Antonio David Fiore

Mosaic, because of its close relationship with architecture, has always been an ideal vehicle for

the symbolically and ideologically charged art to be found on the walls of public and religious

buildings. Nevertheless, after the celebrated achievements of Antique masters, neglect seems to

follow. Yet, the calling of Giovanni Belloni (1772–1863) to set up a national Mosaic School in post-

revolutionary France in 1798, the decoration of Westminster Palace in London (1922; 1926) and

Foro Mussolini in Rome (1931–38), Ben Shahn’s Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1967, Syracuse,

USA) are but a few, deliberately disparate, examples of a modern renaissance.

More than other techniques of architectural decoration, such as fresco and sculpture, mosaic

reflected ambiguities and uncertainties of a practice constantly suspended between

experimentation and revival. Challenges included: the separation between designer and

craftsman, the impact of new materials and semi-industrial practices such as the indirect method,

and the relationship with the Antique traditions. For example, late Roman and Byzantine mosaics,

with their anti-perspective and anti-naturalistic approach, were often referenced by modern artists

when asked to justify their position theoretically. However, the varieties of motives and forms used

in practice were often unorthodox.

This panel aims to highlight questions of relationship between artists and artisans, iconography,

technique and materials, relationship with the architectural space, patronage, and reception. How

do we inscribe mosaics into a socially engaged art history? Papers are invited that situate mosaic

of any period as works of art that conjure up dialogue between tradition, revival, and renewal.

... Impulso fondamentale venne dalla Giunta guidata da Ernesto Nathan, divenu-to Sindaco nel 1908 come espressione di una maggioranza definita ... con la costruzione di una seconda Sottostazione per la trasformazione dell'ener-gia elettrica ad alto voltaggio proveniente dalle ...

This dissertation concerns the creative practice developed by the Italian decorator Giulio Rosso (1897-1976) in Italy during the interwar period (1919-1941). Despite post-war critical oblivion, Rosso's contemporary colleagues, intellectuals, and architects appreciated his ability to master an extremely varied repertoire, adapting it to meet different spatial requirements while also updating it through humour and stylistic references to the visual languages of contemporary fine arts and modern media. This analysis of Rosso's output highlights decoration as a practice worth exploring and distinct from the fine arts. During the 1920s, Rosso took advantage of a new interest in decoration that was developing within the Italian cultural debate. Long despised as the product of negotiations which, arguably, limited the autonomy of the artist, decoration was re-evaluated within the context of the 'Return to Order' for its ability to engage artists in a relationship with socie...

Il presente contributo intende analizzare due pannelli musivi su cartone di Emanuele Rambaldi (1903-1968) e Giovanni Brancaccio (1903-1975) eseguiti all’inizio degli anni ’50 per il salone della Banca Nazionale del Lavoro di Genova. I due pannelli musivi rappresentano una ulteriore tappa nel percorso che, dopo l’intervallo della seconda guerra mondiale, continua a vedere gli artisti italiani impegnati in committenze di decorazione architettonica che coinvolgono imprese ed istituti privati. In quest’ambito, un linguaggio tradizionalmente figurativo viene animato da inserti che includono riferimenti alle novità formali introdotte dalla avanguardia, alla stregua dei migliori risultati della grande decorazione pubblica supportata dal defunto regime fascista. Allo stesso tempo, i temi sviluppati dai due artisti tendono a intrecciare in un unico spazio visivo riferimenti sociali, comunitari, e nazionali con l’affermazione identitaria del committente privato.
La disamina dell’aspetto iconografico di questa decorazione verrà sviluppata mettendo in relazione l’opera finita con materiale archivistico, tra i quali il bozzetto originale del mosaico di Rambaldi, conservato presso l’archivio del Wolfsonian FIU di Miami (Accession number 86.5.66).

This paper will consider the revival of Roman art in decorative practices developed in Italy during the interwar period. The debate about the relationship between modern creative trends and Italian art tradition triggered by the European postwar Return to Order represents the necessary background of my analysis. As a case study, I will discuss some works by Giulio Rosso (1897-1976), a decorative artist who worked closely with key protagonists of the Italian artistic milieu, such as architects Marcello Piacentini, Gio Ponti, Giuseppe Capponi, and Melchiorre Bega. A successful designer of decorative schemes and applied arts for the elite, corporations, and public patrons, Rosso actively participated in the shaping of the visual culture of the time. Always receptive towards new languages and iconographies, he reinterpreted them in an original and often humorous way. In particular, I will examine his engagement with themes dealing with the idea of Rome and its heritage. A constant reference in the development of Italian art, this idea was appropriated, and obsessively reiterated, by the fascist propaganda. However, by analyzing Rosso’s output, I aim to challenge the assumption of a period dominated by ‘the’ shadow of Augustan Rome. I will demonstrate how artists found in the heritage of Rome many suggestions and possibilities of modern reinterpretation, sometimes even noticeably inconsistent with the triumphalist rhetoric of the regime.

Interpreting a barber incarcerated for murder for the past twenty years, Toto’ (Antonio de Curtis), in the film Dov’é la libertá (Roberto Rossellini, 1955), goes back to find his small shop, between via del Corso and via Vittoria in Rome. When he approaches piazza Augusto Imperatore, he tries to track on the pavement the mental map of what was once a familiar space, perfectly (and movingly) embodying the sense of disorientation that local people must have experienced. The new space of piazza Augusto Imperatore, was the last of the operations carried out by the fascist regime in the historical centre of Rome to disencumber the Roman heritage from the material stratifications operated by less noble (and appropriable) historical ages. The results were spaces that suddenly interrupted the multi-layered fabric of the city and offered a rather ambiguous relationship with it, at the same time expressing and denying the continuity with tradition. Besides, with the maze of disordered alleys, small squares and unassuming houses, gone were also its disenfranchised populace who were forced to move to the suburbs.
In this paper, I address issues of perception, nostalgia and sense of loss. By analysing the extremely rich (though largely neglected by art historical scholarship) ornament attached to the buildings of architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo (1890-1966), my intention is to read, through the filter of propaganda, how contemporary artists interpreted the dramatic changes inflicted to the heritage of Rome and its inhabitants. Does architectural decoration - mosaics, bas-reliefs and murals - comply with the eulogist scope for which, during the fascist regime, it was often enlisted and supported? Is it possible to detect elements of discontinuity, messages of distress masked behind apparently naïve and innocent recuperation of traditional genres?

Il presente contributo prende le mosse dall’analisi e dal confronto di due decorazioni parietali in mosaico inedite eseguite tra gli anni ’50 e ’60 a Roma e Palermo per iniziativa, rispettivamente,  dell’ISTAT (sede di viale Liegi) e del Banco di Sicilia (galleria di piazzale Ungheria). Ad accomunare le due opere, i cui cartoni sono di Trento Longaretti (1916) e Alberto Bevilacqua (1896-1976), sono la loro destinazione pubblica e il tema: una esaltazione delle attività economiche, della produttività, dell’abbondanza e del benessere garantito ai cittadini dal lavoro. Gli interventi, eseguiti da ditte dell’Italia settentrionale (Sgorlon di Milano e Cooperativa Mosaicisti di Ravenna), perpetrando il tradizionale impiego del mosaico nella decorazione architettonica, svolgono una interessante operazione estetica incentrata sulla rappresentazione sintetica (ed epica) della contemporaneità. Una contemporaneità tutta risolta nei valori del fare, del costruire e del produrre. La missione dei due istituti committenti - misurare per programmare e garantire l’investimento per lo sviluppo - viene infatti poeticamente rielaborata affinchè piano allegorico e realistico, identità dell’ente e quella degli osservatori si fondano in un’unica visione che aspira ad essere allo stesso tempo monumentale e popolare, locale e nazionale. Il ricorso ad un liguaggio figurativo, in un’epoca in cui tale approccio è decisamente messo in discussione dalle prevalenti correnti dell’astratto e dell’informale, è evidentemente ancora sentito come quello più adatto a funzionare nello spazio pubblico, che sia la strada o la galleria commerciale su cui prospettano gli ingressi dei due enti. Questi mosaici invitano alla condivisione di un sentimento di ricostruzione culturale e materiale; pur potendo sembrare ingenuo, esso documenta un’età dell’abbondanza che, dopo la dittatura e la catastrofe della guerra, se non reale, doveva sembrare finalmente a portata di mano. Diviene quindi particolarmente interessante mettere in evidenza sia gli elementi che fanno delle due opere delle espressioni inequivocabili del contesto storico culturale in cui sono nate (committenza, manifattura, collocazione), sia quelli che gli artisti derivano da tradizioni ed esperienze artistiche passate, risultanti da una identica e ricorrente necessità di visualizzare il mito ottimistico di un futuro prossimo di laboriosa prosperità generale.

Duilio Torres (1882-1972), one of the most active and influent architects in the Veneto region during the interwar period, is now largely forgotten, arguably because of his eclectic approach, which ranged from functionalist to neo-vernacular designs. Yet, the pragmatism with which Torres resolved the formal problems of his buildings is nothing but the prevalent attitude that dominates Italian architectural practice before World War II. The theoretical reflection associated to his activity reveals the array of problems and pressures to which Italian architects were exposed, as well as the source of some of the solutions provided. In particular, Torres’ main preoccupation was the historical city: Venice, in his case. When not commissioned with spaces located in the outskirts of metropolitan areas designed for modern activities such as heliotherapy (Solarium in Lido, 1922-23) or flying (Hangar of Linate airport, 1936), he had to face an impending question: how to interfere with a living built environment that architectural history had sanctioned as valuable testimony of history and civilization? Drawing on concepts developed within the Roman School of Architecture by Gustavo Giovannoni (1873-1947) and Marcello Piacentini (1881-1960), his solution was the ‘ambientamento’, which consisted in recurring to a neo-vernacular language able to merge the new buildings within the existent fabric of the city. Torres responded to a debate, entirely modern, that acknowledged that the historic centres were less and less the places where contemporary citizens normally lived, to become instead locus of symbolical, aesthetic and cultural values; in a word: heritage. Such shift had been originated from the destructions of the Great War, the pressure of urbanization and industrialization, and, crucially, the need to fix a still uncertain Italian national identity. The phenomenon was enhanced by Fascism, but also, significantly, put aside when exigencies of self-representation needed modern architecture to express visually and symbolically the new authority (via dell’Impero, Rome, 1932). Torres’ picturesque modernism, evident in the design for the Riva dell’Impero in Venice (1937), was carried out with the aim of disguising the new for the sake of the past, while preserving, with careful interventions, both the landmark and the humble pre-existence. It provided also a viable answer to the ambiguous patronage of Fascism, satisfying both its poses as allegedly revolutionary movement and defender of Italian traditions.

Il titolo di questo contributo riprende quello dell’articolo anonimo pubblicato nel numero del febbraio del 1940 della rivista Le Tre Venezie, illustrante alcuni dei pannelli musivi disegnati dall’artista Guido Cadorin (1892-1976) per l’atrio del nuovo cinema San Marco a Venezia. L’edificio che li ospitava venne progettato dagli architetti Brenno del Giudice (1888-1957) e Gilberto Errera (1894-1966), che ristrutturarono completamente un precedente cinematografo risalente al 1908. Presentati i primi progetti alla commissione edilizia del capoluogo veneto nel 1932, i lavori iniziarono solo nel 1938 per concludersi due anni dopo, quando i mosaici interni di Cadorin e le sculture esterne di Napoleone Martinuzzi (1892-1977) vennero finalmente installati e il cinema aperto al pubblico.
La struttura, dopo un lungo periodo di abbandono, è stata trasformata in sede di attività commerciali: dopo aver ospitato una libreria, è stata recentemente adattata a sede veneziana della boutique Louis Vuitton. Durante l’ultima ristrutturazione,  i mosaici sono stati staccati, sistemati su pannelli ed esposti presso il piano terra dell’adiacente hotel Monaco & Gran Canal. Dove si trovano tuttora. Nonostante l’opera chiuda la prima fase della carriera dell’artista veneziano (antecedente alla pausa forzata dovuta alla seconda guerra mondiale), essa è stata trascurata dala storiografia e non è stata mai studiata con la dovuta attenzione critica.
Il presente contributo intende contestualizzare l’opera in rapporto all’opera di Cadorin, a quella dei progettisti, al momento storico della sua ideazione e alla sua finalità di apparato decorativo musivo ideato e realizzato per un luogo di intrattenimento, estraneo quindi alle tradizionali applicazioni della tecnica in contesti religiosi (mosaici dell’abside di San Giusto a Trieste, dello stesso Cadorin) o propagandistici (il Foro Mussolini a Roma).

La produzione musiva del periodo fra le due guerre è tanto intensa quanto poco indagata. Gli studiosi hanno in genere riconosciuto come, sull’onda di tendenze di diversa natura quali il ‘ritorno al mestiere’ e ‘muri ai pittori’, il mosaico, dopo la relativa marginalità occupata durante il XIX secolo, venga fatto oggetto di un nuovo interesse da parte di artisti di punta – Severini, Sironi e Ferrazzi i principali - che ne indagano le potenzialità espressive in chiave moderna. A questo riconoscimento non ha però fatto seguito una indagine più approfondita sulle modalità con cui artisti minori, parallelamente ai maestri, hanno contribuito a questa stagione di rinascita. Problemi di natura iconografica, di relazione con lo spazio architettonico, di committenza e ricezione attendono poi di essere persino formulati.
Questo contributo ha per oggetto uno dei tanti episodi di utilizzo della tecnica musiva a scopo decorativo in una committenza pubblica durante il ventennio. Giulio Rosso (1897-1976), artista oggi quasi completamente dimenticato ma attivissimo nel campo delle arti decorative e della grande decorazione tra il 1922 e il 1945, viene incaricato di disegnare i cartoni per sei pannelli musivi nelle sale da gioco del nuovo Casinò di Venezia al Lido. L’opera viene citata da Agnoldomenico Pica nella sua concisa ricognizione del mosaico in età moderna pubblicata nel volume curato da Bertelli nel 1989, e di nuovo da Patrizia Peron nel testo sulla cupola dell’ex Padiglione Italia alla Biennale di Venezia (2006), senza però includere una valida interpretazione delle scene, un’analisi delle qualità tecnico-artistiche o un resoconto storico della commissione.
Il mio intento è quello di ricostruire il contesto e le circostanze della committenza, discuterne i valori storico artistici e presentare una ipotesi interpretativa dell’opera nel suo complesso.

Despite a new interest in historical studies regarding Italy’s colonial past, rare are the researches about artists’ response to colonial theme. Among the many decorative enterprises that Giulio Rosso (object of my PhD research) carried out during the fascist ventennio, the black and white mosaic panels designed for the Foro Mussolini in Rome and the Grand Hotel Uaddan in Tripoli are of much interest once analysed from this particular point of view. Indeed, they both deal with the problem of representing overseas colonies, presenting different approaches and solutions to evidently different exigencies.
The Foro Mussolini was built as an example of ‘total work of art’, by the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB). In 1936, Corrado Ricci commissioned architect Luigi Moretti with the design of a large entrance thoroughfare to celebrate the conquest of Ethiopia. Moretti chose four artists – Achille Capizzano, Angelo Canevari, Giulio Rosso and Gino Severini - to design 7500 square meters of mosaics celebrating sports and artistic and economic enterprises of the fascist regime. Only two panels referred to contemporary events: Giulio Rosso’s Marcia su Roma and The conquest of Addis Ababa. The latter is a propagandistic collage of different images celebrating war, technology, and submission. It is a comprehensive (and involuntarily merciless) picture of what the public opinion was driven to believe about the self-proclaimed civilizing mission, the organizational efficiency, and the fatal destiny of Fascist Italy.
On the other hand, Rosso gave a slightly different picture of colonial life in the mosaics for the so-called Turkish Bath of the Hotel Uaddan. Here another version of the colonial myth was represented, one that is more consistent with the general context of European culture of the time. It recalls a dreamy flight in an imagined Libya, suffused with oriental exoticisms, ready to be enjoyed by foreign tourists and Italian administrators in an exclusive environment.

The Foro Italico, once Foro Mussolini, was built as an example of ‘total work of art’ by the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the fascist organization which enlisted the young Italians in semi-military educative sections, and was responsible for the implementation of sport complexes all around the country.
The propagandistic content of the enterprise needed the involvement of every kind of figurative art in order to be fully expressed. Art had to represent the catalogue of old myths revived to legitimate modern imperialistic dreams, as well as new legends and aggressive symbols created by the party. Artists, on their side, collaborated with architects to envision the alleged ‘revolutionary’ process. In fascist Italy the issue was not the consensus or the acceptance of the dictatorial patron, but the kind of art through which the doctrine had to be expressed. This art was various, contradictory, difficult to classify, uncertain in its development and ambiguous in its results.
Despite a recent resurgence of interest for the culture of the fascist ventennio, key episodes of the development of public art during the years between the two world wars are still neglected by critics, scholars and by the public opinion. The mosaics of the Foro Italico are today in a poor state of conservation, ruined by skaters, vandals, and above all indifference. Generally considered as an interesting collective enterprise carried out by Gino Severini, Giulio Rosso, Angelo Canevari and Achille Capizzano, the question of the attribution of the 37 mosaic panels which form the 10.000 square metres of decorated surface has been never addressed.
With this paper I offer an attributive hypothesis based on the analysis of archive documents, stylistic comparisons and thematic evidences.

La Centrale Termoelettrica San Paolo della SAR’; ‘La Centrale Termoelettrica municipale Giovanni Montemartini’; ‘Mulini e Pastificio Antonio Biondi’; ‘Il Deposito ATAC di San Paolo (già del Littorio)’; ‘La Meccanica Romana’; ‘La Scuola elementare Niccolò Tommaseo’
paragraphs included in: Torelli Landini E., Roma, Memorie della città industriale, (Rome: Palombi, 2007)

This event aims to explore the way recurrent themes, iconography, and atmospheres of Metaphysical painting entered the repertoire of European decorators from the 1920s on. Antonio David Fiore will discuss works by Gio Ponti, Tomaso Buzzi, Piero Fornasetti, and Giulio Rosso. Focusing on their appropriation of aspects of de Chirico, Carrà, Sironi, and Morandi’s art, Antonio will show how Metaphysical painting—a complex approach to art, rooted in philosophy and literature—was turned into a source of suggestive decorative motives. Once deprived of their most unsettling and disquieting atmospheres, these themes became part of the taste of the time, not only in Italy but also in other countries. Paul Stirton will respond by showing examples from central Europe, in which parallel approaches can be detected. Stimulating comparisons between different contexts will emerge, as well as a different perspective from which to look at the Metaphysical Masterpieces exhibition on view in CIMA’s galleries.