“Africa sintetica, dinamica, simultanea”: Colonial Iconographies and Contexts in Italian Futurism

Giulia Beatrice

Enrico Prampolini, Apparizione magica (Visione magica), 1931, oil on canvas applied on masonite, 89 x 116 cm, Rovereto, Mart, Collezione VAF-Stiftung — Enrico Prampolini, *Apparizione magica (Visione magica),* 1931, oil on canvas applied on masonite, 89 x 116 cm, Rovereto, Mart, Collezione VAF-Stiftung

Enrico Prampolini, *Apparizione magica (Visione magica),* 1931, oil on canvas applied on masonite, 89 x 116 cm, Rovereto, Mart, Collezione VAF-Stiftung

The Ph.D. project “Africa sintetica, dinamica, simultanea”: Colonial Iconographies and Contexts in Italian Futurism investigates the links between Italian colonialism on the African continent and the Futurist movement between the 1910s and the mid-1940s. The research aims to trace within the Italian Futurist movement racialized and stereotyped representations of Africa on the one hand and images of imperialist warfare employed for colonial conquest on the other. Although the project finds its point of departure in visual representations, it also intends to touch upon the various fields related to futurist cultural history, such as literature, performing arts, and ephemera, as well as cultural politics (organization and participation in exhibitions). The main objective of the research is to highlight the contribution of the avant-garde to the construction and diffusion of an Italian “colonial consciousness.” The case study concentrating on the Futurist movement enables first of all an analysis of the extent to which the modernist categories of “exotic”, “primitivistic”, and “barbarian” were immersed in a colonial and subaltern perspective. This then allows a broader analysis of the dynamics between art and politics during the twenty-year Fascist period. While being part of the official propaganda, Futurism’s elaboration of a “colonial art” had different results from those of an art that, by seeking to legitimize European colonial expansion, promoted mainly extra-artistic objectives. The project therefore aims to highlight new aspects of Italian colonial history in Africa, which has only recently begun to attract more intense interest. The deconstruction of long-standing stereotypes, such as that of an Italian colonialism that was ‘softer’ and less violent than the versions practiced by other European countries, or the treatment of Italian colonialism as a Fascist project – a perspective that obscures the legacy of the liberal period and the continuities with the post-war period – is fundamental for this research.