 Esodo Pratelli. Room A, Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, Rome 1932–1934. | |
 | |
| Native name | Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista |
|---|---|
| Date | 28 October 1932 – 28 October 1934 (2 years) |
| Venue | Palazzo delle Esposizioni,Rome |
| Location | Rome,Kingdom of Italy |
| Coordinates | 41°53′58″N12°29′24″E / 41.89944°N 12.49000°E /41.89944; 12.49000 |
| Theme | Propaganda |
| Organized by | Dino Alfieri and theNational Fascist Party |
TheExhibition of the Fascist Revolution (Italian:Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista) was anart exhibition held inRome at thePalazzo delle Esposizioni from 1932 to 1934.[1] It was opened byBenito Mussolini on 28 October 1932 and was the longest-lasting exhibition ever mounted by theFascist 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 ofItalian 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 theNational Fascist Party directorate on 14 July 1931, in the presence of Mussolini, who enthusiastically approved it. Alfieri was involved in the project with a group of young, radical artists including, among others, the paintersMario Sironi andAchille Funi and therationalist architectsAdalberto Libera andGiuseppe 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]
UnlikeAdolf Hitler and theNazi 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 asFuturism. 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—toIl Popolo d'Italia andLa Rivista Illustrata del Popola d'Italia, theFascist newspapers,[5] and, together with Modernist architectGiovanni Muzio, designed apavilion forIl Popolo d'Italia at the 1928 Milan trade fair.[6] AsDiane Ghirardo has shown "TheModern Movement received substantial state support in Italy as it did from no other major power in the decade beforeWorld 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 theSoviet Union and theWeimar Republic. While Hitler’sDegenerate 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.
The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution opened on October 28, 1932, on the tenth anniversary of theMarch on Rome. The anniversary was called theDecennale (evoking the ancient RomanDecennalia). The Exhibition was the propaganda centerpiece of theDecennale.[8] It was the largest official display organized by the Fascist regime to date. Its director and designer wasDino Alfieri, with the cooperation ofLuigi Freddi,Alessandro Melchiori [it], andCipriano Efisio Oppo.[9] As artistical-technical consultant for the exhibition, Oppo was joined byFilippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Futurist leader and a longtime friend of Mussolini, and by a small group of artists, including the architectEnrico Del Debbio and the painter Giovanni Guerrini. The organizing body included a special Propaganda Office, that worked directly with the undersecretary of theMinistry 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 theMarch 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 ofFascist 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 youngavant-garde designers, such as Mario Sironi,Enrico Prampolini,Gerardo Dottori, Adalberto Libera and Giuseppe Terragni. The rooms were filled with muralphotomontages (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 Sovietconstructivist artistEl Lissitzky's "The Task of the Press is the Education of the Masses" in the Soviet Pavilion at the 1928Cologne International Press Exhibition.[13]
The Palazzo delle Esposizioni was given a temporaryfaçade by Adalberto Libera and Mario de Renzi dominated by four twenty-five-meter talltin-platefasces and two six-meter X's, one on 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 ofWorld 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 theFasci 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 thesquad years from 1920 to 1921. Clashes betweenSocialists andBlackshirts 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 aSala del Duce ('Room of theDuce') 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 theSacrario 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 thetheater designer Antonio Valente (creator of the famousCarro di Tespi).[14] TheSacrario 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 andprimary schools were offered numerous incentives to visit it.[15] Over half a millionposters 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 to first 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 wereLe Corbusier,André Gide,Auguste Perret,Maurice Denis, andPaul Valéry.[17]
The exhibition made known to a wider public many young artists and architects. Some of them, including the sculptorMarino Marini and the painterEnrico Paulucci, would become leading figures in Italian and European art after the war.[3] Others, like Esodo Pratelli orLeo Longanesi, went on to active careers incinematography and the photographic documentary. The exhibition has been praised by manyart historians, such asGiulio Carlo Argan andBruno Zevi, who have both written appreciatively of Libera's and Terragni's contributions.[18]
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 ofAugustus. This second version of the exhibit was held in theNational Gallery of Modern Art. Italianrationalist architectCesare Bazzani designed a new façade for the gallery. The Exhibition was updated to cover theSecond Italo-Ethiopian War, the proclamation of theFascist Empire and the deeds of theItalian volunteers fighting for theNationalist faction in theSpanish Civil War. The second edition attracted far fewer visitors than 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 againstJews andCommunists, who were given the blame for starting thewar. 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 newItalian Social Republic, inSalò onLake Garda. Today much of this material is preserved in theCentral Archives of the State in Rome.[19]
