Rome, the years of the economic miracle told in an exhibition at the Museum of Rome

From the hard reconstruction of the country after the devastation of World War II to the resounding economic boom of the 1960s. This is the historical period narrated in the major photography exhibition Il sorpasso. When Italy Raced, 1946-1961, hosted at the Museum of Rome from Oct. 12, 2018 to Feb. 3, 2019. 1946-1961: fifteen years in which a shattered and exhausted country managed to overcome the traumas of the war, giving rise to a tumultuous economic, social and imaginary development that was admired worldwide. It was an unrepeatable, exciting and contradictory moment, a history so intense that it is still a relevant legacy of our present.

The exhibition, promoted by Roma Capitale, Assessorato alla Crescita culturale - Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, co-produced withIstituto Luce-Cinecittà and organized in collaboration with Zètema progetto Cultura, is curated by Enrico Menduni and Gabriele D’Autilia. The City of Parma and the CSAC Center for Studies and Archives of Communication of theUniversity of Parma collaborated on the production.

Il sorpasso, recalling a film-icon of an era, a memorable synthesis of Italy’s journey of the time, is the extraordinary tale in images of a country at the moment it enters modernity forever. Political life and private life, labor struggles and revolutions of costume, the construction of highways and that of the imagery of cinema and TV, the change of landscape, of forms, of the face of a country as had not happened for centuries. It is the idea ofItaly accelerating and gaining positions (even with traits of aggressiveness, vulgarity and vainglory) that surpasses its archaic and backward traits, moving forward despite enormous problems that it often leaves unresolved, or that are generated by the very forms of fast, and voracious, development.
The images of the time, from extraordinary archives, represent a collective portrait of Italy with its hopes, achievements, and progress without hiding the many unresolved problems, injustices, and inequalities.

Many of these photos are taken by the “image workers” of the era of the illustrated weeklies: obscure agency photographers, but capable of vivid, sharp and precise portrayals of the country’s many realities. Often anonymous artists, creators of an art of the gaze that the exhibition invites us to observe as a true discovery. And whom the exhibition path places alongside and in comparison with well-known and acclaimed signatures of contemporary photography, Italian and foreign authors at a time when Italy is discovered and actively visited by the great international photographers, also due to the influence of the great neorealist cinema and that irresistible phenomenon that became the Cinecittà Studios, the Hollywood on the Tiber. We will thus find shots by names of the caliber of Gianni Berengo Gardin, Fulvio Roiter, Cecilia Mangini, Federico Patellani, Caio Mario Garrubba, Pepi Merisio, Wanda Wultz, Tazio Secchiaroli, Ferruccio Leiss, Romano Cagnoni, Walter Mori, Bruno Munari, Italo Insolera,Italo Zannier, and among the foreigners the great Willian Klein, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gordon Parks.

A rich exhibition traverses recent Italian history, starting from the end of World War II.
In 1945, Italy was a country to be rebuilt both materially and in its identity, grappling with enormous structural and political problems: shortages of housing, food, medicine, raw materials, infrastructure and industries, and in the uncertain and delicate wait for new political choices, beginning with that between monarchy and republic and for the creation of a new democratic state. A country torn by physical and moral wounds, by great tensions and contrasts, in politics and in the streets; but in which the desire for rebirth, the desire to overcome mourning and tears, recovering on a cultural and civil level all the time lost with the closures of the Fascist twenty-year period, make that differences and frictions are not a blockade, but an unprecedented reason for momentum, a source of energy and confrontation, toward an ambition to improve one’s conditions, to challenge oneself, to be protagonists of one’s own history again.

The exhibition is divided into ten thematic sections that develop a “double gaze,” placing side by side with the optimistic vision of the reconstruction of the country launched toward an economic boom, the often critical gaze of independent photographers,who of that explosion observecontradictions, fictions, losses. Many images by the latter, adequately documented in the funds of the invaluable Historical Archives of the Istituto Luce and in the Publifoto archives preserved, with other important funds, at the Center for Studies and Archives of Communication of the University of Parma, are published in the magazines of the time, the main mirror, along with cinema, of the new postwar Italy.

A double track that shows the ability to be reborn despite political divisions, splits between Christian Democrats and Communists, between trade unions and industrialists, even between fans, between melodic singers and screamers... But with a united tension to rebuild spirits, and houses, monuments, workshops. A country that trembles over the return of Italian Trieste or the tragedy of our immigrants at Marcinelle, that fears the riots over the assassination attempt on Togliatti, and knows the demands of the workers in the streets. Italy suffers from deep social and economic differences between south and north, city and country, causing vast emigrations in search of work in Europe or to the two Americas. A country changing face, also beginning to show the limits and dangers of unrestrained growth without any attention to the landscape, to the preservation of the architectural and urban past, to the uncontrolled increase of private car traffic. A foretaste of the congested face of today’s cities.

Without forgetting politics, the focus of the photos in the exhibition is on the daily life of ordinary people: their lifestyle, mentality and behavior that perfectly express the new Italy. Exemplary is the section that recounts ’love’ in the declinations of the new man-woman relationships, in a cinematic imagery that promotes the majoratas and politics that abolishes the ’case chiuse,’ where ’La dolce vita’ comes to the fore, Hollywood stars flee (or seek) the scoops of the paparazzi, and the puritanism of television begins to fall under the blows of the Kessler twins.

A country discovering in the late 1950s the forms of hard-won, controversial prosperity within everyone’s ideal reach. Between illiteracy and an unrepeatable intellectual class, the signs of personal well-being identified in the automobile and the refrigerator together with the drift represented by the building explosion, Italy gains position after position in the world context, arriving in 1957 to have with Rome the founding seat of the European Community.

From a defeated and devastated nation, then, to an industrial power capable of truly exporting technologies, entertainment, beauty, fashion, cinema, innovation and invention all over the world.
A story that ideally closes with the Rome Olympics and the completion of the television network, both in 1960, the Turin exhibition Italia ’61 and theAutostrada del Sole, completed in 1964.
A tale that leaves room for emotions, including tenderness and nostalgia.

A reflection through images on the Italy of yesterday and indirectly on the Italy of today; an invitation to rethink the value of work, initiative and culture together with the ability to share a project of Italy. Not the predictable history of Italy in those years, rather a collective portrait of Italians, their hopes and commitment, their weaknesses and dreams. Which are often, in evidence of the photos on display, often and still our dreams-present.

Il sorpasso, in addition to the 160 photographic shots offers in the path of video installations made with footage from the Luce Historical Archives, a necessary and impactful visual pendant to the story of a period largely dominated by cinema and audiovisual communication. And providing a valuable accompaniment to the itinerary is a catalog for the visitor, published by Silvana Editoriale and Istituto Luce Cinecittà, with photos and a historical-critical textual apparatus by the exhibition’s curators, Enrico Menduni and Gabriele D’Autilia, which stands as a fascinating insight to this unique story of the Italians’ imagination.

Following the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi, Il sorpasso. Quando l’Italia si mise a correre, 1946-1961 already has a new stop set, in Parma at Palazzo del Governatore, from March 8 to May 5, 2019.

For MIC Card holders, access to this exhibition is charged, while admission to the museum remains free. Simply purchase the “Exhibition Only” ticket according to the indicated pricing.
Ticket price: full € 7, reduced € 5, schools € 4 per pupil (free admission to one accompanying teacher for every 10 pupils), family (2 adults plus children under 18) € 22. Museum+exhibition full € 13, reduced € 9 (residents € 12 / € 8). Free admission for categories under current pricing. Free admission to the Museum of Rome for “MIC Card” holders, but not to the exhibition.

For all information you can call +39 060608, visit www.museodiroma.it or send an e-mail to museodiroma@comune.roma.it.

Rome, the years of the economic miracle told in an exhibition at the Museum of Rome

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