The illustrative work of one of the greatest artists of the Italian 20th century retraced through a corpus of 120 drawings, sketches, projects and drafts made during the years of Sironi’s collaboration with Sironi with “Il Popolo d’Italia”. The exhibition, curated by Fabio Benzi, is a natural continuation of the major show in October 2015 at the Villa Torlonia Museums, and brings together an extraordinary nucleus of works produced by one of the greatest aedi of Fascism for the publications that revolved around the organ of the official press of the Fascist Party. Works that thus testify to the extent to which Sironi’s Sironi’s avant-garde training envisaged political engagement in current affairs as an ninescapable element of his aesthetic conception.
The works in the exhibition bring together both the drawings destined for the publications of the editorial network – which included the weekly “Domando la Parola! Il Lunedì del Popolo d’Italia”, “La Illustrated Magazine of the People of Italy’ and the ‘Encyclopaedic Almanac of the People of Italy’ – as well as an nucleus of exceptional drawings executed for the bas-reliefs destined for the façade and atrium of the new
headquarters of the “Popolo di’Italia” that architect Muzio had designed in 1938, highlighting how Sironi’s commitment to Mussolini’s newspaper ranged from illustrations, to sculpture, to to architecture. A small nucleus of drawings in the exhibition is also representative of Sironi’s interest in the Sironi’s interest in the study of antiquity and was probably intended for the Palazzo del Popolo of Italy, while another section of the exhibition brings together some drawings of unknown destination including studies for stage sets, such as the one for the staging of Ferruccio Busoni’s Doctor Faust, and erratic illustrations, such as the sketch for the cover of Benito Mussolini’s Scritti Adriatici.
