<p>While Italian art of the twentieth century is usually associated with either the avant-garde practices of Futurism or the classicism of Fascist visual culture, the Italian modernists' complex engagement with concepts of the ‘Baroque’ has yet to be explored. Through an extensive analysis of paintings, sculptures, publications, collecting practices, and exhibitions, my dissertation addresses this lacuna by investigating how the Baroque was discursively constructed and visually represented in Italian modernist artistic and cultural debates between 1880 and 1945. I study how artists and critics such as Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio De Chirico, Adolfo Wildt, Lucio Fontana, and Roberto Longhi championed or disparaged the Baroque in the context of heated debates over the import of Italy’s rich cultural heritage, its status in modern Europe, and the potential role of avant-garde art as a catalyst for national regeneration. In contrast to previous scholars I argue that the development of modern art in Italy was actively shaped by cultural perceptions about the Baroque. My dissertation therefore sheds new light on the role of style in the cultural politics of Italy, which in turn will transform our understanding of visual culture in modern Italy, and of twentieth-century representations of the Baroque in art, literature, and aesthetics.</p> / Dissertation

The aim of this work is to present Italian modernism and its forms as we can find them in the magazines from the beginning of the 20th century. Due to their long-term activity magazines are a useful mean for studying social processes. For our analysis four magazines were chosen from which everyone represents a specific area: Leonardo magazine offers an overview of modern philosophic thoughts, Il Rinnovamento magazine reports on modernist movement within the Catholic Church, Lacerba magazine represents area of modernist art and literature and finally La Voce magazine can be considered a synthesis of topics with regard to processes going on in the Italian society at the beginning of the 20th century. After introductory part with description of historical and culture context the attention is focused on the magazines themselves explaining what was the motivation of their origin, how their program declaration developed and especially offering thematic analysis of their content. One of the examined areas is also described with regard to the concrete magazine and the effect it had on it. At the very end of the analytic part there is an evaluation of the magazines and their influence within the social transformation. Conclusion part offers an answer to the initial question, whether the word "modernism" is...