juan Manuel Bonet, Miguel Blesa De La Parra, and Martin Chirino. 1997. ''Realismo mágico: Franz Roh y la pintura europea 1917-1936''. Valencia: Ivam, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern. 1997. (Spanish and English)
* Sarfatti, M. (Editor): ''Catalog of the Seconda Mostra del Novecento Italiano'', Palazzo della Permanente, Milano, 1929.
Il Novecento Italiano* Oxford Art Dictionary
{{Modernism
Modern art
Italian art movements
Neoclassical movements