The First Words from October: Artists, Mass Culture and Russian Avant-Garde in Italy, 1968–1977

Duccio Nobili

This research project aims to rediscover how the imaginary and style developed during the Russian Revolution maintained a pervasive, and hitherto forgotten, presence in Italian and French visual art and mass culture between the Sixties and the Seventies. Specifically, it surveys the cultural agents that contributed to the diffusion of these images in Italy and focuses on the ways it was used for artistic and communicative purposes.  Attention will be divided between two directions: the Italian visual arts and mass culture. In the first case, the project seeks to retrace the different ways Italian artists employed a certain style and certain images inspired by the Russian Revolution in their work. The reasons are many: formal issues, a desire for political engagement, or the necessity to identify themselves in the Italian cultural and artistic scene. In the second case, the focus will fall on the underground and counter-cultural scenes and thereby reveal the deep interest that the students and counterculture movements developed in and the usage they made of the Russian avant-garde at the end of the Seventies. Such episodes have been neglected in art-historical and cultural studies of the period. This project aims to fill this gap.   
Adopting a methodological perspective that brings together transnational exchange with a wide range of cultural, visual, and political issues, the goal of this project is to explore an unknown chapter of the afterlife of Russian avant-garde and to add a pivotal element to a more complete, well-rounded comprehension of the Italian and French visual culture of the Seventies, particularly in its political entanglements.