Looking Inside. The Home in Italian Art and Visual Culture from the 1940s to the 1970s

Research Seminar

Date: Jun 25, 2019
Time: 11:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
Speaker: Silvia Bottinelli
Location: Villino Stroganoff, Via Gregoriana 22, 00187 Rom
Contact: event@biblhertz.it

Looking Inside. The Home in Italian Art and Visual Culture from the 1940s to the 1970s

Thinkers such as Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, and Joanne Hollows, among others, reflect on the personal and social meanings of the home. Demonstrating the relevance of domestic cultures to both lived experience and academic discourse, they argue that the home— and the interactions with and within it— contributes to shape our identity.

This talk applies such theoretical frame to the representation of domestic activities in Italian art and visual culture from the 1940s to the 1970s. It compares artworks with contemporaneous popular media to show forms of dynamic negotiation between personal narratives and societal expectations. Within a diverse range of case studies, particular attention is given to artworks created by women, as their critical relationship with domestic experiences was often central to their art practice during and after WWII. Examples include works by Fillide Levasti, Antonietta Raphaël Mafai, Maria Lai, Lucia Marcucci, Ketty La Rocca, and Mirella Bentivoglio; as well as Cesare Tacchi, Lamberto Pignotti, and Gilberto Zorio. The result is a mosaic of perspectives that highlight individual sensitivities as much as generational and gender differences in the visual interpretation of the home.

Silvia Bottinelli is lecturer of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Her current research explores the topics of Food and Contemporary Art, Art and Domesticity, and Art in the public sphere in post-fascist Italy.

Scientific Organization: Giorgia Gastaldon