In Milan and Rovereto double exhibition on Margherita Sarfatti, the art critic who loved Mussolini

To most, Margherita Sarfatti (Venice, 1880 - Cavallasca, 1961), a journalist and very active art critic who worked mainly in the interwar period, is mostly known because of her relationship with Benito Mussolini. But this would greatly diminish the stature of one of the most important figures of twentieth-century culture in Italy, because Margherita Sarfatti played an absolute leading role in the debate on the relationship between classicism and modernity in the art of the time and in the promotion of many artists who later became greats in the history of Italian art. Now, in Milan and Rovereto, a double exhibition explores her complex figure: two autonomous but complementary exhibitions, each dedicated to different aspects of this important figure. It is Margherita Sarfatti. Signs, Colors and Lights in Milan (in Milan, Museo del Novecento, from September 21, 2018 to February 24, 2019) and Margherita Sarfatti. Il Novecento Italiano nel mondo (at Mart in Rovereto, from September 22, 2018 to February 24, 2019).

The Milanese exhibition, curated by Anna Maria Montaldo and Danka Giacon with the collaboration of Antonello Negri, is promoted and produced with the Municipality of Milan | Culture and with Electa, and offers the public an exhibition itinerary that, through about ninety works by the protagonists of the Novecento Italiano movement, of which Margherita Sarfatti was the official critic and animator, allows visitors to follow the events of that season so fruitful that saw the rising stars of Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio De Chirico, Adolfo Wildt, and of course the seven artists who, together with Sarfatti, in 1922 at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan founded the movement(Mario Sironi, Achille Funi, Leonardo Dudreville, Emilio Malerba, Pietro Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi and Anselmo Bucci, who invented the name). The works are contextualized by film footage and photographs, letters, invitations to vernissages, period books, and even clothes, glassware and furniture, with an insight from multiple perspectives into Milan in the 1910s and 1920s in the 20th century.

If the Milan exhibition focuses mainly on what happened in Milan, the one at the Mart, curated by Daniela Ferrari, has a broader character: in fact, the aim is to reconstruct Margherita Sarfatti’s cultural expansion project, with particular attention to the exhibitions organized in Europe and the Americas to promote Italian style and the idea of “modern classicism.” About one hundred works are on display, with masterpieces by Boccioni, De Chirico, the seven founders of Novecento Italiano, as well as artists such as Carlo Carrà, Felice Casorati, Giorgio Morandi, Medardo Rosso, and Gino Severini.

Information on the exhibitions can be found on the Museo del Novecento website and the Mart website in Rovereto.

Pictured: Margherita Sarfatti with fur coat, photograph by the Riess studio in Berlin, 1929, Mart, Archivio del ’900, Fondo Sarfatti (graphic reworking).

In Milan and Rovereto double exhibition on Margherita Sarfatti, the art critic who loved Mussolini

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