Novecento Italiano

ノヴェチェント・イタリアーノ / 1922–1943 / Style / Painting Techniques

A movement that, after the avant-garde had dismantled form, sought a return to the mass and stillness of Italian classicism. Simplified, solid bodies, subdued earth colour and emphatically frontal composition became the vocabulary of interwar public building and mural painting. A leading case of the return to order, and one that has to be read together with its closeness to the regime.

Novecento Italiano — Mario Sironi, Composition with Figures — Fondazione Cariplo / CC BY-SA 3.0 — Mario Sironi, Composition with Figures — Fondazione Cariplo / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Novecento Italiano — Mario Sironi, Composition — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Foundation de — Mario Sironi, Composition — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Foundation de

Novecento Italiano — Mario Sironi, Italy between the Arts and the Sciences — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Owunsch — Mario Sironi, Italy between the Arts and the Sciences — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Owunsch

At a glance

Visual cues

Simplified, solid bodies
Emphatically frontal composition
Subdued earth colour
Mass recalling classical sculpture

Best used for

Institutional identity that wants gravity without ornament, for museums, foundations and civic bodies, provided the political reading is faced rather than ignored
Figurative illustration and sculpture-led art direction in which weight and calm matter more than movement

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Dictionary entry

Type: Roman capitals cut to classical proportion and spaced as though incised, aligned to the axis of the figure.
Composition: Frontal and symmetrical, the figure centred and cut at the knee, the ground a plain plane with no incident.
Material: Fresco-like matte surfaces in ochre, terracotta and stone grey, lit so that mass is modelled and almost nothing casts a shadow.
Caution: Taking the monumental frontality as neutral good taste: the same devices were built to speak for a state, and used without that awareness the work carries an argument its author did not intend.
Further study: Margherita Sarfatti's leadership / The context of the return to order / Its extension into public murals

Related entries

Italian Rationalism (イタリア合理主義)Shared effects: Trust / Luxury.Compare Novecento Italiano and Italian Rationalism
Socialist Realism (社会主義リアリズム)Shared effects: Luxury / Trust.Compare Novecento Italiano and Socialist Realism

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