Modernism and the Politics of Transdisciplinarity in 1930s Italy

In the opening article of the architectural magazine Quadrante, edited by the writer Massimo Bontempelli and the art critic, curator and collector Pier Maria Bardi and published in Milan between 1933 and 1936, Bontempelli provocatively stated that the time had come to ‘edificare senza aggettivi’ and ‘scrivere a pareti lisce’. This almost untranslatable paradox (‘to build without adjectives’ and ‘to write plain walls’) was intended as a double call for the culture of 1930s’ Italy, both to simplify and streamline the artistic language and to create a productive dialogue between disciplines. This would result in the so-called “fronte unico dell’estetica” which would be a common intellectual project, a unified vision that could connect all the arts, regardless of their formal medium. The model for this vision was contemporary architecture, in particular the so-called “architettura funzionale” or “architettura razionale”, whose exponents, especially the young architects of the Gruppo 7, inspired by the masters of the Modern Movement – Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – had been advocating an architecture devoid of decoration, whose beauty would be expressed through its adherence to function.

Quadrante’s stated intention was to gather “not only writers and architects, but also musicians, painters, scientists, sculptors, engineers and even industrialists – in order to create a centre for an unprejudiced, advanced, original intelligence”. Faithful to its proclaimed mission, during its short life, Quadrante became a transdisciplinary platform, featuring articles and debates ranging from architecture to literature, graphic art, fashion, interior design, theatre, cinema and urban development. From mural and abstract art to architectural competitions, to the project for a theatre for mass audiences and Giuseppe Terragni’s iconic design for the fascist party headquarters in Como (to which Quadrante devoted a double issue in 1936), the transdisciplinary model pursued by Quadrante combined artistic nationalism with an international outlook and responded to the avant-garde vision of an art able to shape all aspects of life.

However, with the rise of the fascist regime in Italy, the idea of an autonomous art had been relinquished by many intellectuals in favour of an alliance with politics, in the belief that artists could have the power to influence the intellectual and cultural agenda of the nation under the new regime. As Bontempelli declared in article written in 1933, the debate around contemporary architecture was “deeply political”, as the new architecture concerned itself not so much with private housing, but with public buildings, according to a fascist vision which posited a collective life that obliterated individuals and considered them above all in relation to their function within the state. The streamlined style promoted by Quadrante, therefore, its functional, anti-decorative stance on monumentalism and its championing of public projects that dealt with the mass dimension of modern life and politics coalesced contemporary artistic trends and totalitarian politics, showing the ideological permeability of artistic modernity in 1930s Europe.