The Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution (Mostra della
Rivoluzione Fascista) was a show held in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni
from 1932 to 1934. Opened by Mussolini on 28 October 1932, it had 4 million
visitors.
Its director and designer was Dino Alfieri, with the
cooperation of Luigi Freddi and Cipriano Efisio Oppo. Seen as a great success,
it was repeated in 1937 and 1942, though these two repeats did not have the
same public success.
Telling the evolution of Italian history from 1914 to the
March on Rome, it was never conceived as an objective representation of the
facts or as being solely based on the exhibiting of historic documents, but as
a work of Fascist propaganda to influence and involve the audience emotionally.
For this reason not only historians were called in to assist in the exhibition,
but also exponents of various artistic currents of the era, such as Mario
Sironi, Enrico Prampolini, Gerardo Dottori, Adalberto Libera and Giuseppe
Terragni.
"The relationship between the thought and architecture of
Italian Rationalists and the new Fascist state is commonly presented as a
battle between revolutionary modernism and a reactionary regime. Most
historians have ignored the ardent Fascism of the best architects, while others
simply avoid the issue altogether and study the buildings as stylistic
phenomena. This attitude in part derives from a post-war desire to extricate
the best architects and their architecture from a thoroughly discredited
political system. Consequently, the architects' own words about their
architecture and their ideas about Fascist culture and the purposes for which
their state-funded buildings were designed are ignored. Historians acknowledge
that the Modern Movement in other European nations encompassed social programs,
but Italian architecture of the inter-war period has been strangely exempt from
discussion on this level. Despite years of heated polemics and debates during
the 20s, Rationalists, traditionalists, and moderates in Italy reached a
consensus on political and social objectives. The Fascist state claimed to
offer revolutionary social programs, and the various architectural factions
merely argued about the appropriate forms within which to house these programs.
This article discusses the differences between the various groups of
architects, examines the work and writings of some leading Rationalists with
particular reference to Fascist notions of hierarchy, order, and collective
action, and discusses the ways in which Rationalist architecture celebrated
Fascism. It also offers an explanation for the fact that Modern Movement
architecture received substantial state support in Italy as it did from no
other major power in the decade before World War II."
In Diane Yvonne Ghirardo / Italian Architects and Fascist
Politics : An Evaluation of the Rationalist’s Role in Regime Building
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
“In 1928, Terragni
joined the Fascist Party. Some historians, being uncomfortable with
this have chosen to ignore it, or dismiss it as being merely an
opportunistic ploy to get commissions. However, Terragni’s
writings, coupled with the fact that he was a man of principles,
betrays him – he was a Fascist. Incredibly, he was also a deeply
religious man; although it would perhaps be taking it too far to
infer that his devotion to both the Catholic Church and the Fascist
Party, inspired him (or at least allowed him) to strike a balance
between the traditional, and the avant-garde; faith and reason.
Gruppo 7 announced
themselves upon their graduation from the Milan Polytechnic in 1926
and consisted of Sebastiano Larco, Guido Frette, Carlo Enrico Rava,
Adalberto Libera, Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, and Giuseppe Terragni.
The date which Gruppo 7 published their first manifesto (December
1926) in Rassegna Italiana is noteworthy, for in the summer of 1926,
Italian architecture had received a damning appraisal in the Swiss
journal Das Werk:
Today’s Italian
architecture has not yet been touched by the major movements and
discussions of the rest of Europe.
Perhaps the late
unification of Italy as a nation had kept Italian architecture behind
in its development, but Gruppo 7 saw their late arrival as an
opportunity to give the most mature, definitive character to the new
style. Thus they would be able to reassert the traditional Italian
primacy in the Arts.”
Text and images in
middleton van jonker /
http://middletonvanjonker.com/category/giuseppe-terragni-italian-rationalism/
"Fascism is a
house of glass into which all can look."
(…)Located to the
rear of the Duomo, the Casa del Fascio was designed as a house of
glass; a physical realization of a modern architecture, but also as a
symbolic statement about the supposed nature of Fascism, recalling
Mussolini’s doctrine:
Fascism is a house
of glass into which all can look.
Terragni took this
metaphor literally, and applied it to justify structural honesty, and
constructional clarity. Terragni employs extensive glazing; the
meeting room overlooks the central atrium through a glass wall,
whilst the glass wall on the front façade opens up to the crowds.
This integration of the exterior had already been seen in Hannes
Meyer’s submission to the League of Nations, and in Le Corbusier’s
submission for the Palace of Soviet’s. The building as an honorific
space is clad throughout in Bolicino marble, important to Terragni
for its symbolic meaning, conveying the status of the Casa Del Fascio
as a monumental building (in importance rather than size). The use of
marble came in the aftermath of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona
Pavilion, where Mies showed how the rich beauty of polished stone
could be complimented by modern materials. Terragni may also have
sought inspiration from the Barcelona Pavilion, in his use of a
slight elevation of the base, ‘piano rialzato’, establishing the
monumental status for the whole structure. The spatial aesthetic is
grounded in the exposed reinforced concrete frame. Terragni did not
create this skeleton in order to hide it; the frame occupies the
forefront plane.
The Casa del Fascio
presents a complex rhythmical layering of partial walls, openings,
and frames in which clear glass, glass block, polished stone, and
filtered light, as well as direct views to the exterior, form a total
architectural organism whose gridding carries straight through the
structure while undergoing transformations of patterns that leave no
two facades the same.
Etlin
Terragni does not
depart from the grid, or the rigours of rectilinear geometries,
employing the golden section. Material is removed from the half-cube
to create layers, emphasised by the marble returns, and deep-set
glass. The plan, arranged around a central (covered) courtyard, is
almost Palladian, whilst the empty frame at the entrance is the
modern equivalent of a portico or colonnade. The Classical qualities
are masked by the four facades with variations of fenestrations
integrated into the frame system, representing modern construction,
but nonetheless the building is Classical in nature.To the extent
that an interest in proportion, massing, regularity of groundplan,
and cubical massing are Classical ideas, Terragni – like Le
Corbusier or Mies – was a Classical architect.
Schumacher
There is also
another important reference that the Casa del Fascio relies upon. As
well as the grand tradition of the Renaissance palazzo, Terragni pays
homage to the modest tradition of the vernacular. The non-bilateral
symmetry, and the loggia bears a striking resemblance to an Italian
farmhouse. The building is the result of rigorous Rationalism, but
grounded in references to the past. We must read between the lines
of the Rationalist’s rhetoric, and be aware of their conservative
audience, and their need to receive approval from the authorities.
We must also be aware of their other audience; the previously mocking
architects of Northern Europe, and the rhetoric that the Rationalists
employed for their benefit, following the lead of Mies, Gropious and
Corb."
Text and images in
middleton van jonker /
http://middletonvanjonker.com/category/giuseppe-terragni-italian-rationalism/
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