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| Valori Plastici | |
|---|---|
| Name | Valori Plastici |
| Established | 1918 |
| Founder | Mario Broglio |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
Valori Plastici Valori Plastici was an Italian art magazine and cultural journal founded in Rome in 1918 that promoted a revival of classical form and the primacy of pictorial values through essays, manifestos, and images by leading European artists and critics. It served as a nexus connecting figures from Futurism and Cubism to advocates of a return to order associated with Neoclassicism, linking artistic debates in Italy, France, Germany, and beyond through contributions, reproductions, and critical exchanges. The publication’s pages featured polemics, theoretical statements, and reproductions that influenced exhibitions, collections, and artistic movements across the interwar period.
Valori Plastici appeared amid post‑World War I debates involving artists, critics, and intellectuals such as Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà, Mario Sironi, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and Alberto Savinio who sought alternatives to avant‑garde radicalism. The journal, directed by Mario Broglio and associated with contributors like Roberto Longhi, provided forums for discussions involving patrons and institutions including the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna and collectors linked to Prince Chigi. Its pages balanced reproductions of works by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Amedeo Modigliani with essays on technique, iconography, and cultural policy.
Founded in the aftermath of the First World War and during the cultural reconfigurations following the Paris Peace Conference, the journal emerged as part of a broader "return to order" found in the work of artists tied to movements such as Return to Order (Rappel à l'ordre), Neue Sachlichkeit, and the post‑Cubist reassessments of the Salon d'Automne. The magazine was a response to tensions between proponents of Futurism—notably Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla—and those reasserting classical discipline, including figures from the Scuola Romana and artists associated with the Novecento Italiano group like Achille Funi and Gino Severini. International discourse with critics and curators at institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Tate Gallery, and Museum of Modern Art shaped its agenda.
Valori Plastici published texts and images by a wide array of artists, historians, and critics: painters Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà, Filippo De Pisis, Mario Sironi, Gino Severini, Amedeo Modigliani, Massimo Campigli; writers and critics Roberto Longhi, Margherita Sarfatti, Cesare Brandi, Tullio d'Albisola; sculptors Adolfo Wildt, Umberto Mastroianni; and international contributors such as Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Paul Cézanne, Fernand Léger, and Salvador Dalí. The network extended to curators and historians linked to the Uffizi, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and publishers such as Skira and Mondadori.
The magazine championed a pictorial language emphasizing solidity, volume, and compositional balance, aligning with aesthetic debates advanced by scholars like Cesare Brandi and critics such as Roberto Longhi and Margherita Sarfatti. Its aesthetic evinced affinities with Neoclassicism, Magic Realism, and structural elements from Cubism, while rejecting the mechanistic dynamism of Futurism advocated by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the expressive fragmentation associated with Expressionism and Dada exemplified by Hugo Ball and Marcel Duchamp. Texts analyzed works by canonical figures including Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Piero della Francesca to argue for formal continuity and renewed emphasis on artisanal technique.
Valori Plastici both reproduced and promoted paintings, sculptures, and exhibitions that embodied its principles, enabling shows at venues such as the Galleria Pesaro, the Galleria del Milione, and the Quadriennale di Roma where works by Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Sironi, Gino Severini, Massimo Campigli, Achille Funi, and Adolfo Wildt were featured. The journal’s pages documented retrospectives, salons, and catalogues for exhibitions held at the Biennale di Venezia, the Mostra Nazionale d’Arte, and international fairs where the art of figures like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky was contrasted with the more figurative works it championed.
Contemporaneous reception ranged from endorsement by conservative critics such as Margherita Sarfatti and collectors allied with institutions like the Fondazione Querini Stampalia to skepticism from avant‑garde proponents including Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and later modernists tied to Abstract Expressionism and followers of Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. The journal influenced museum acquisitions at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, critical methodologies advanced at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, and pedagogical approaches at academies like the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and the École des Beaux‑Arts.
Valori Plastici’s legacy persists in scholarship on interwar culture, curatorial practices at institutions such as the Museo Nazionale Romano and the Pinacoteca di Brera, and in exhibitions revisiting the "return to order" aesthetic from the 20th century that involve collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. Its archival issues are referenced in studies by historians linked to universities like Sapienza University of Rome, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Columbia University, Università Bocconi and in catalogues for shows featuring artists included in its pages such as Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Mario Sironi, and Massimo Campigli.
Category:Italian art magazines Category:20th-century art Category:Interwar culture