Imaging the Military in Modern and Contemporary Italian Art

This paper will trace the evolution of images of the military of and in Italy since Unification. Looking at the figure of the soldier, this investigation will unpack the relationship between history and its representation beginning within the context of Italian national self-determination in the age of the Risorgimento. This exploration will continue into the twentieth century, touching upon Futurism’s relationships with the technocratic bellicosity of WWI-era Italy, Interwar Fascism and its mythologies of militocratic Italianità, WWII and postwar recovery and the dispersed militarism of the 1960s and 70s. Interwoven with this historical trajectory will be an enunciation of the evolution of Italian art from late-Romanticism through arte povera and the attendant discourses of Modernism and Postmodernism in the visual arts.