Novecento movement

Novecento movement, group of Italian artists, formed in 1922 in Milan, that advocated a return to the great Italian representational art of the past.

The founding members of the Novecento (Italian: 20th-century) movement were the critic Margherita Sarfatti and seven artists: Anselmo Bucci, Leonardo Dudreville, Achille Funi, Gian Emilio Malerba, Piero Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi, and Mario Sironi. Under Sarfatti’s leadership, the group sought to renew Italian art by rejecting European avant-garde movements and embracing Italy’s artistic traditions.

At the same time, nationalistic goals were also being developed by the Italian fascists under the dictator Benito Mussolini. The Novecento movement came to be associated with fascism; Sarfatti was Mussolini’s mistress, wrote for his newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia (“The People of Italy”), and convinced him to give the inaugural speech for the first Novecento exhibition in 1923.

Despite its fascist affiliations, the Novecento never promoted propagandistic art; in fact, the group was so inclusive of various artistic styles that by the end of the 1920s it was criticized by many fascists. This inclusiveness also meant that the group lost coherence as an art movement. Other artists associated with the Novecento included the sculptors Marino Marini and Arturo Martini and the painters Ottone Rosai, Massimo Campigli, Carlo Carrà, and Felice Casorati.