FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF SURREALISM IN ITALY FROM 1924 TO 1969

Surrealism in Italy 1929-1954

par Alessandro Nigro

3 avril 2021

This conference took place by videoconference on April 3, 2021 as part of APRES activities.

We will analyze how surrealism was perceived in Italy during the period of the movement's official existence. It is not surprising that in Italy of the 1920s and 1930s, oppressed by a totalitarian dictatorship, there were few opportunities to confront a libertarian avant-garde movement; the attention paid to surrealism at that time was indeed limited and reveals clichés and misunderstandings rather than effective knowledge of the poetics and objectives of Breton's group. However, there were important exceptions, as in the case of the monographic issue of the journal Prospettive, whose director was Curzio Malaparte (Il surrealismo e l'Italia, 1940).

It is, on the other hand, much more surprising to note the difficulties in understanding surrealism after 1945 and throughout the 1950s: in an Italy divided between Catholic conservatism and a still fundamentalist left, surrealism appears as a foreign body that arouses concerns on all fronts, both ideological and formal: this is evidenced by the contrasting climate that accompanied the presentation of Peggy Guggenheim's collection at the Venice Biennale in 1949 and the lively controversy that marked surrealism's presence at the 1954 Venice Biennale.

A turning point in the knowledge of surrealism in Italy can be recorded in the 1960s thanks to the activity of certain art galleries, particularly those of Carlo Cardazzo and Arturo Schwarz, and the success of surrealist works on the Italian art market and among art collectors. Finally, a major exhibition like the one organized by Luigi Carluccio for the Galleria d'arte moderna in Turin in 1967 ("Le muse inquietanti. Maestri del surrealismo"), even if it was not free from misunderstandings about the movement, can be considered as the first moment of institutionalization of surrealism in Italy.

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Alessandro Nigro studied art history at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and the University of Padua. He has been an associate professor at the University of Florence since 2005. His research themes focus on the history of art criticism from the 18th to the 20th century, on the history of avant-gardes (notably futurism and surrealism) and on portraiture. He was a visiting researcher at the Fondazione Cini in Venice in 2017 and Associate Director of Studies at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris in 2018. Among his recent publications: "'L'Homme 100-têtes': André Breton photographed by Man Ray in front of L'Énigme d'une journée by Giorgio de Chirico. Between portrait and self-portrait" (in Autoportrait et altérité, 2014); "Bernard Berenson, Charles Vignier e i mercanti d'arte orientale a Parigi" (Studi di Memofonte, 2015); ""Au carrefour de la poésie et de la révolution": la critica militante di René Crevel nella Parigi degli anni Venti" (Ricerche di storia dell'arte, 2017); "Edward Gordon Craig e i Berenson" (Biblioteca teatrale, 2018); "Il prezzo di un ritratto nella Parigi dell'Ancien Régime: prime osservazioni sul Discours sur la portraiture (Genève, 1776)" (Ricerche di storia dell'arte, 2019); ""Le muse inquietanti. Maestri del surrealismo" (Turin, 1967): histoire d'une exposition surréaliste mémorable" (in Le Surréalisme et l'argent, Heidelberg 2021).