Il Novecento Italiano was an art movement founded in Milano for the purpose of promoting the work of a group of young artisits through exhibits, newspaper columns and magazine articles. The year was 1922, a time when Italy was still reeling from the devastation of world War I; the organizers were Lino Pesaro, the owner of a private gallery interested in modern art and publisher of beautifully illustrated catalogs, and Margherita Sarfatti, a renowned art critic and writer. Several artists were in the original group; Angelo Bucci, Leonardo Dudreville, Achille Funi, Gian Emilio Malerba, Pietro Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi and Mario Sironi. Some of them were veterans of the war where they had lost friends and colleagues (e.g. Umberto Boccioni and Antonio Sant’Elia), adding a measure of kinship with Margherita Sarfatti, whose oldest son Robeto, had died in the trenches earning a gold medal for valor. All of them were anxious to take on the old establishment and create an art that, buoyed by the heroic rhetoric of the fascist era, in the words of Mario Sironi, “would not imitate the world created by God but would be inspired by it”, predicting that “future generations will speak about the Novecento as we now speak of the Quattrocento or the Cinquecento”. This note of pride and optimism, struck in gray and dark times, fired up the young artists many of whom were still in a combative mood. Again, Mario Sironi: “if we look at the painters of the second half of the 19th century, we find that only the revolutionary were great and that the greatest were the most revolutionary”.
Born in Venice in 1880, Margherita Sarfatti began her career reviewing the Venice “Biennale” of 1901 and a great art exhibit held in Milano in 1905 and, writing with equal competence and understanding about the bronze and marble sculptures of Leonardo Bistolfi, the less traditional wax sculptures of Medardo Rosso and the work of young painters such as Alberto Martini and Romolo Romani.
A few years later, Margherita met Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement and Umberto Boccioni, one of its major exponents, and began writing about their work and that of other young artists, who were anxious to start their careers, but as if inhibited by their own strong individuality, were unable to organize. Among them, in addition to those named above, were Massimo Campigli, Carlo Carra‘, Felice Casorati. Angelo Guidi, Alberto Salietti, Arturo Tosi and the sculptor Adolfo Wildt. These men began to gather at a weekly “Studio” in the Milano apartment of the Sarfatti’s, an apartment filled with their own art (Margherita disliked the word “Salon”). In the early 1930’s, after Margherita moved to Rome to be near her lover, Benito Mussolini, many of the artists continued to gather at the home of Carlo and Isa (“Carlisa”) Foa‘. Margherita had become the de facto editor of “Gerarchia”, a monthly political magazine nominally edited by Mussolini himself. Isa became her secretary, Sironi became the designer of Gerarchia’s covers and the unofficial artist of the fascist regime, and Carlo, an enthusiastic and facile writer, was everybody’s aid and consultant.
Not everyone liked the art of the Novecento, which soon became the object of bitter attacks by political enemies and cultural philistines. Among them Achille Starace, the General Secretary of the Fascist Party, writing in “Il Regime Fascista” and other dailies. In 1930 A.F. Della Porta wrote that the art of the 900 is not Italian, because it is ugly and without spirit or goals”, that it is “anti-Italian because it plagiarizes the revolting and cadaveric art of Germany and the sadistic softness of the French—an abortion without hope—a game invented by Jewish merchants who advertise Matisse, Rousseau and Picasso as if they were cough drops and who live in Paris, the gathering spot of Germans, Czechs, Russians, Poles, Orientals and Semites”. The great composer Pietro Mascagni contributed to the tirades, writing: “the Novecento represents artistic events which offend the eyes and destroy the ears of the young generations and are contrary to the nature of any human being with a brain and a soul .... young people who do not go to museums, theaters or concert halls, unless they feature Novecento productions or the lacerating music of jazz .... the Novecento should be eradicated like a grape vine infested by the phylloxera”.
Margherita Sarfatti rose to the defense, proposing the creation of a biweekly journal, possibly entitled “La Frusta” (The Whip) or “Botte da Orbi” (Blind Blows) and threatening “sberle” (slaps in the face) for everyone, friend or foe, discussing budget (about 500 lire per issue), naming several possible editors and suggesting that this hard-hitting magazine take the place of the “Comitato del 900” and lead the counter attack. As Sarfatti put it: “we have been accused of monopolizing a century only a few decades old, of boundless immodesty and of ignorance of the most elementary arithmetic. But a name is not a definition. Woe to the poor creature saddled from birth with a name that suggest a program rather than a wish. To-day everybody knows what we mean by Macchiaioli or Impressionists, but then these groups were the children of an intense if nebulous inspiration”.
The difficulties of keeping
the “900 movement” going are discussed further in a letter written by Carlo
Foa‘ to Margherita Sarfatti in 1930. The letter laments the impossibility
for the movement to survive her absence from Milano and cites financial
difficulties, to which Sarfatti replies by returning the letter with marginal
notes, correcting “impossibility” to “inability” and deploring everyone’s
lack of faith, but refusing to help. “Let them do it, if you have
the men, you’ll find the money”. By this time, Sironi himself had
lost his enthusiasm: “there are too many exhibits, even the Gioconda
would lose all value if seen every day. In Milano everybody knows
who we are, we should move to Naples, which is enemy territory”.
As Sarfatti’s relationship with Mussolini cooled, her political power and
influence in the art world weakened. Still, there was a will to survive
and “Carlisa”, honorary members of the movement, offered to rekindle the
flame by opening their home to the “Studio”. Margherita was grateful
and moved (“grazie, commossa”). Sironi and Tosi continued to visit
until the late 1930’s, but the Novecento, as an organized group, ceased
to exist. Nevertheless, to this day, its art continues to be much
valued by art collectors and museums.
Cannistraro, P.V. and Sullivan, B.R.: Il Duce’s Other Woman, Wm. Morrow, NewYork,1933.
Correnti, C.: Cento Opere
d'Arte Italiana. Dal Futurismo a Oggi, Galleria Nazionale
d’Arte Moderna, Roma,
1968. Della Porta, A.F.: Polemica sul “900”, Risorgimento
Artistico Italiano,
Milano, 1930.
Formaggio D. et al.: Il Novecento Italiano, 1923 - 1933. Gabriele Mazzotta, Milano, 1983.
Hulten P. and Celant, G. (Editors): Arte Italiana, Presenze 1900 - 1945, Bompiani, Milano, 1989.
Sarfatti, M. (Editor):
Catalog of the Seconda Mostra del Novecento Italiano, Palazzo della Permanente,
Milano, 1929.