The title of the new show at the Palazzo Strozzi is a little confusing. Most of the artists in Italy in the 1930s weren’t beyond fascism; they were in it up to their necks. They didn’t really need much persuading by Mussolini to come up with pictures like Luciano Ricchetti’s 1939 painting ‘Listening to a Speech by the Duce’: enraptured, bare-footed Italian peasants in headscarves sit dangling babies on their knees, hanging on Il Duce’s every word.
Today lots of Italians still don’t like to admit it, but much of Florence, and Italy, were really rather keen on Mussolini, and Hitler, too. A fascinating little exhibition of official watercolours at the city archives shows what extraordinary lengths Florence went to in order to welcome the Führer in May 1938. The city was draped in 4,000 fascist and swastika flags, as Hitler made his triumphal progress from Santa Maria Novella Station, via the Pitti Palace, Piazzale Michelangelo and Palazzo Vecchio: 25 million lire — a fifth of the city’s annual budget — was spent on decking out the place for his visit. Only the churches refused to fly any flags, and Hitler avoided them on his sightseeing tour.
Like in Nazi Germany, fascist Italy was an enthusiastic sponsor of art to further the cause. The Venice Biennale, the Milan Triennale and the Rome Quadriennale were all under explicit fascist control in the Thirties.
You can see the dead hand of officially approved art in many of the pictures in this historically interesting, aesthetically disappointing show. Pippo Rizzo’s ‘The Nomad’ of 1929 — a sub-Wyndham Lewis figure stands in front of a train that presumably arrived at the station on time — is skilful enough. But it lacks originality — not because Rizzo happened to be secretary of the Sicilian Regional Fascist Fine Arts Union; just because he wasn’t very original.
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