MARIO SIRONI – DRAWINGS, PROJECTS AND SKETCHES FOR “IL POPOLO D’ITALIA”

The illustrative work of one of the greatest Italian artists of the twentieth century retraced through a corpus of 120 drawings, sketches, projects and sketches made in the years of Sironi’s collaboration with “Il Popolo d’Italia”. The exhibition, curated by Fabio Benzi, is a natural continuation of the great Mario Sironi exhibition and illustrations for the “Popolo d’Italia” held in October 2015 at the Museums of Villa Torlonia, and collects an extraordinary core of works produced by one of the major aedi of Fascism for the publications that revolved around the official press organ of the Fascist Party. Works that thus testify to how much Sironi’s avant-garde training envisaged political commitment in current events as an essential element of his aesthetic conception. The works contained in the exhibition include both the drawings for the newspapers of the publishing network – which included the weekly “Domando la Parola! The Monday of the People of Italy “,” The Illustrated Magazine of the People of Italy “and the” Encyclopedic Almanac of the People of Italy “- both a nucleus of exceptional drawings made for the bas-reliefs for the facade and atrium of the new headquarters of the “Popolo di’Italia” that the architect Muzio had designed in 1938, highlighting how Sironi’s commitment to Mussolini’s newspaper ranged from illustrations, to sculpture, to architecture. A small group of drawings on display is also representative of Sironi’s interest in the theme of the study of antiquity and was probably destined for the Palazzo del Popolo d’Italia, while another section of the exhibition collects some drawings of unknown destination including studies for scenographies, such as the one for the staging of Doctor Faust by Ferruccio Busoni and erratic illustrations, such as the sketch for the cover of the Writings Adriatici by Benito Mussolini.