Margherita Sarfatti

 

May 17, 2016

Join us for an evening of conversation about Margherita Sarfatti, journalist, critic, art patron, and founder of the group Novecento, who profoundly influenced Italian art and cultural life in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Venice to a wealthy Jewish family, she was notorious above all as a mistress and biographer of Mussolini. CIMA welcomes the art historian Rachele Ferrario, on the occasion of the publication of her new book, Margherita Sarfatti: La Regina dell’arte fascista (Mondadori, 2015).

Ferrario’s new book, currently receiving much attention in Italy, re-examines Sarfatti’s role as a patron of modern art and as a primary architect of propaganda for the Fascist regime. Based on extensive archival research, it paints a portrait of a woman’s whose Milanese salon was a hotbed for the avant-garde, frequented by leading Futurist and Novecento artists, intellectuals, and poets like Gabriele d’Annunzio.

Ferrario will be joined by Sarfatti’s granddaughter, Magalì Sarfatti Larson, Professor Emeritus at Temple University, in a conversation moderated by CIMA 2015-16 Fellow Lucia Piccioni. Copies of the book will be available for sale.

Rachele Ferrario, an art historian and critic, teaches at the Accademia di Brera and at the University of Milan IULM. She publishes regularly in the Corriere della Sera, and has written several books, including Giulio Paolini: Un viaggio a distanza (2009); Regina di quadri (2010), the first biography of Palma Bucarelli; and Le signore dell’arte (2012), a group portrait of Carol Rama, Carla Accardi, Giosetta Fioroni, and Marisa Merz.