Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution – 10th Anniversary
One of several posters promoting the Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista (Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution), an art exhibition celebrating Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. Held for exactly two years at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome from the 28th of October 1932 to 1934, it registered almost four million visitors, and brought in a net profit for the regime of around 15.5 million lire. This poster, illustrated by Mario Sironi for the exhibition’s opening on the 10th anniversary of the March on Rome, is characterized by its starkly modern, sharp and aggressive lines, as well as a sense of dynamism and movement.
Sironi was a painter and an early member of the Futurist movement in the years leading up to the First World War. After the war, he co-founded the Novecento Italiano movement and declared his support for Mussolini. He contributed hundreds of illustrations and designed covers for the Fascist newspapers Il Popolo d’Italia and La Rivista Illustrata del Popola d’Italia. He also designed pavilions for exhibitions and numerous posters, both political and commercial (including for Fiat). He eventually abandoned easel painting in favor of communicating via “a fusion of decoration and architecture exemplified by Gothic cathedrals.” He felt that the mural was the proper basis of a popular national art.
Unlike Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, who openly attacked modern architecture and art on both stylistic and racial grounds, Italian Fascism had been closely linked since its early inception to avant-garde artistic movements such as Futurism. Many of Italy’s most renowned artists and architects were ardent fascists who sought for their work to embody fascist values. Italian Fascism, as reflected in its ideological doctrine, was more open towards new ideas and lacked the artistically counterproductive fixation on stylistic purity and traditionalist realism that defined the Nazi aesthetic, and which often resulted in their works wanting in creative vitality.
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One of several posters promoting the Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista (Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution), an art exhibition celebrating Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. Held for exactly two years at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome from the 28th of October 1932 to 1934, it registered almost four million visitors, and brought in a net profit for the regime of around 15.5 million lire. This poster, illustrated by Mario Sironi for the exhibition’s opening on the 10th anniversary of the March on Rome, is characterized by its starkly modern, sharp and aggressive lines, as well as a sense of dynamism and movement.
Sironi was a painter and an early member of the Futurist movement in the years leading up to the First World War. After the war, he co-founded the Novecento Italiano movement and declared his support for Mussolini. He contributed hundreds of illustrations and designed covers for the Fascist newspapers Il Popolo d’Italia and La Rivista Illustrata del Popola d’Italia. He also designed pavilions for exhibitions and numerous posters, both political and commercial (including for Fiat). He eventually abandoned easel painting in favor of communicating via “a fusion of decoration and architecture exemplified by Gothic cathedrals.” He felt that the mural was the proper basis of a popular national art.
Unlike Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, who openly attacked modern architecture and art on both stylistic and racial grounds, Italian Fascism had been closely linked since its early inception to avant-garde artistic movements such as Futurism. Many of Italy’s most renowned artists and architects were ardent fascists who sought for their work to embody fascist values. Italian Fascism, as reflected in its ideological doctrine, was more open towards new ideas and lacked the artistically counterproductive fixation on stylistic purity and traditionalist realism that defined the Nazi aesthetic, and which often resulted in their works wanting in creative vitality.
