“Avanti della Domenica”

Una rivista illustrata all’alba delle avanguardie

Casa Galleria Cavalli - informale e contemporanea
Piazza dell’Immacolata, 9
54028 Filetto - Villafranca in Lunigiana (Massa-Carrara)

“AVANTI DELLA DOMENICA”

Casa Galleria Cavalli – Filetto- Villafranca in Lunigiana – Italy

18th July – 6th september 2009

“Avanti della Domenica”, issued between January 1903 and March 1907, began as a cultural supplement of the Italian Socialist Party’s daily newspaper and became one of the most important illustrated weeklies during the first decade of the last century, primarily for the quality of its artistic and critical contributions. Writing for it were journalists and literary figures such as Margherita Sarfatti, Edmondo De Amicis, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Anna Franchi, Diego Garoglio, Giacinto Stiavelli, Tomaso Monicelli, Goffredo Bellonci, Camille Mauclair, Guelfo Civinini, Giovanni Cena and Diego Angeli, while the cover illustrations were signed by artists of the calibre of Libero Andreotti, Gabriele Galantara, Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni, Mario Sironi, Leonardo Dudreville, Duilio Cambellotti, Domenico Baccarini, Arnaldo Ferraguti, Giorgio Kienerk, Augusto Majani, Filiberto Scarpelli, Enrico Sacchetti and Luigi Bompard. And yet no study has ever been specifically devoted to this magazine, which can certainly claim to be one of the most quoted but least known of the period.

This situation gave rise to the idea of conducting a systematic survey of all 216 numbers of “Avanti della Domenica”, with a particular focus on the themes of illustration and art criticism.

The editorial history of the magazine is complex and troubled: from its inception in Florence under the leadership of Alfredo Angiolini to the advent of its management by Vittorio Piva and Savino Varazzani (which coincides with the transfer of its headquarters to the capital), the magazine’s subsequent transition from eight to twelve pages in January 1905, the appearance of a full colour front cover, the significant increase in space reserved for art news, Piva’s purchase of the magazine, and the ever-mounting economic difficulties. Without neglecting the numerous changes in typography, we finally arrive at the heated controversy over antimilitarism that reflected the deep dissention existing between revolutionaries and reformists within Italian Socialism, and which, in the autumn of 1906, led to the fierce clash between “Avanti!” (especially in the person of its director, Enrico Ferri, who later became a fascist senator) and its (ex-) artistic and literary supplement, thus contributing to the political, professional and financial ruin of Vittorio Piva and of the magazine he directed. (Piva died of endocarditis on 10th August 1907 at the age of thirty-two, four months after suffering a thrombosis that had paralyzed him.)

In fact, the Party had already viewed “Avanti della Domenica” with disfavour for a couple of years: it was suspect due to its declared independence from the “cultural guidelines” that were decided centrally by the Socialist leaders, especially concerning the theme of the relationship between politics and art. Indeed Piva resolutely refused to allow artistic expression to serve propaganda aims or other heteronomous objectives; his objective was of an essentially educational nature: the readers’ “moral and intellectual development” was for him the social function to some extent attributable to art, and certainly not its subordination to political goals, or the pure and simple realistic representation of the conditions of the poor, the excluded and the oppressed. Primarily it was taste that governed the choice of the drawings and colour illustrations that adorned the magazine, free critical discernment and not the ideal or ideological aspect – or at least not to any dominating degree. “The only... social character art can have is beauty in all its varied aspects,” wrote Piva in May 1905.

Paolo Bolpagn