by Paolo Campiglio

Mario Sironi. Arte e politica in Italia sotto il fascismo, Emily Braun, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2003 (pp. 388, Euro 48,00) 

As late as 1946, the Milanese painter Sironi stated in an interview: ‘One has to tackle the mural problem. I’ve been working on them for years and they have obsessed me for years’. It was as if the fall of fascism had not affected an artistic conviction that originated when he was politically active, when the name Sironi meant fascist propaganda. Why was it still embarrassing to discuss his work in the 1980s?

Emily Braun teaches at Hunter College of New York’s City University. For 15 years she has sought to respond to these and other questions concerning Sironi, not just one of Italy’s leading artists, but also one of the most problematic cases in contemporary art. The scholar recently published the fruit of more than a decade of research on Sironi by Bollati and Boringhieri. The book is intended to be an artistic and political biography, interpreting the painter’s works in terms of his ideological convictions.

It is more than a monograph, since Sironi is emblematic of the relationship between art and politics under fascism. The author maintains that the Italian case was unique among totalitarian regimes, for once the avant-garde was engaged in the construction of a new political system and way of life. Braun outlines the relationship between the avant-garde and modern aesthetics, art making and aesthetic policies: a dialogue or reciprocal rejection.
The tales of fakes and fakers, the intricate negotiations over the will and the 13,000 drawings held in a bank vault until 1995 all helped to distort the stylistic rise and fall of a painter who loved conflict in life and art. Early on he became a fascist, as is demonstrated by the recent discovery of his political illustrations, and he remained close to Mussolini and the regime. At the same time, he fought for ‘social art’ against reactionaries like Farinacci, who ridiculed his creations.

This volume is praiseworthy because it has the detachment of historical, political studies and the accuracy of the art historian that is necessary to probe the very close links between Sironi’s mytho-poetics and fascist policies.

The author sheds new light on the artist’s monumental works (including the large 1936 mosaic Il lavoro fascista in Milan’s Palazzo dell’Informazione), pointing out the accute contradictions on both sides and stressing the late-romantic elements shared by Mussolini and Sironi. Braun examines the diverse stages of the artist’s production, from futurism to the early 1920s and the celebrated urban landscapes, poised between metaphysics and futurism.

During the 20th century the artist took part in the fascist seizure of power and was to become the chief curator of the 1932 show at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, which was intended to fete the first decade of fascism. This was the first ‘synthesis of the fine arts’, presenting experiments in painting, sculpture and architecture to stir the leading intellectuals of the time. The decisive chapters in Braun’s study are those on the politicization of aesthetics, starting with Sironi’s mural-painting manifesto of 1933, and his involvement with the regime’s major works.

The basic hypothesis is that Sironi’s murals artistically represented an alternative to socialist realism and the stereotypes much loved by reactionary fascists. It was also supposed to be a response to the ‘subjectivism’ of the sophisticated international avant-garde. Likewise, Mussolini’s ‘third way’ opposed both socialism and Western capitalism. However, Sironi’s magic drew on the past, the dusty dusk of history, evoked by emblems and stark lighting. History reappeared in the excitement of colour and form, making concrete Bontempelli’s ideals of reconstructing space and time.

Paolo Campiglio is an art critic