Visual arts

The great names in Italian art through the centuries make a long list that includes, among many others, Giotto, Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Bernini, and Tiepolo. Broadly characterized by a warmth of colour and light, Italian painting enjoyed preeminence in Europe for hundreds of years. Continuous subjection to foreign powers, however, eventually enfeebled Italy’s artistic contribution, which sank into provincialism. Ties with European art were renewed about 1910 by the work of the Futurists, led by the poet Filippo Marinetti and the painters Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla. Futurism was succeeded by the Metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who influenced the Surrealists until the 1920s, when he began to produce more traditional canvases. The subtle, quietist paintings of Giorgio Morandi placed him in increasingly high regard since his death in 1964. Argentinian-born Lucio Fontana’s work exemplifies the modern artist’s quest for form, expressed, for example, by a blank canvas slashed open by a knife. Modern additions to the Italian tradition of sculpture include the works of Giacomo Manzù, Gio Pomodoro, Marino Marini, Luciano Minguzzi, Alberto Viani, Harry Bertoia, Mirko Basaldella, and Emilio Greco. (For further discussion, see Western painting; Western sculpture.)

Italy is a world leader in high fashion, an industry centred in Milan, a haven for models, designers, and photographers who come to work in the houses of Versace, Gucci, Krizia, Ferragamo, Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, and Armani, among many others. Italian design houses such as Modigliani and Alessi have also been strongly influential.

Architecture

The traditional image of old Italian towns situated around piazzas adorned with fountains remains valid in a country where ruins from Classical antiquity may stand alongside modern construction marvels. The Rationalist architecture movement of 1926 produced one of the outstanding Italian architect-engineers of the 20th century, Pier Luigi Nervi, architect of the Turin exhibition complex and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Marcello Piacentini was responsible for much of the imposing architecture of the fascist period, such as the Esposizione Universale di Roma (EUR) area in Rome. Innovative architecture is represented in Milan’s Marchiondi Spagliardi Institute, by Vittoriano Viganò. Other architects of note include Renzo Piano, known for his international museums; Aldo Rossi, whose critical writings rivaled his built works; and Paolo Portoghesi, who created public buildings from curvilinear forms. (For further discussion, see Western architecture.)

Literature

Italian literature, and indeed standard Italian, have their origins in the 14th-century Tuscan dialect—the language of its three founding fathers, Dante, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. The thread of literature bound these pioneers together with later practitioners, such as the scientist and philosopher Galileo, dramatist Carlo Goldoni, lyric poet Giacomo Leopardi, Romantic novelist Alessandro Manzoni, and poet Giosuè Carducci. Women writers of the Renaissance such as Veronica Gàmbara, Vittoria Colonna, and Gaspara Stampa were also influential in their time. Rediscovered and reissued in critical editions in the 1990s, their work prompted an interest in women writers of all eras within Italy.

After the unification of Italy, writers began to explore subjects theretofore considered too lowly for literary consideration, such as poverty and living conditions in the Mezzogiorno. Writers such as Giovanni Verga invented a new vocabulary to give expression to them. Among women writers was a Sardinian, Grazia Deledda, who won the 1926 Nobel Prize for Literature. However, the most prominent Italian woman writer of the 20th century was Elsa Morante.

The themes of writers in the 20th century ranged widely. The flamboyant patriotism of Gabriele d’Annunzio in the early decades of the century gave way to the existentialist concerns of Deledda and Ugo Ojetti, who focused on local aspects of Italian life. The fascist period forced many writers underground but at the same time provided inspiration for their work, as in the case of Ignazio Silone and Carlo Levi. Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello pioneered the psychoanalytic literary genre, prior to the revival of realism by writers such as Elio Vittorini. Alberto Moravia wrote of the corruption of the upper-middle classes and gained notoriety for the eroticism of his narrative.

By the 1960s the literary world joined the protest movement against the corruption of the state, and poetry eclipsed the novel as the primary literary genre. Pier Paolo Pasolini, a poet, critic, and filmmaker, was the dominant creative figure of the period. Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo won Nobel Prizes for their poetry, and Giuseppe Ungaretti founded Hermeticism. A onetime disciple of that movement, the spiritual poet Mario Luzi was frequently nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Of literature in the late 20th century, the work of Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, and Primo Levi met with much success abroad; within Italy the work of Cesare Pavese, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Natalia Ginzburg, and Leonardo Sciascia was also well received. The last decades of the century saw the revival of the narrative and the historical novel, together with new forms of experimental and innovative language. In 1997 Dario Fo, a playwright known for his improvisational style, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Writers active in the first years of the 21st century, working in a variety of genres, included Niccolò Ammaniti, Andrea Camilleri, Antonio Tabuchi, and Carlo Lucarelli. (For further discussion, see Italian literature.)