News of the second phase of...
We are delighted to announce that we have won an AHRC standard grant of £680,000 to enable us to continue this project from summer 2015 until the end of 2018....
Category Archives: History
Sketches of a Dialogue: The Correspondence Between Arnaldo Pomodoro and Francesco Leonetti
The correspondence between sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro and writer Francesco Leonetti, only recently analysed, has proven to be a significant source for reconstructing not only Leonetti’s biography but also some of the principles...
“Poi, come s’uno schermo”: Modernist Poetry and Cinema
Adorno, Kracauer, Ortega y Gasset: these are just a few of the thinkers who, at the turn of the 20th Century, expressed critical views on cinema and the way it affects its...
Sanguineti’s ‘Il Giuoco dell’Oca’: The Novel as an Ecfrastic Board
Edoardo Sanguineti’s second novel Il Giuoco dell’Oca was written between 1963 – the year of the publication of Capriccio italiano – and 1967, and it was conceived as the ideal second step...
Angiolo Mazzoni Meets F. T. Marinetti: the Italian System of the Arts during Mussolini’s Regime
In his lengthy 1960s correspondence with architectural historian Bruno Zevi, from Bogotà architect Angiolo Mazzoni lamented that, unlike many of his colleagues who worked under Mussolini, not only he had to move...
Ornament as Crime: Carlo Emilio Gadda’s Sociology of Fashion
In Carlo Emilio Gadda’s modernist works, dress never constitutes a merely instrumental element of narrative. Rather, it serves to reflect the social habitus of a character, or its very habits of being....
‘Poesia Visiva: Use a Concrete Mixer.’ The Vanguard Intermediate Poetry in the 60s and 70s
In 1972, the Dutch visual poet Herman Damen published an outstanding critical text illustrating the daring and multifaceted expressions of neo-avant-garde experimental poetry as follows: ‘a living poesia visiva uses all available...
‘Tre per un topo’: A Journey into Toti Scialoja’s First Illustrated Book
Artist Toti Scialoja (1914-1998) was a man of many talents: while a poet, first and and foremost, he quit writing after a negative review and for years devoted himself to painting and...
Stripsody: Transforming Comics into Vanguard Art
Take the language of comic strips and give it to one of the most charismatic avant-garde singers. Pair her with an abstract painter who doubles in graphic design. Wrap up by putting...
Advertising Olivetti: The Male Chauvinist Pig Wants You
There is a photograph, taken around 1920, of the Olivetti manager Domenico Burzio. Olivetti was the first Italian company to make a typewriter, and it went on, after World War II, to...
Writing in Images: Interartistic Encounters and the Genesis of Creative Writing in Leonardo Sciascia
Cultural history is full of examples of the fascinating interactions between art and literature. The verbal representation of an image known as ‘ekphrasis’, famously seen in Homer’s description of the shield of...