The Nineteen Hundreds of Margherita Sarfatti
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| Sarfatti by Wildt |
By Ivan Buttignon (Translated by L. Pavese).
At the
end of 1922, with Benito Mussolini firmly seated as President of the Council of
Ministers (the executive branch of the Italian government), Margherita Sarfatti
began to delineate her cultural project in a modernist sense. With Mussolini’s
permission, Sarfatti founded the artistic movement Novecento Italiano (the Italian 20th century) with the
goal of creating an entirely new Italian art that would reinvent the Italian
tradition from Roman to medieval art, merging it with modernity and therefore
becoming the figurative transposition of fascist ideology.
But
let’s take a step back. In an artistic sense, by the end of the year 1919, the
Futurist artists were feeling very much disoriented. And after Mussolini’s May
1920 sharp turn to the right, they began to feel disoriented in the political
sense as well. They rejected the movement to the right and denounced the scarce
artistic receptivity towards the arts shown by the fascist movement, upon which
they had been trying to confer a cultural dignity. And it is
precisely in the period 1919 to 1920 that Margherita Sarfatti was persuaded
that painters like Achille Funi and Mario Sironi were the pioneers of a new
form of Italian art, which embodied the typically Italian cultural tradition
and formidable historical insight. In her words, Margherita saw the two
painters as the precursors of a “Classic Modernity” that certainly did not need
to abase itself to the blind imitation of antiquity. After all,
Margherita Sarfatti ‘s fascination with Classic Modernity was very much in
keeping with her cultural and moral values. Her fear of a Bolshevik revolution
reinforced her tendencies. Her mentors had taught her that art should reflect
the values of the society in which it is expressed. Therefore, an orderly
society necessarily produces an art informed by order, which in turn inspires
respect for discipline and order. And that was the reason Sarfatti advocated a
return to the stylistic tradition that had made Italy great. [1]
The
movement was sparked one October night in 1922, shortly before the fascist
March on Rome, when Sarfatti attended a meeting at the Pesaro art gallery in
Milan. Seven of her favorite artists were present, namely, Anselmo Bucci,
Leonardo Dudreville, Achille Funi, Gian Emilio Malerba, Piero Marussig, Ubaldo
Oppi, and Mario Sironi. [2]
The purpose of
the meeting was to formalize the formation of the artistic group that had been
conceived and wished-for by the “Red Virgin” herself. [3] Margherita Sarfatti became the unofficial advertising
agent of the new group, in charge of publicity and critical reviews.
During a second meeting that was entirely devoted to
finding a name for the group, Anselmo Bucci proposes the name “I Candelabri”
(the Menorahs), in view of the fact that the group had seven members. But
Sarfatti and Pesaro were Jewish and considered Bucci’s choice a risky one that
could cause unfavorable comments from the public. Bucci then floated a second
proposal that the movement be named for the century in which it operated: Novecento (The Nineteen-Hundreds), and Novecento it became.[4]These are the years during which Margherita Sarfatti
also edited the publications “Gerarchia” and “Il Popolo d’Italia,” and was also responsible for the foreign press service
of the future Italian Duce. She did it all from Milan, to be close to her
family.
During
those early meetings of the organizing phase of Novecento, Sarfatti was careful to avoid any explicit reference to
the current political situation and to Fascism, even though such references
would have pleased the ultra-fascist Mario Sironi, who was the official
illustrator of “Il Popolo d’Italia” and “Gerarchia,” and the painter Achille
Funi, one of the very early supporters of the Fasci di Combattimento” (the
Fighting Fasces organization). The two artists, together with Carlo Carrà,
saluted euphorically the appointment of Benito Mussolini to the head of the
government, the only man they considered capable to reaffirm the Italian
supremacy in the arts over the rest of the world.[5]
When, in March of 1920, Novecento decided to hold the first
group exhibition, Margherita convinced the Duce to inaugurate the event. On
that occasion, Mussolini gave a short speech, which was probably written by
Sarfatti herself. He thundered:
“It is
impossible to rule ignoring the arts and the artists. Art is an essential
manifestation of the human spirit; it began with the history of humanity, and
it will follow humanity to the end. And in a country like Italy, a government
that did not care about art and artists would be deficient.
“I
declare that the idea of anything that could even resemble a state art is very
far from me. Art pertains to the sphere of the individual and the state has
only one duty: to avoid impeding the arts, to ensure humane living conditions
for the artists and to encourage them from a national and artistic point of
view. I really care to point out that the government that I preside over is a
sincere friend of the arts and of the artists.” [6]
It is very likely that Mussolini did not like the
nudes, the portraits, the landscapes, the still-life paintings and the pictures
of everyday objects painted by the artists of Novecento. But it is a fact that he appreciated the return to
“order,” after all the Futurist clangor and the Dadaist nonsense.[7]
Throughout
the 1920’s, Margherita Sarfatti forcefully denounced the various attempts to
imprint a Fascist mark on popular culture and the arts. In one of her articles,
written to commemorate the first anniversary of the March on Rome, she declared
in a lapidary tone that Fascism inspired “bad taste,” and that the only valid
works were the bust of Mussolini created by Adolfo Wildt and Sironi’s satirical
political cartoons.
Mussolini obtorto
collo seemed to concur with her and, for that reason, he allowed Margherita
to be his advisor in matters of aesthetics. It is not an accident that in 1924,
at the national conference of the artistic organizations, Mussolini pointed out
that, in his opinion, the concepts of Italy and art cannot be separated.
Moreover, and these were his exact words, “For centuries art was our very own
Fatherland”.[8]
Novecento achieved its first great public recognition in 1924,
when the members received the official invitation to participate as a group in
the Biennale of Venice. That would be the first time ever that an organized
group exhibited at the Biennale. [9]
On April 26th, during Education Secretary Giovanni
Gentile’s welcome speech to the King at the Biennale inauguration ceremony, a
frowning and dark-in-the-face Filippo Marinetti yelled, “Down with decrepit
Venice!”[10]
That was Marinetti’s way of protesting the exclusion of
the Futurists from the Biennale.
After all, many of the members of the Novecento group had come from Marinetti’s
movement, and that hurt. But what hurt even more was that Futurism had not become (and never would become) Fascism’s official
art form, and by that time it was already becoming a marginal artistic movement
to the advantage of Novecento. [11]
But Novecento was already coming apart.
Regardless the recognition that the group had achieved thanks to the Biennale,
Anselmo Bucci, Leonardo Dudreville, Gian Emilio Malerba, and Lino Pesaro, who
were probably hostile to Margherita Sarfatti, decided to leave the group.
Although Margherita’s friends, like Sironi, Funi and Pietro Marussig remained,
the secession of the other members resulted in the dissolution of Novecento. [12]
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| Sironi. Natura morta antifascista |
Sarfatti’s artistic salon between Fascism
and Anti-Fascism.
When peacetime came after the end of WWI, Margherita
Sarfatti had employed two powerful cultural “levers” to secure a role for
herself in Italian politics and the arts. These instruments were her personal
column in the daily “Il Popolo d’Italia” and her salon. It was in her salon
that, during her Wednesday meetings, she welcomed new guests and sealed new
alliances. The poets Ada Negri and Alfredo Panzini were old acquaintances. Her
new friends were Massimo Bontempelli, the illustrious professor Dr. Giuseppe
Antonio Borghese, and the orchestra conductor Arturo Toscanini.[13] Soon, Sarfatti
added to her tools her new political magazine “Ardita,” a publication launched by her and by Benito Mussolini, the
future Duce. The title “Ardita,” from
Arditi, the name of the WWI Italian Royal Army’s assault troops, was chosen by
the Red Virgin herself to honor not only her son Roberto (killed in action),
but also the former Arditi who were now backing Mussolini. This monthly
literary magazine owed a lot to the previous 1913-14 publication “Utopia,” and the first issue was
published in March 1919 featuring a short story by Massimo Bontempelli. [14]
In 1929,
twenty-one-year-old writer Alberto Pincherle, better known as Alberto Moravia,
published his first novel, Gli
Indifferenti (The Indifferent Ones). From a sociologic point of view, the
novel was very advanced. It portrayed in scathing prose the alienated and
morally corrupted Italian bourgeoisie. Giuseppe Borgese, positively impressed
by the novelty of Moravia’s work, welcomed it in the pages of the daily
“Corriere della Sera” as a very important literary work. But when Moravia was
introduced to Margherita Sarfatti, she greeted him in an inopportune
and scornful way: “You’re the cousin of that pig, Carlo Rosselli!” She wasn’t
wrong about the degree of kinship (but only about that). Moravia was indeed the cousin of the Rosselli
brothers who would be murdered by Mussolini’s agents in France in 1937.[15]
But many were the antifascists who frequented
Sarfatti’s salon and, in 1929, Margherita met Calabrian writer Corrado Alvaro.
The writer had fought in the Great War as a teen-ager, and later became a
reporter in Rome. In 1925, while he was the editor of the Liberal newspaper “Il Mondo,” Alvaro had signed philosopher
Benedetto Croce’s antifascist manifesto. The immediate effect of this choice
had been Alvaro’s expulsion from the guild of fascist journalists. Margherita
met him in the home of common acquaintances.
“I’d like to see you again,” Margherita told him. “I
receive every Friday.” Alvaro pondered his isolation and the fact that he was
being hounded by Mussolini’s henchmen. He knew that under Margherita’s
protective umbrella he would find a haven. He decided to play the Margherita
card; he began to frequent assiduously her salon and —
so it’s rumored — became her lover. A year later — but this might be just a
coincidence — Alvaro won the Giovanni Agnelli literary prize for his novel Gente d’Aspromonte (People of
Aspromonte). The prize had been instituted by the Turin’s daily newspaper La Stampa and included a £50,000
(Italian Liras) award.
But Alvaro put up with Margherita’s insolence and
capriciousness only until he realized that being her friend had become
counterproductive.[16] There is an amusing anecdote that Corrado Alvaro told
frequently, which says a lot about the tensions between Margherita Sarfatti and
Mussolini’s family. One evening a lady had invited inadvertently and maybe a
little carelessly both Sarfatti and Edda Ciano (Mussolini’s daughter) to her
party. When Edda arrived, everyone huddled around her, except Margherita,
Alvaro and Bontempelli. For that reason, throughout the entire evening everyone
avoided Margherita like the plague. When the time came to leave, Margherita and
Edda met face to face and Sarfatti, with a big smile on her face, exclaimed:
“Good evening, Countess!” while the other woman, after an icy “Buonasera” in
reply, said intentionally and very loudly: “Who’s that woman?”[17] These and other episodes would suggest Corrado Alvaro
that his patroness was no longer able to guarantee his protection; and he would
quietly slip away.[18]
Many other “antifascist” personalities frequented
Margherita’s salon. Some particularly assiduous frequenters, who came all the
way from France, were former French Prime Minister and then Foreign Minister
Louis Barthou, and writers André Malraux, Eugène Marsan, and André Gide. And
even sui generis American “fascists”
were present, such as playwright Sinclair Lewis (whose last great work, It Can’t Happen Here, was a speculative dystopian novel that
told of the election of a fascist to the presidency of the United States) and
the poet Ezra Pound, who would meet Benito Mussolini in 1933. [19]
Finally, her falling out of favor with the fascists
would lead Margherita Sarfatti to a long personal reflection about the “search
for happiness.” With the help of diplomat friends based in Rome, Sarfatti began
to research and appreciate more and more the social experiment of American
President Roosevelt’s New Deal, and
she would increasingly become convinced that that was the new political
frontier and the panacea for every social crisis. In 1934, she visited the
United States. She studied the local situation and, in 1937, she wrote L’America, ricerca della felicità (America,
the search for happiness).
From reading the text, it is clear that among
Margherita’s always fervid political hopes was that Roosevelt’s America had
replaced Mussolini’s utopic regime,[20] to the point that she would request the membership of
the Socialist Party when she returned to Italy after the Second World War.
Ivan Buttignon.
This article appeared on the Italian magazine Il Fondo, edited by Miro Renzaglia. It was translated and published here with their permission.
Ivan Buttignon is an author and a historian who teaches at the University of Trieste.
Your comments, as usual, will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Leonardo Pavese.
[1] P.V. Cannistraro, B.R. Sullivan Margherita Sarfatti. L’Altra
donna del Duce, Mondadori, Milano, 1993, pages 292-294.
[2] U. Nebbia, La pittura del Novecento, Milano, 1946, pages 184-186.
[3] M. Sarfatti, Storia della pittura moderna, Roma, 1930, pages 123 - 125.
[4] P.V. Cannistraro, B.R. Sullivan Margherita Sarfatti. L’Altra
donna del Duce, Mondadori, Milano, 1993, page 296
[5] “Un omaggio a Mussolini di poeti, romanzieri e
pittori”, November 3, 1922, in Camerasca e Gian
Ferrari, Mario Sironi: Scitti, pages
67- 68.
[6] B. Riccio, La Sarfatti e, Mussolini e il Novecento, in “La
Repubblica – Mercurio”,
April 29 1989.
[8] P.V. Cannistraro, B.R. Sullivan Margherita Sarfatti. L’Altra donna del Duce, Mondadori, Milano, 1993, page 311.
[9] Catalogo della XII
esposizione internazionale d’arte della città di
Venezia, (Catalogue of the 12th City of Venice International
Art Exhibition), Milano, 1922, page 3.
[11] C. Salaris, Storia del Futurismo,
Libri giornali manifesti, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1985, page 127 and following.
[12] R. Bossaglia, Il
Novecento Italiano, Milano, 1979, page 72.
[13] P.V. Cannistraro, B.R. Sullivan Margherita Sarfatti. L’Altra
donna del Duce, Mondadori, Milano, 1993, page 211.
[16] A. Spinosa, Alla corte del duce,
Mondadori, Milano 2001, page 15.
[17] R. De Felice, Mussolini, il duce, I:
Gli anni del consenso 1929 – 1936. Einaudi, Torino, 1974, pages 519 – 533.
[18] P.V. Cannistraro, B.R. Sullivan Margherita Sarfatti. L’Altra donna del Duce, Mondadori, Milano, 1993, pages 377 – 379.
[20] S.Urso. Margherita Sarfatti, Dal
Mito del Dux al mito americano, Venezia, 2003, page 213.
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