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Home , Impressionism, Marcel Breuer, Mario Radice, Scuola Romana

One or Several Rationalisms

DAVID RlFKlND Columbia University

In the Jvears between the two world wars. Italian archtects. critics (Architettura, Casabella, Quadrante, Dedalo, etc.). Such classification, and historians vigorously debated the proper role and form of however, is misleadmg.The major polemical figures of this period often .The stakes in these debates were hgh -polemicists from found themselves collaborating with the same people whom they had, all camps saw architecture as part of a broader project of cultural renewal or would later, criticize strongly. A prime example is Pagano's and tied to the political program of , and argued that archtecture Piacentini's work together at the City University and E'42 .Though the must represent the goals and values of the fascist regime. As such, they former's functionalist and the latter's stylized addressed the issues of modernization, technology, functionalism and seem incomoatible.I both architects shared an exoressedI interest in structural expression raised by international modernism alongside developing an appropriate architectural expression of Italianitri. soecificallv Italian concerns. such as the tradition of and i Eventually, however, Pagano would join the attack on Piacentini's architecture's relationship to the urban fabric. persistent use of classical .2 Ths paper is part of my ongoing dssertation research into the role To some degree the level of collaboration in interwar Italv was also 0 J of the magazine Quadrante, one of the key vehicles of interwar Italian the result of a pragmatism among its architects, who were practitioners architectural discourse, and its relationship to other journals, such as as well as theorists, and thus found compromise a neccesary step toward Casabella. Quadrante was published in and from 1933 to testing their ideas in practice. Collaboration among architects also 1936 by the critic and gallery owner. Pietro Maria Bar& and Massirno '3, reflected the fascist ideal of consensus, which in turn influenced the Bontempelli, a novelist and playwright. Gruppo 7's rejection of individualism. Above all, ths atmosphere of Bardi and Bontempelli published the first issue of Quadrante in May, collaboration reveals the experimental urge that drove many of these 1933, with the financial assistance of GiuseppeTerragm and the painters strange bedfellows (Pagano and Piacentini, Persico and Bardi) as they Mario Radice andvirginio Ghringhelli. Quadrante combined coverage strove to reconcile the forces of and tradition in an of architecture with articles on the fine and ao-oliedI I . literature. architecture that would appropriately represent the Fascist state. music, theater, technology, enpeering and- especially - politics. Whle Bardi was a well-known art critic and gallery owner in Milan and Quadrante's broad scope distinguished it from contemporary Rome. In 1926, he launched a review called I1 Belredere to publicize his archtectural magazines (most notably Architettura and Casabella), the second gallery, the Galleria Bardi in Milan. By 1930, he had turned over - - Ioublication's oolemicalI vi~or0 and consistencvJ differentiated it from the the gallery to Edoardo Persico later to be edtor of Casabella who eclecticism that marked Domus and similar "culture" magazines. renamed it the Galleria del Milione. The Galleria del Milione Over the course of three years, Quadrante printed critical appraisals immediately became the center for a circle of modern painters and of bellwether architectural and urban design projects, such as the architects, including Ghiringhelli, Figini, Pollini and Pietro Lingeri, as comoetition for the Palazzo del Littorio. the MilanTriennales of 1933 did the Bar Craja, a caf6 designed the same year by Luciano Baldessari and 1936, the planning of the Pontine marsh towns andTerraplswork with Figini and Pollini, and the sculptors Fausto Melotti and Marcello in Como (from the Novocomum to the ). Manv issues of Nizzoli. This circle of architects and artists would become a kev i J Quadrante printed statements on cultural production by Mussolini, constituency for Quadrante. presented in a heroic typography not used in other articles.Terragni's That same year, Bar& opened the Galleria & Roma in Rome with Casa del Fascio was juxtaposed against the Duce's famous proclamation the financial support of Mussolini and the official sanction of the National that "Fascism must be a glass house into which everyone can see."' Syndicate of Fine Arts. In contrast to the Milan gallery, whose ehbitions Quadrante published (and commented on positively) works by favored the abstraction of the Gruppo d Como (Rho, Radice, et al), the international figures like , , Galleria di Roma vromoted the fi~urationof the 0 and Fernand Leger. Bardi himself covered the 1933 CIAM conference (especially Mafai and Scipione) and other European painters, such as aboard the Patris 11. Most notably, Quadrante defended the Rationalist Dix and Kokoshka. In 1931, Bardi hosted and helped organize at the position of the Gruppo 7 against criticism from numerous quarters, gallery the controversial Second Exhibition of Rationalist Architecture, including the more functionalist Rationalism of Casabella and the which saw Mussolini's appearance at a preview of the show's opening. tradtionalist orientation of Architettura. Bardi assembled a polemical photomontage called the "table of Taken as a whole, Italian architectural discourse reveals diverse horrors" (la tarola degli orrori) for the ehbition. It juxtaposed hstoricist interoretations of modernism. linked bv a web of shared concerns and i buildings by Marcello Piacentini and Armando Brasini (members of the transformed by a host of exigencies. Archtectural hstorians have Accade&a.~taliana and representatives of the archtectural mainstream) frequently divided architects and critics into opposing camps accorhg and illustrations from old fashon magazines. As Bardi explained in an to their membership in various organizations (such as MIAR, and the article in La Eibuna ("La tavola degli orrori alla Mostra d' Architettura Accademia d' Architettura) and their association with specific journals Razionale") and a harshly-toned introduction to the exhbition, Rapporto sull'Architettura (per Mussolini), his goal was to attack the moribund construction technologies), modernism in would remain unique institutions of the Italian archtectural profession, the Syndicate and the and exclusive to the peninsula, just as modernism retained unique local qualities elsewhere in Europe.The truly Italian qualities of architecture Academv.J Even before foun&ng Quadrante, Bar& had established a reputation would emerge through the spirit of classicism and mediterraneitd. among Rationahst architects for his iournahsm. He wrote weeklv columns Terragni, the most visible link between the Gruppo and 0 J 7 Quadrante, on archtecture and culture for the Milanese journal L'Ambrosiano. After would insist on geometric and proportional principles as the touchstone the controversvi surround in^0 the Second Exhibition of Rationalist to tradition. As the Gruppo 7 had written,"There is no incompatibility Architecture, he became a foreign correspondent for the publication. between our past and our present. \lie do not want to break with He published book-length accounts of his travels in the USSR and tradition; it is tradition which transforms itself, and assumes new aspects." on behalf of L'Ambrosiano and the Roman journal, I1 Lar~oroFa~cista.~ He The Gruppo 7 faced two key blocks of opposition, which would also served as Italian corresnondent for L'Architecture d'auiourd'hui. help spur the formation of Quadrante six years later. One came from Quadrante's prominent poltical stance, whch &stinpished it from Piacentini and other conservatives (such as the art critic Ojetti and the contemDorarv archtectural iournals and the avolitical manifesto of the academician Giovanonni) who were concerned about the lack of 1 i Gruppo 7, grew out of Bardi's attempts to gain official sanction for emphasis on beauty and the elevation of rationality to a value of the Rationalism as the regime's style. Beginning in November, 1930, Bardi hghest order. Piacentini, though often sympathetic to modernists (whom used his column in L'Ambrosiano to wage a propaganda campaign aimed he supported in projects like the Florence train terminal and the CittA at winning Mussolini's support of Rationalism as the official state style. Universitaria), felt the Rationalists were too quick to msmiss the formal Bardi argued that Rationalism should be adopted as the appropriate attributes of Italian archtecture whose long development had endowed expression of the Fascist revolution (largely because of their shared them with universal meaning6 interest in technolo~icaland social modernization). and that control The Gruppo 7 (and later, the archtects associated with Quadrante) b ,, over architectural commissions throughout the nation should be granted also faced opposition from another branch of Rationalists, represented to a MIAR-like svndcate. by the pioneering journal whose editors were Giuseppe J Casabella, Barb's cosmopolitan orientation was shared by Quadrante's co- Pagano and Edoardo Persico. In contrast to that of the Gruppo 7, Pagano edtor, Bontempelli, a prominent critic, novelist and playwright. After and Persico argued in Casabella for a Rationalism marked by early infatuations with D' Annunzio and , Bontempelli emerged aggiomamento, a process of modernization m which architecture would as a key theorist of Metaphysical art, with close ties Giorgio de Chrico, be develoned bv a rational consideration of technical. utilitarian and I i Alberto Savinio and . Bontempelli's primary vehcle material concerns. Above all, Pagano believed that architecture's was the journal 900 - Cahiers d'ltalie et d'Europe, whch he published necessity to speak universally required the reduction of formal with Curzio Malaparte from 1926 to 1929. Originally printed in French, vocabulary and syntax to a bare minimum. He argued against the'lyrical"

900 ~romotedliterature nroduced throughoutC the continent. which individualism ofTerragni, which he felt could not transmit universal was consistent with Bontempelli's interest in opening Italian literature qualities, and thus limited his own archtectural vocabulary to an almost and culture to the more rapidly developing cultural milieu of Paris.' journalistic prose opposed toTerragnils poetic turns.7 The polemical atmosphere of the 1930's was primed by two decades Pagano's support of Fascism came from a deeply-held conviction of writing by architects and critics in ltair. Futurism's that Italian society needed to be redeemed from cultural decay, and prodigious production of publications before the first world war provided that th~srenewal of societvJ needed cultural forms-above all architecture the first important proclamations on the future of archtecture in Italy, - that were truly rational, as opposed to the veneer of rationality he both as 1namuhlets I and as small iournals (such as Lacerba). However. identified in the GrunooI I 7. The new architecture had to eschew the despite an explosion in avant-garde journals throughout Europe in the seduction of indvidual artistry in favor of a collective labor continuing years following the war, Italian archtects &d not use publications as an the project of Italian tradtion, yet cognizant of the new building types integral part of their polemical practices until late in the 1920's. A key and construction methods arising from the modern era. In this respect, exception is the Rationalist manifesto, "Architecture," written by the his polemics were in large part consistent with those of the Gruppo 7's Gruppo 7 and published in four parts in Rassegna Italiana in 1926 and manifesto of 1926-7. 1927. The development of Rationalist thought through journalism and The Gruppo 7 manifesto adapted Le Corbusier's krs une architecture criticism magnified when Pagano and Persico joined the staff of La Casa to local concerns, especially in its argument that Bella in 1931, under the direction ofArrigo Bonfiglio.Whle Pagano and must be a continuing development of traditional Italian and Roman Persico were passionate modernists and avowed Rationalists, they still architecture. The manifesto attempted to reconcile modernity and criticized the Gruppo 7 and their peers for their conceptual tradition by focusing on shared concerns, such as typology, geometry, contradictions. Nonetheless, their harshest criticism was reserved for metaphysics and the appropriate use of materials.The classical values of Piacentini and the forces of Italianita. Pagano began his campaign against rhythm, harmony, grace and proportion and the modern emphasis on Piacentinian monumentalitv with hs 1931 article "Del ccmonumentale~~ functional requirements and developments in construction technology nell'archtettura moderns? in which he lambasted those who confused columns and bombastrv with the nobilitv of ancient monurnentalitv. He would together pdethe development of new bdclmg types and forms. J J J To the Gruppo 7, the careful study of trahtion revealed that the historical juxtaposed "genuine" monumentality - that of Trajan's aqueduct at development of architectural form was gradual and anonymous; they Segovia and the ruins of Great Zimbabwe- with the pompous display declared that Italy stood on the verge of a new archaic era, one that of Behrens's embassy in St. Petersburg. Alberto Sartoris, who in 1932 would quickly lead to a new classical age, but which required the uublished one of the first broad hstories of modern archtecture. wrote combined effort of artists willing to suppress their individual egos in about the new principles of urbanism and housing development espoused favor of collective labor. bv CIAM and nracticed in Frankfurt. Stuttgart and elsewhere. 0 Quadrante adopted a variant of the Gruppo 7 manifesto as its own ' In the last issue under the name La Casa Bella,9 Pagano proclaimed "Un Programma dArchitettura,"signed by Banfi, Belgioioso, Bottoni, a new venture to unite the divergent strands of Italian modernism ("la Cereghmi, Griffini, Lingeri, Figini, Frette, Peresutti, Pollini and Rogers.' veccha guardia dell ccgruppo 7)) milanese e dei gruppi & Torino e & Quadrante expanded on the Gruppo 7 program, acknowledging that Roman) under the banner of the renamed journal, Casabella. Pagano while modern architecture would necessarily share international traits took over the direction of the journal in 1933, with Persico as editor-in- (such as those forms associated with the development of new chief. Casabella intensified its coverage of European modernism, yet paradoxically the magazine paid special attention to archtects like Henry NOTES van de Velde and Hans Poelzig, who hardly fit the model of Pagano's selfless, anonymous participants in the great current of tradition. 'Quadrante 35, March 1936, p.15. Persico criticized the Gruppo 7/Quadrante Rationalists in 1933 for 'Giuseppe Pagano, "Potremo salvarci dalle false tradizioni e dalle their refusal to address the contradiction between a national spirit in ossessoini non mentali?' Casabella (1941). 'Bardi, 15 giorm a Parigi tra i fuoriusciti. (1931) and Unfascisto a1 pacse architecture and its relationshp to international modernism. l6 It was dei Soviet. (1932). ~reciselvthe inabilitv to deal with the dialectic of national and 1 J J '900's ed~torialboard included , AndrC Malraux, Rainer international tendencies that Persico identified as the failure of Italian Maria Rilke and . Rationalism. For Persico. modernism was certainlv Euro~ean.but it J I ' 'Two years later, Quadronte 23 and 24 (March and April, 1935) was a developmental process in which Italy participated reciprocally. revisited the Gruppo 7, reprinting the Rassegna Itahana manifesto Persico insisted that the material condtions which s~awnedmodern articles and "Origini del Gruppo 7" by C. Belli. architecture (the development of iron, glass and concrete) were only a @'Why then, the need to make the entire essence of architecture consist of rationality alone? Why must they equate the two terms: small Dart of what needed to be discussed bvi contemDorarvI i criticism. He faulted hspeers' attempts at archtectural hstory (such as Gustave architecture and rationality? [...I In short, the identification of Adolph Platz and Myron Malkiel-Jirmounsky) which put too much the beautiful with the structural does not exist. Let us leave these emphasis on material, and too little on the spatial breakthroughs of arid and metaphysical speculations to the men of the North. Neither puritanism nor protestantism have ever taken root under our Frank LloydWright. Materialism left too little room for lyricism, he sun. We need gesture and form, the touching word and smile. We believed. "Let us collect the data and go beyond it."" are basically musical, art for us is always a song." Marcello Piacentini Persico argued that the origins of modern architecture lay not in "Prima internazionale architettonica," Architettura e arti decorative the translation of into architectural form, but in the work of (August, 1928). Wright, whom he identified with . l2 Persico described "'If we want Italian architecture to continue in a direction that can Wright's architecture as being ofa single atmospherenwithout dividing be developed both aesthetically and morally, and if we want it to partitions, with a horizontality that took in the terraces and extended express our world, we must not think, act and poeticize with feelings that are aristocratic, eccentric or proudly enamored with space into the 1andscape.The massing, roof lines and fenestration rationalized speculation. Rather, we must strive to be anonymous, all showed the influence of the Far East, an exoticism that raised Persico's to free ourselves from rhetorical attitudes. We must not imprison suspicion omright's Impressionism, since he claimed "giapponeismo" ourselves in an academy of forms and words." was common to both.I3 'Pagano, "Del 'monumentale' nell'arch~tetturamoderns," La casa Persico believed that the demands of modern architecture could bella 40 (1931). not be reduced to a "battle of stylesnpitting flat roofs against gables, I' '"Programma 1933," La casa bella 60 (1932). I0Doordan, Architecture and Politics, pp. 30- 1. and he criticized both the Rationalists and the "traditionalists" with lacking0 sound "theoretical foundations" and producing a hollow &alogue 'lacking "Persico, (1933). Translated in AD 5 1, p.60. any real content."Instead he argued in favor of a gradual and collective "Persico, "Profezia dell'architettura," (1935). reprinted in Barocchi, transformation of architecture, much like the Gruppo 7 had demanded, p.299. and which he believed was already underway throughout Europe. I3Persico refers to 's L'impression~sme (1904) "Contrary to claims by the most unlikely polemicists, the goal of new liPersico, "Profezia dell'architettura," p. 30 1. archtecture is not to be found in the coherence of Eurovean Rationalism "Persico, (1935). Translated in AD 51, p.60. and salvation does not lie in a return to 'classical' or 'nationalistic' forms, but in a continual faith in true tradition."" In 1935, Persico became codrector of Casabella; the following year he died. Pagano would continue to e&t the journal until 1943, when he suspended publication and joined the military. From 1940 to 1943 the magazine's title was Construzioni casabella, and it was under that name that publication resumed briefly in 1946.