18 Jun Margherita Sarfatti and Italian art between the wars

Organised at the Galleria Russo (Rome) and postponed to a future date to be allocated, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an introduction by Corrado Augias and texts by Fabio Benzi, a professor at the University of Chieti and one of the leading experts of Italian art of the 20th century, and Rachele Ferrario, author of a detailed recent monograph dedicated to Margherita Sarfatti.

Leafing through the catalogue, it offers an overview of the twentieth century in all respects; political, cultural artistic and social, and presents the figure of a woman who, as Fabio Benzi writes, “with her determined and cosmopolitan culture had outclassed the role of any dominant male of the era“.

Margherita Grassini Sarfatti (Venice, 1880 – Cavallasca, Como, 1961) was a woman of extraordinary strength, sophisticated culture and authentic intelligence. In the international context of women in the 20th century who contributed to building a modern world, she stands out as a star of great prominence. This is despite the aspects of political involvement that surrounded her, and that portray her more contrasted and controversial than commonly occurs with characters so intimately ‘progressive.’

An extraordinary and compulsive art critic and collector with left-wing ideals that she rigorously applied in her writings and in her friendships, a writer and journalist, a protagonist of international and European culture of the era, she collected thousands of works of art throughout her life from Toulouse-Lautrec to Mario Sironi, Alberto Martini, Romolo Romani, Medardo Rosso, Umberto Boccioni and Achille Funi, to name but a few.

Through a wide selection of works originally present in her collection, the book evokes the image of a woman who has turned out to be one of the greatest figures of her time, for better or for worse (as she herself acknowledged in her later years). Born to a family of Jewish origins, Sarfatti had to leave Italy due to the racial laws, becoming a victim herself of the ideals she had helped to give birth to but which took an unstoppable turn.

“Margherita had calmly subverted the role of ‘gender’ that for centuries had stuck to women: she had overturned the myth of Pygmalion that created the feminine ideal as an emanation of masculine strength.” Her influence on Mussolini’s cultural formation  gives us a clear example.

THE CATALOGUE
EDITED BY Fabio Benzi
BINDING Hardback
FORMAT 22 x 22 cm
PAGES 128
ILLUSTRATIONS 60
LANGUAGE Italian
YEAR 2020
PUBLISHER Silvana Editoriale
PRINTED BY Tecnostampa, Loreto

For further information visit the website
https://www.silvanaeditoriale.it/exhibition/234/margherita-sarfatti-galleria-russo