Art Deco and its “roaring years” in Italy

In accordance with its founder Rodolfo Squinzi’s expressed belief that “work can never be separated from art and passion”, for many years now Mapei has been supporting important projects in the realms of art and culture.

So, following this general policy, Mapei has decided to support an exhibition entitled “Art Deco. The roaring years in Italy” - scheduled to be held in the San Domenico Museums in Forlì from 11^th February-18^th June - organised by the Cassa dei Risparmi Foundation in Forlì in partnership with Forlì City Council.

After already being a partner in an exhibition entitled “Piero della Francesca. Investigation of a legend” held at the same location in 2016, Mapei is proudly taking part in an event whose various aims include helping children in need.

Part of the money coming from ticket sales for the exhibition will be donated to Mediafriends by the Cassa dei Risparmi Foundation in Forlì to support projects organised by the “Fabbrica del Sorriso” support research, prevention and care for children with tumours.

Mapei has recently reasserted its commitment to social responsibility projects in Forlì by sponsoring the “Cresco Award for Sustainable Cities” promoted by the Sodalitas Foundation and ANCI. This project rewarded the most sustainable towns and cities with the backing and support of leading companies in their sector, including Mapei. On that occasion, the award-winning from Forlì was “Regenerating the old Courier Warehouse”, which Mapei supported by supplying products and expert technical consultancy.

THE TRANSIENT BUT EXPLOSIVE 1920S

Under the supervision of Gianfranco Brunelli and a scientific committee headed by Antonio Paolucci, “Art Deco. The roaring years in Italy” features 440 artworks, providing an overview of a style embodied in art and artistic craft that had a major influence on life and culture, film, music, theatre and literature. This is the first Italian exhibition to focus mainly on Italian works showing the link - on a high-quality profile - between the decorative arts, architecture, painting and sculpture.

A sense of taste, peculiar charm and stylistic idiom that characterised Italian and European art in the 1920s before really coming to the fore in America after 1929. Everybody agrees that Art Deco might be described as an eclectic, high-society and international kind of lifestyle. The success of this stylistic period came from focusing on luxury and a love of life (as intense as they were transient), brought to the fore by the European bourgeoisie after the Great War dissolved the last myths of the 19^th century and mimesis of industrial reality and its manufacturing processes. Ten “roaring” years for the grand international bourgeoisie, while an unprecedented armed conflict between nations was approaching.

After an initial sense of continuity with the Liberty style that chronologically preceded it, Art Deco then moved beyond and even contrasted its predecessor. The difference between the idealism of Art Nouveau and the rationalism of Art Deco was quite substantial. The very idea of modernity, the industrial production of art works, and the concept of beauty in everyday life, changed radically: the raw drive of the historical avant-gardes and the industrial revolution replaced the myth of nature with the spirit of machinery, the geometric patterns of gears, the prismatic forms of skyscrapers and the city’s artificial lights.

THE ROOTS OF ITALIAN DESIGN AND SO-CALLED “MADE IN ITALY”

Art Deco was also the preferred style of cinemas, railway stations, theatres, ocean liners, public buildings and spacious middle-class residences: it was, above all, a clearly identifiable style that influenced the decorative arts on various levels, everything from furniture and ceramics to glass work, wrought iron, gold work, fabrics, fashion in the 1920s and early 1930s and even the design of motor cars, advertising posters, sculpture and decorative painting.

The exhibition mainly focuses on Italy, most notably the international biennials of the decorative arts held in Monza, a city in Northern Italy, in 1923, 1925, 1927 and 1930, as well, of course, as the Paris Expos of 1925 and 1930 and the 1929 Barcelona Expo. The Art Deco phenomenon was a roaring success right through the decade from 1919-1929 producing furniture, ceramics, glass and metal work, fabrics, bronzes, plasterwork, jewellery, silverware and clothing mirroring the raw energy of high-brow craftsmanship and proto-industrial production and contributing to the emergence of Italian design and manufacturing (so-called “Made in Italy”).

The exhibition sets out to provide the public with an overview of the quality, originality and importance that the modern decorative arts have had on Italian artistic culture. It also aims to show how the distinctive traits of Art Deco have profoundly influenced and characterised the figurative arts: great painting and sculpture of the highest quality.

It also had a major impact on and influenced film, theatre, literature, revues, fashion and music: from Hollywood (Lloyd Bacon’s Parades and legendary divas like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Rudolph Valentino) to such an unforgettable book as “The Great Gatsby” (1925) by Francis Scott Fitzgerald and the writings of Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde and Gabriele D’Annunzio.