Nicola Lucchi

Spring 2016

Nicola is a doctoral candidate in Italian Studies at New York University. His dissertation investigates an understudied case of Italian industrial architecture, the Fiat Lingotto car assembly plant. Through an interdisciplinary approach, Nicola is mapping the factory’s sociopolitical, cultural, and aesthetic resonances in interwar Italy. During his undergraduate studies in Italy, at the University of Trieste, Lucchi wrote a thesis on the 1949 MoMA exhibition Twentieth Century Italian Art, with a particular focus on the political framework that surrounded the event. Lucchi’s research interests include Futurism, Socialist Realism, modern Italian literature, visual culture, and the cultural rapports between Italy and the United States during the 20th century. Lucchi has written on the visual and linguistic challenges prompted by modernity and postmodernity in the painterly work of Eugenio Montale, and he is completing essays on Bruno Munari’s activity as a graphic designer. 

For his CIMA fellowship, Lucchi investigated the network of institutions, exhibitions, personal and professional rapports that favored the diffusion of Morandi’s art in the United States during the interwar years.