The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution (Italian: Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista) was an art exhibition held in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni from 1932 to 1934.[1] It was opened by Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1932 and was the longest-lasting exhibition ever mounted by the Fascist regime. Nearly four million people attended the exhibition in its two years.[2] Intended to commemorate the revolutionaries who had taken part in the rise to power of Italian fascism, the Exhibition was supposed to be, in Mussolini's own words, "an offering of faith which the old comrades hand down to the new ones so that, enlightened by our martyrs and heroes, they may continue the heavy task."[3]
In the early 1930s the Fascist regime's popularity was approaching its peak in Italy and abroad.[3] The idea of an exhibition celebrating the first decade of Fascist rule originated with Dino Alfieri, the president of the National Institute of Fascist Culture, in 1928. Alfieri presented the program of the Exhibition in a meeting of the National Fascist Party directorate on 14 July 1931, in the presence of Mussolini, who enthusiastically approved it. Alfieri involved in the project a group of young, radical artists including, among others, the painters Mario Sironi and Achille Funi and the rationalist architects Adalberto Libera and Giuseppe Terragni. The artists were called to translate the epic of the Fascist Revolution into plastic form making use of contemporary styles in graphic arts and architecture. The purpose of the Exhibition was, in Mussolini's words, to “create something ultramodern and audacious, free from melancholy memories of the decorative styles of the past.”[4]
Unlike Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, who openly attacked modern architecture and art on both stylistic and racial grounds, denigrating its practitioners as decadent if not actually communists or Jews, Fascism had been since its early inception closely linked to avant-garde artistic movements, such as Futurism. Many of Italy's best artists and architects were ardent fascists who tried in every possible way to embody fascist values in their work. Mario Sironi contributed a large number of cartoons—over 1700 in all—to Il Popolo d'Italia and La Rivista Illustrata del Popola d'Italia, the Fascist newspapers,[5] and, together with Modernist architect Giovanni Muzio, designed a pavilion for Il Popolo d'Italia at the 1928 Milan trade fair.[6] As Diane Ghirardo has shown "The Modern Movement received substantial state support in Italy as it did from no other major power in the decade before World War II".[7] As of 1930, indeed, very few governments had offered official support to the European avant-garde art, perhaps with the exception of the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic. While Hitler’s Degenerate Art exhibition placed avant-garde art on display for ridicule, Mussolini used modernist art as a tool to promote Fascist ideology, linking the Fascist revolution to an equally revolutionary style in art.
Event
The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution opened on October 28, 1932, on the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome. The anniversary was called the Decennale (evoking the ancient Roman Decennalia). The Exhibition was the propaganda centerpiece of the Decennale.[8] It was the largest official display organized by the Fascist regime to date. Its director and designer was Dino Alfieri, with the cooperation of Luigi Freddi, Alessandro Melchiori[it], and Cipriano Efisio Oppo.[9] As artistical-technical consultant for the exhibition, Oppo was joined by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Futurist leader and a longtime friend of Mussolini, and by a small group of artists, including the architect Enrico Del Debbio and the painter Giovanni Guerrini. The organizing body included a special Propaganda Office, that worked directly with the undersecretary of the Ministry of InteriorLeandro Arpinati.
The Exhibition celebrated the Fascist' rise to power in October 1922 and presented the Fascist view of Italian history from Mussolini's foundation of his newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, in November 1914, to the March on Rome. It was never conceived as an objective representation of the facts or as being solely based on the exhibiting of historic documents, but as a work of Fascist propaganda to influence and involve the audience emotionally. The idea behind the exhibition, in the words of one Fascist journal, was "to express a faith, which must be represented with the kind of fervor that ... can arouse religious feelings."[10] For this reason not only historians were called in to assist in the exhibition, but also exponents of various artistic currents of the era. Documents and memorabilia were displayed to help describe the events leading to the rise of Fascism. The exhibition’s organizers solicited items from Italian citizens such as symbols, photographs, medals, newspapers, letters connected to Fascism's historical origins, totaling 18,040 items collected by the end of this campaign. The exhibits were laid out in a series of twenty-three rooms, with specific rooms being devoted to periods of history.[11] Each room of the exhibition was designed by a team composed of an historian and an artist, most of whom were young avant-garde designers, such as Mario Sironi, Enrico Prampolini, Gerardo Dottori, Adalberto Libera and Giuseppe Terragni. The rooms were filled with mural photomontages (or “photo-mosaics”), sculptures, collages, sound clips, and quotes that surrounded visitors with visions of World War I and achievements of the Fascist movement.[12] The extensive use of photomontages was inspired by Soviet constructivist artist El Lissitzky's "The Task of the Press is the Education of the Masses" in the Soviet Pavilion at the 1928 Cologne International Press Exhibition.[13]
Guards change outside of the Exhibit. The words “Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista” announcing the location of the exhibition are displayed largely to mark the site.
The Palazzo delle Esposizioni was given a temporary façade by Adalberto Libera and Mario de Renzi dominated by four twenty-five-meter tall tin-plate fasces and two six-meter X's, one to either side of the entry. The X's represented a ten-year span of Fascist history. One "X" looked to the past, beginning in 1922, the second "X" pointed to the future (from 1932 to 1942). The façade conveyed a sense of startling modernity through its use of modern materials and stark simplicity of design.
The exhibition was designed in such a way that it led visitors sequentially from one space to the other. Visitors were led through nineteen chronological and thematic halls covering the period from the outbreak of World War I to the victory of Fascism. The nineteen rooms were divided into five units corresponding to the general history of pre- and early Fascism. Rooms A-C covered the years from 1914 to 1918. Rooms D and E covered the early postwar period from 1918 to March of 1919. Rooms F and G presented the year 1919, beginning with the foundation of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento on March 23. The chief themes of these early rooms were intervention, the italian mobilization, Fascism's emergence, and idealization of the sacrifice of the Italian soldier. Rooms H through N were devoted to the squad years from 1920 to 1921. Clashes between Socialists and Blackshirts were dramatized as battles over the soul of the nation leading up from the decadence of the years immediately following the war to the triumph of Fascism and the beginning of the new era. Room O (1922) presented the final year of Fascist struggle before the March on Rome. Rooms P-S covered the March on Rome and also stood as commemorative chambers to Fascism. The exhibition culminated in a Sala del Duce ('Room of the Duce') narrating the life of Mussolini from its humble beginnings to his rise to world leadership.
Having completed the long detour through the history of Fascism, the visitor finally reached the Sacrario dei Martiri della Rivoluzione Fascista ('Shrine of the Martyrs of the Fascist Revolution'), the most theatrical and cathartic space of the entire exhibition. This large cylindrical space, over thirteen meters in diameter and seven meters in height, was designed by the Rationalist architect Adalberto Libera and the theater designer Antonio Valente (creator of the famous Carro di Tespi).[14] The Sacrario commemorated to the thousands of soldiers and scores of Fascist Party members who gave their lives for the cause and soon became the focal point of patriotic pilgrimages.
The government offered travel discounts and other perks to incentivize visitors. Schools were closed from October 24 to November 5 1932, so that entire families could view the Exhibition in its opening days and primary schools were offered numerous incentives to visit it.[15] Over half a million posters were printed together with tourist pamphlets in several languages.
Although the Exhibition was initially intended to be temporary, lasting only six months, it proved so popular that the closing date, April 21, 1933, had first to be postponed until October and then again until the following October. The Exhibition was seen by 3,854,927 Italian and foreign visitors over the course of nearly two years.[16] Outside Italy the Exhibition was widely hailed for its aesthetic value. Among the many foreigners who came to see it were Le Corbusier, André Gide, Auguste Perret, Maurice Denis, and Paul Valéry.[17]
The exhibition made known to a wider public many young arists and architects. Some of them, including the sculptor Marino Marini and the painter Enrico Paulucci, would become leading figures in Italian and European art after the war.[3] Others, like Esodo Pratelli or Leo Longanesi, went on to active careers in cinematography and the photographic documentary. The exhibition has been praised by many art historians, such as Giulio Carlo Argan and Bruno Zevi, who have both written appreciatively of Libera's and Terragni's contributions.[18]
Subsequent events
Given its great success, the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution was repeated in 1937 and 1942, though these two repeats did not have the same public success. The Exhibition of 1937 took place in conjunction with the much larger and more important "Mostra Augustea della Romanità", celebrating the bimillennium of the birth of Augustus. This second version of the exhibit was held in the National Gallery of Modern Art. Italian rationalist architectCesare Bazzani designed a new façade for the gallery. The Exhibition was updated to cover the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the proclamation of the Fascist Empire and the deeds of the Italian volunteers fighting for the Nationalist faction in the Spanish Civil War. The second edition attracted far fewer visitors than had the first version. It closed after a year and reopened in a slightly altered form on March 23, 1939, the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento.
In the Exhibition of 1942, new rooms were added, one dedicated to the Doctrine of Fascism, another to artifacts recovered during the African campaigns, and yet another against Jews and Communists, who were given the blame for starting the war. The inauguration ceremony was presided over by a German delegation. A room on "Victory" was promised soon. The Exhibition was still open when the Germans occupied Rome in July 1943. Most of the documentary material was then transferred to the seat of the new Italian Social Republic, in Salò on Lake Garda. Today much of this material is preserved in the Central Archives of the State in Rome.[19]
Related Research Articles
Alessandro Pavolini was an Italian politician, journalist, and essayist. He was notable for his involvement in the Italian fascism government, during World War II, and also for his cruelty against the opponents of fascism.
Giuseppe Tucci was an Italian orientalist, Indologist and scholar of East Asian studies, specializing in Tibetan culture and the history of Buddhism. During its zenith, Tucci was a supporter of Italian fascism, and he used idealized portrayals of Asian traditions to support Italian ideological campaigns. Tucci was fluent in several European languages, Sanskrit, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit, Chinese and Tibetan and he taught at the University of Rome La Sapienza until his death. He is considered one of the founders of the field of Buddhist Studies.
Giuseppe Terragni was an Italian architect who worked primarily under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and pioneered the Italian modern movement under the rubric of Rationalism. His most famous work is the Casa del Fascio built in Como, northern Italy, which was begun in 1932 and completed in 1936; it was built in accordance with the International Style of architecture and frescoed by abstract artist Mario Radice. In 1938, at the behest of Mussolini's fascist government, Terragni designed the Danteum, an unbuilt monument to the Italian poet Dante Alighieri structured around the formal divisions of his greatest work, the Divine Comedy.
Giuseppe Bottai was an Italian journalist and member of the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini.
Renzo De Felice was an Italian historian, who specialized in the Fascist era, writing, among other works, a 6000-page biography of Mussolini. He argued that Mussolini was a revolutionary modernizer in domestic issues but a pragmatist in foreign policy who continued the Realpolitik policies of Italy from 1861 to 1922. Historian of Italy Philip Morgan has called De Felice's biography of Mussolini "a very controversial, influential and at the same time problematic re-reading of Mussolini and Fascism" and rejected the contention that his work rose above politics to "scientific objectivity", as claimed by the author and his defenders.
The Aventine Secession was the withdrawal of the parliament opposition, mainly comprising the Italian Socialist Party, Italian Liberal Party, Italian People's Party and Italian Communist Party, from the Chamber of Deputies in 1924–25, following the murder of the deputy Giacomo Matteotti by fascists on 10 June 1924.
Adalberto Libera was one of the most representative architects of the Italian Modern movement.
Fascist architecture encompasses various stylistic trends in architecture developed by architects of fascist states, primarily in the early 20th century. Fascist architectural styles gained popularity in the late 1920s with the rise of modernism along with the ultranationalism associated with fascist governments in western Europe. Fascist styles often resemble that of ancient Rome, but can extend to modern aesthetics as well. Fascist-era buildings are frequently constructed with particular concern given to symmetry and simplicity.
The National Fascist Party was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian fascism and as a reorganisation of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The party ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 when Fascists took power with the March on Rome until the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, when Mussolini was deposed by the Grand Council of Fascism. It was succeeded, in the territories under the control of the Italian Social Republic, by the Republican Fascist Party, ultimately dissolved at the end of World War II.
A casa del Fascio, casa Littoria, or casa del Littorio was a building housing the local branch of the National Fascist Party and later the Republican Fascist Party under the regime of Italian Fascism, in Italy and its colonies, and Malta. In major urban centers, it was called the palazzo del Littorio or palazzo Littorio. Littorio means lictor, the bearer of the fasces lictorii, the symbol of Roman power adopted by the Fascist party.
Marcello Piacentini was an Italian urban theorist and one of the main proponents of Italian Fascist architecture.
Novecento Italiano was an Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 to create an art based on the rhetoric of the fascism of Mussolini.
Ettore Ovazza was an Italian Jewish banker. He was an early financer of Benito Mussolini, of whom he was a personal friend, and Italian fascism, which he supported until the Italian racial laws of 1938. He founded the journal La nostra bandiera. Believing that his position would be restored after the war, Ovazza stayed on after the Germans marched into Italy. Together with his wife and children, shortly after the Fall of Fascism and Mussolini's government during World War II, he was executed near the Swiss border by SS troops in 1943.
The Palazzo delle Esposizioni is a neoclassical exhibition hall, cultural center and museum on Via Nazionale in Rome, Italy.
The Stadio dei Marmi is one of four stadiums in the colossal sports complex the Foro Italico, initially named Foro Mussolini. The other stadiums are the Stadio Olimpico, the Stadio del tennis Romano, and the Stadio Olimpico del Nuoto. It was designed in the 1920s as a complement to the annexed Fascist Academy of Physical Education, to be used by its students for training. The Stadio dei Marmi first opened in 1932, on the 10th anniversary of the March on Rome, near the Roman neighborhood Monte Mario, by the architect Enrico Del Debbio under the Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini. The Stadio dei Marmi is encircled by sixty, 4-meter tall classical statues of athletes made from Carrara marble. The stadium was built to celebrate Fascist accomplishments and the Gioventú del Littorio, the youth movement of the National Fascist Party of Italy. In its twenty-year reign, the Fascist regime used sports to introduce and instill new fascist traditions, ideals, customs, and values, with the goal of forming citizen warriors. The Stadio dei Marmi was used to host some of the field hockey preliminaries for the 1960 Summer Olympics and also hosted the opening ceremony for the 2009 World Aquatics Championships.
Ines Donati was a political activist and a supporter of the first wave of Italy's Fascist movement.
The Sandro Italico Mussolini School of Fascist Mysticism was established in Milan, Italy in 1930 by Niccolò Giani. Its primary goal was to train the future leaders of Italy's National Fascist Party. The school curriculum promoted Fascist mysticism based on the philosophy of Fideism, the belief that faith and reason were incompatible; Fascist mythology was to be accepted as a "metareality". In 1932, Mussolini described Fascism as "a religious concept of life", saying that Fascists formed a "spiritual community".
Fascist mysticism was a current of political and religious thought in Fascist Italy, based on Fideism, a belief that faith existed without reason, and that Fascism should be based on a mythology and spiritual mysticism. A School of Fascist Mysticism was founded in Milan on April 10, 1930, and active until 1943, and its main objective was the training of future Fascist leaders, indoctrinated in the study of various Fascist intellectuals who tried to abandon the purely political to create a spiritual understanding of Fascism. Fascist mysticism in Italy developed through the work of Niccolò Giani with the decisive support of Arnaldo Mussolini.
The Era Fascista was a calendar era used in Fascist Italy. The March on Rome, or more precisely the accession of Mussolini as prime minister on 29 October 1922, is day 1 of Anno I of the Era Fascista. The calendar was introduced in 1926 and became official in Anno V (1927). Each year of the Era Fascista was an Anno Fascista, abbreviated A.F.
Roberto Ricci, known as Berto Ricci was an Italian Fascist writer, journalist and poet. One of the foremost Fascist intellectuals, he wrote for Il Popolo d'Italia, Il Selvaggio, Primato and Critica fascista as well as for his own magazine, L'Universale, which he founded in 1931. He was also a teacher at the School of Fascist Mysticism.
↑ . “. . . far cosa d’oggi, modernissima dunque, e audace, senza malinconici ricordi degli stili decorativi del passato.” The quote is from Mussolini, cited from Dino Alfieri and Luigi Freddi, La Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista (Rome: PNF, 1932), 8–9.
↑ Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930. London: Tate Gallery. p.241. ISBN1-85437-043-X.
Braun, Emily; Carpi, Cioni (1987). "Illustrations of Propaganda: The Political Drawings of Mario Sironi". The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. 3: 84–107. JSTOR1503949.
Falasca Zamponi, Simonetta (1998). "Of Storytellers and Master Narratives: Modernity, Memory, and History in Fascist Italy". Social Science History. 22 (4): 415–444. doi:10.2307/1171571. JSTOR1171571.
Stone, Marla S. (1998). The Patron State, Culture & Politics in Fascist Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Russo, Antonella (1999). Il fascismo in mostra (in Italian). Rome: Editori Riuniti.
Schnapp, Jeffrey T. (2003). Anno X: La mostra della Rivoluzione fascista del 1932 (in Italian). Pisa: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali. ISBN8881473410.
Salvatori, Paola S. (2003). "La seconda Mostra della Rivoluzione fascista". Clio (in Italian). XXXIX (3): 439–459.
Capanna, Alessandra (2004). Mostra della Rivoluzione fascista (in Italian). Turin: Testo & Immagine.
Rocco, Vanessa (2009). “Acting on the Visitor's Mind': Architectonic Photography at the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in Rome, 1932.” In Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda from Pressa to The Family of Man, ed. Jorge Ribalta, 245–55.
Andreotti, Libero (2011). "The architecture of violence: Mario Sironi and Italian Fascism". Architecture and Violence. ACTAR Publishers: 19–52. ISBN978-8492861736.
Carli, Maddalena (2014). "Immagini, rivoluzioni, frontiere. Sguardi francesi sulla Mostra della rivoluzione fascista del 1932". Vers une Europe latine. Acteurs et enjeux des échanges culturels entre la France et l'Italie fasciste (in Italian). Paris: Peter Lang: 97–113. ISBN9782875740472.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
