Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

The reading seminar discusses recently published works or manuscripts that are largely complete. The texts are sent to participants in advance and then discussed together with the authors.

Avant-garde Propaganda. Colonialism and Futurism analyzes the links between Italian colonialism on the African continent and the Futurist movement from the 1910s to the mid-1940s. Drawing on visual and literary sources from the era of Italian Fascism — moving across visual culture, literature, performing arts, ephemeral materials, and exhibition politics — the book traces two particular strands of Italian Futurism: racialized and stereotyped representations of Blackness and Africa, and images of the imperialist military campaigns waged against the peoples of Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. The research reconstructs the role of art within the Fascist regime's cultural-political propaganda strategies. It demonstrates how Futurist artists systematically promoted a colonial and subaltern perspective through modernist categories such as the "exotic," the "primitive," and the "barbaric," thereby contributing to the construction and dissemination of an Italian "colonial consciousness." At the same time, it shows how these artists supported Italy's expansionist policies and, through direct encounters with African territories and peoples, developed new visual and cultural imaginaries. The book also addresses the contemporary implications of this legacy, asking how colonial-era collections can be exhibited and studied today within a post-colonial and decolonial framework, while offering a broader analysis of the dynamics between art and politics under Fascism and actively countering a form of collective amnesia that continues to shape public memory of European – and especially Italian – colonial history.

The final chapter, La Maledizione Cade dal Cielo: Futurist Iconographies of the Colonial War, focuses on Futurist aeropainting during the invasion of Ethiopia (1935–1936). While Fascist propaganda rarely represented wartime actions, framing the campaign as a humanitarian and modernizing enterprise, aeropainting constituted an exception: through the exaltation of aviation and a "hypermodern" vision of total war, Futurist works provide evidence of the most brutal sides of the invasion—the bombings and the use of noxious gases such as mustard gas. Read alongside texts by Marinetti, these works acquire the status of documentary sources, bearing indelible testimony to wartime violence usually excluded from both media and art. Through case studies such as the works of Mario Menin, Renato Di Bosso, and the Futurist Group Savarè, the chapter investigates the sources and models employed in depicting colonial bombing and the enemy, showing how the Ethiopian landscape and climate – rather than a physically present foe – were constructed as the true adversary of colonial war. By adopting a decolonial perspective, the chapter rethinks the active role of modernism in consolidating Fascist war ideology and racist contempt, while bringing these works into dialogue with contemporary Ethiopian art and memoir production.

Giulia Beatrice is a postdoctoral scientific assistant at the Weddigen Department of the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, and an adjunct lecturer at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. She earned her PhD from the University of Zurich, in a joint doctoral program with Sapienza University of Rome (2025), with a thesis on the relationship between Futurism and Italian colonialism in Africa. The thesis, forthcoming as a book, was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal. Her research interests focus on Italian modernism and its transnational connections, Italian colonialism, and women's artistic practices of the early twentieth century. In recent years, her research has been supported by the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Swiss National Science Foundation, Yale's Beinecke Library, and the Wolfsoniana Foundation. Since 2022, she has been a member of the research unit Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture: from Nationbuilding to Now.

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Teilnahme am Lektüreseminar nur nach Anmeldung: seminar@zikg.eu. 
Das Seminar findet in englischer Sprache statt. // Participation in the reading seminar is by registration only: seminar@zikg.eu. The seminar will be held in English.