Art Of The Day Weekly

Margherita Sarfatti, the Duce’s Jewish muse

MILANO – TRENTO – How can a beautiful, brilliant, cultivated, Jewish woman model a politician named Mussolini? This situation was not only a paradox, but it also lasted: Margherita Sarfatti met the young Socialist tribune in 1912, when she had just turned thirty, and followed him as his mistress for twenty years, even more so as his Pygmalion, until he befriended Hitler, and she left Italy and fled to Argentina and Uruguay. During the twenties and thirties Sarfatti was the unofficial Minister of Culture, leading this return to order, this neo-classic breath of fresh air, under the banner of the Novecento movement. She brought in the main painters of the time, and drew up an art theory of the exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Boccioni, De Chirico, Sironi, Wildt or even Funi all owe her part of their fame. Two museums have gotten together to gain recognition of the importance of this surprising deux ex machina: the museum of the Novecento in Milano and the Mart in Trento and Rovereto, which holds major archives and studies of the politics of international diffusion.
• Margherita Sarfatti. Segni, colori e luci a Milano at the Museo del Novecento, frm 21 September 2018 to 24 February 2019.

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