Mario Sironi, illustrations for Popolo d'Italia on display in Lucca

Mario Sironi (Sassari, 1885 - Milan, 1961) was one of the greatest artists of the early 20th century, but he is also known for his skills as a political draftsman: these very skills are the focus of the exhibition Mario Sironi and the illustrations for “Il Popolo d’Italia” 1921-1940, scheduled from March 10 to June 3, 2018 in Lucca at the Lu.C .C.A. - Lucca Center of Contemporary Art. On display is a selection of one hundred works chosen from the approximately one thousand that Sironi created for Il Popolo d’Italia, the official newspaper of the fascist party.

The cartoons, created mainly ra 1921 and 1927, lash out at the political opponents of the fascist party (such as the socialist and popular parties, as well as the old liberal ruling class, the pro-democratic press, as well as the societies of the United States, France and England, and the Russian communists), with a satire that is always decidedly sharp.

“In the illustrations for ’The People of Italy,’” says the exhibition’s curator, Fabio Benzi, “one is struck by the infinite of compositional and iconographic themes, never repeated but instead reinvented daily, with a wealth of visionary and symbolic depth, transfiguring reality but deeply rooted in it; so as to constitute an absolutely extraordinary unicum in the history of illustration.” Some of the original drawings are colored and for the most part accompanied by his commentaries, “a technical and expressive overlay that is also an anxiety for perfectionism and a quest for the absolute,” a sign that “political passion is inseparable from artistic and aesthetic passion.” Again, “Sironi’s profound participation in Fascist ideas led him to sublimate them into monumental, imperturbable and inappellable stylistic syntheses, helping to set up a model of propaganda also used in very banal and corny ways. However, in Sironi always prevails the meditation on man, whom he represents in his most courtly or at any rate most total feelings: pensive, inspired, involved in drama, perhaps desperate, but always mindful of his noble nature, tending to the absolute.”

The exhibition is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday is the closing day. Tickets: full 9 euros, reduced 7 euros. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Galleria Russo and MVIVA and with the support of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca and Gesam Gas+Luce, has obtained the patronage of the Region of Tuscany, City of Lucca, Opera delle Mura, Chamber of Commerce of Lucca, Confindustria Lucca, Confcommercio Province of Lucca and Massa Carrara, Confesercenti Toscana Nord, Confartigianato Imprese Lucca with the support of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca and Gesam Gas+Luce.

Mario Sironi, illustrations for Popolo d'Italia on display in Lucca

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