The reason for the round table was the international conference “Ilya Golosov / Giuseppe Terragni. Artistic avant-garde: Moscow Como, 1920–1940”, which took place in Como at the end of October this year. It focused on the links between Soviet and Italian art and architecture in the years between the two world wars. The meeting was attended by Anna Bronovitskaya, Research Director of the Institute of Modernism and a teacher at the MARSH School, Anna Vyazemtseva, Senior Researcher at NIITIAG and postdoctoral student at the University of Insubria Como-Varese, and Sergey Kulikov, architecture historian, independent curator, member of AIS. Moderator - Chief Editor of Archi.ru Nina Frolova.
Nina Frolova: At the end of October, Como hosted a conference on the links between the Italian and Soviet avant-garde, with an emphasis on the work of Giuseppe Terragna and Ilya Golosov; Sergey Kulikov and Anna Vyazemtseva took part in it. How did the idea of such a scientific meeting come about?
Sergey Kulikov: The idea came up during a chat on Facebook. In May 2014, Como hosted a conference entitled “The Legacy of Terragna” organized by MAARC. I saw photos of the Novokomum residential building in Como by Giuseppe Terragni on the Internet and, having nothing to do, attached a photo of the Moscow Zuev Ilya Golosov House of Culture in the comments. Then we began to discuss with Ado Franchini, President of MAARC and professor at the Milan Polytechnic Institute - he eventually became the organizer of the conference - the topic of mutual influences in Italian and Soviet architecture, and we came to the conclusion that it would be nice to clarify the connections between Soviet architecture and the architecture of Italy between the world wars. Initially, it was about the exhibition, later it was decided to phase the path to it and first hold a conference. The issue of mutual influences was actively discussed back in the early 1930s in the Italian press as part of a large architectural discussion between fascist “innovators” and fascist “retrogrades”: retrogrades accused innovators of the secondary nature of their works based on functionalist ideas, including Soviet ones. It was, rather, a political polemic, replete with all kinds of pamphlets, far from art. I must say that this topic has not yet been sufficiently disclosed, studied, and the case of Terragna and Golosov is quite indicative, but not the only one.
NF: Anna, your scientific interests are directly related to the topic of the conference …
Anna Vyazemtseva: That is why I was attracted to the conference. Ado Franchini and his colleagues created the MADE in MAARC Association and conceived MAARC - the Virtual Museum of Abstract Art in Como. They are engaged in the preservation and popularization of the avant-garde art and avant-garde architecture of the interwar years in Como, because it was in Como that there was a very specific environment, many artists and architects worked there, like the same Giuseppe Terragni, the most famous rationalist outside Italy. Another important point is that abstract art was born in Italy, oddly enough, only in the 1930s, and it was in Como that there was a fairly significant group of abstract artists, among whom was Mario Radice, who also collaborated a lot with architects. In the post-war years this art was forgotten; it is now known, but still not well understood. The association is studying it, collaborating with researchers. I was recruited on the advice of Roberto Dulio, an expert on 20th century Italian architecture and art, who, like Franchini, teaches at the Politecnico and was a reviewer of my dissertation, and introduced me to Sergei. However, initially we thought to make an exhibition, but it turned out to be very difficult for many reasons, and therefore it was decided to make a conference first. The most famous Italian researchers of the interwar period - Alessandro De Magistris, Giovanni Marzari and Nicoletta Colombo, as well as Sergei and me and the photographer Roberto Conte were invited to the conference.
SC: Conte this year filmed monuments of avant-garde architecture in different parts of the former USSR, in Samara, Yekaterinburg, Volgograd, St. Petersburg, and at the conference he made something like a report on their current state.
AB: At the conference, Italian researchers met for the first time in such a context - to talk about the connection between the Italian avant-garde and the Soviet. The Association plans to develop this topic to a pan-European scale, in particular, to trace the connection between the Italian and German avant-garde, because Como is a border city between Italy and trans-Alpine Europe. And one more important aspect of the Association's activities, for which they hold conferences, is to draw the attention of residents to the heritage of the avant-garde in the city. Just on the occasion of the conference, they made a video projection on the facade of Casa del Fasho for the 80th anniversary of its construction, the main work of Terragni, because it is still an administrative building, where the tax office is located. It can be visited by appointment, but it is still not publicly available as a valuable piece of architecture.
NF: Anna, you are participating in the Politeknico seminar on international architectural relations.
Anna Bronovitskaya: However, this seminar is about post-war modernism, not the 1920s - 1930s.
NF: It turns out that the topic of the interwar legacy and connections between masters of different countries is still waiting for research, judging by the fact that even obvious ties with the Germans are only planned to be studied within the framework of conferences in Como. But why is it so?
AB: The period of 1920-1930s for Italy is the theme of fascism, and therefore, until a certain time it was difficult to deal with the international relations of Italy under Mussolini. It was believed that it was a closed country during the entire period of the fascist regime (1922-1943), and no foreign ideas penetrated there. In the collection on the history of bilateral relations “Italy - USSR. Published in the late 1980s simultaneously in the USSR and Italy. Diplomatic Papers the period from 1924 to 1946 is simply missing. In 1924, the famous act on the establishment of diplomatic relations was published, and the next document is from the post-war years, as if nothing had happened in 22 years. We see the same in Italian studies of the 1970s and 1980s on the travels of Italians in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. The authors of these works write, with the exception of a small number of modern researchers, that travels at that time were isolated, and I, simply using the national electronic catalog of Italian libraries, found about 150 books of travelers of the fascist period: these are studies about Russia, travel notes or translations of foreign authors … Some of them have been reprinted several times, and not twice, but three or four. Apparently, ideological directives were the basis for such a strange interpretation.
SC: Giuseppe Terragni dreamed of getting to Russia, but he got there only in 1941, together with the Italian army, where he volunteered, he fought at Stalingrad. It is known that a rather large array of his sketches, made at the front, remained: he was an artillery officer and therefore had the opportunity to work as an architect in his spare time. However, it is quite difficult to get into the family archives in order to study them.
AB: In those years, there were not many Soviet travelers in Italy, but they published reports on their trips. Therefore, there were several publications about the modern architecture of Italy in the 1920s and 1930s: it was followed quite closely, despite the changing political attitude.
NF: As we understood from your lecture at the Higher School of Economics, in the interwar years, the Italian press did not widely publish modern Soviet architecture.
AB: Soviet architecture began to be published quite late, but I don't know how much it was dictated only by ideological motives. Until 1928, when Domus, Casabella and Rasseña di Arcitetura appeared, there were practically no international architecture magazines in Italy, apart from Arcitetura e Arti Decorate. The rest of the magazines published rather conservative projects, that is, they did not even publish the avant-garde projects of Italian architects. In 1925, a turning point occurs, interest in foreign countries arises: at the international exhibition in Paris, the Italian pavilion is next to the USSR pavilion designed by Konstantin Melnikov, which makes a great impression. However, extensive publications appear only in 1929. However, we cannot say that until 1925 the Italians did not know Russian constructivism, because many read the German magazines that published their projects, subscribed to them, because there were no libraries in the libraries - in contrast to the USSR, where state purchases were carried out until a certain point. foreign literature, but it was difficult to subscribe privately.
SC: If we return to the key plot of the conference - the similarity between the Zuev Golosov House of Culture and Terragni's Novokomum, then Terragni, then a very young architect, he was born in 1904, saw Golosov's project and used his solution for his apartment building. For the first time, the project of the Palace of Culture named after Zuev was shown at the 1st exhibition of modern architecture, which was organized by the Constructivists in 1927. The first publication was in the magazine Construction of Moscow, which included a report from this exhibition. After that, there were many foreign publications, primarily German ones, which came to Terragni.
NF: But until what point were these ties maintained? Really before the outbreak of World War II?
AB: Judging by the magazine "Kazabella", "Architecture of the USSR" entered Italy, because in the section "foreign news" they constantly published notes from "Architecture of the USSR" until the beginning of 1938, criticizing neoclassicism, and on the pages of "Urban studies" one can find publications of Soviet urban planning projects - perhaps not directly from Soviet magazines, but reprinted from other foreign sources.
AB: In the Russian Cultural Center in Milan, I saw all the issues of "Architecture of the USSR" before the war. It is unlikely that they were brought after the war; most likely, they were already there.
AB: I studied the documents from the correspondence of the Italian embassy in Moscow, and on the eve of the completion of the master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow, Italy received a request: to send materials on the road network, the device of tramways in Rome - similar technical literature.
AB: Surely on their famous trip to Europe, graduate students of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR brought some publications with them to Italy in 1935.
AB: The graduate students then joined the Soviet delegation that went to Rome for the XIII International Congress of Architects. And the delegation brought books: a brochure "Plan for the reconstruction of Moscow" in three languages, as well as publications of the Academy of Architecture of the USSR - "Architecture of Post-War Italy" by Lazar Rempel, "Aristotle Fioravanti", "Renaissance Ensembles" by Bunin and Kruglova, a translation of Alberti's treatise and a brochure of quite propagandistic character "Conversations on Architecture" by Ivan Matz.
NF: Rempel's book is completely unique: an edition about the latest architecture of Italy at that time.
AB: It is unique in view of the circumstances: it was planned to publish a series of monographs on modern architecture of different countries, but only Italy was released. Rempel writes in his memoirs that he was supposed to write it with Hannes Meyer and Ivan Matza, but they had their own affairs, and he wrote it alone. As far as I understand, he wrote it from notes on Italian architecture in German magazines: I came across illustrations in German magazines, which were then used in the book.
NF: One goal of the Como conference is to eliminate the vacuum in the discussion of international cultural relations, to some extent initially ideological, associated with the totalitarian period and the difficult attitude towards it in the following decades. And the second goal, the broader intention of the creators of MAARC, to which the conference should draw attention, is to turn Casa del Fasho Terragni into a museum of contemporary art, into a kind of modern public space.
And this story looks very sharp: on the one hand, the silence, reflecting the complexity of the problem of dealing with the period of fascism even after decades, on the other hand, the easy transformation of the totalitarian regime, which did not change its function in essence, into an art museum. The administrative building, first the local department of the fascist party, then the tax office, will suddenly open its doors as a pleasant public space for the exhibition of contemporary art. This question is also about the attitude towards heritage.
This is especially interesting because the Germans are only now planning to remove the bushes in front of the "House of Art" in Munich, which Rem Koolhaas liked to talk about, since they worked out their past and now feel that it is possible to use the structure of the Nazi regime according to its function without any equivocations. And in Italy there was no official, large-scale condemnation of fascism …
AB: It is worth noting that Terragni tried in his project Casa del Fasho to create a metaphor for Mussolini's expression that fascism is a glass house where anyone can enter.
NF: At the same time, Casa del Fasho has long become a symbol of the architecture of the modern movement, not only of Italian rationalism, but also of international modernism in general.
AB: We are talking about this while in Russia. Our experience of the totalitarian past took place to a much lesser extent. How is the position of the Soviet Union different? We won the war, but Italy together with Germany lost. I have a rather vague idea of Mussolini's regime, I understand that it is very difficult to compare the degree of this kind of evil, but it seems to me that in terms of the level of "villainy" of the regime, Mussolini's one was very far behind Hitler and Stalin. And that is why, probably, in Italy this transition to post-war life was softer.
SK: In 1943, Mussolini was removed from his post and arrested, Italy withdrew from the war. Moreover, after the liberation of Mussolini by Hitler, half of Italy was occupied. The regime may have been villainous, but Italians find it much easier to ignore it.
AB: On the other hand, in the current global situation, Mussolini's relative moderation is precisely the danger. When I saw the video projection on the facade of this monument - "80 years of Casa del Fasho", I felt sick. Nobody will say: let's make a new Hitler. Only freaks say: let's make a new Stalin. But a modern figure close to Mussolini is much easier to imagine. Moreover, it seems to me that the Mussolini regime was not truly totalitarian. It is an astonishing case - Olivetti built the avant-garde, socially-oriented corporate city of Ivrea. No traces of the regime's evil are visible there, because the control completely belonged to a well-meaning private person, and no one prevented him from implementing his project. In the Soviet Union, this degree of autonomy was not possible.
NF: The Nazis also had architectural censorship, which even affected private housing construction: at least, street facades had to look "traditional".
AB: Of course, in Italy there was some formal censorship regarding buildings built with public money and there were recommendations for private construction, but Marcello Piacentini, one of the key architects of the regime, built himself a beautiful rationalistic villa. Giuseppe Bottai, who was responsible for the cultural policy of Italy for many decades, until the 1940s, wrote about Germany, where modernism was replaced by neoclassicism, with condemnation, because modernism is the art of a fascist regime, a modern regime, and Italians are especially sensitive to art. Even in his war diaries, he writes: how Soviet art is similar to German art, how awful it is, how tasteless it is. And when in 1938 the prominent fascist figure Roberto Farinacci established the Cremona Prize for art, applicants for which were supposed to submit huge didactic canvases, Bottai instituted in 1939 the Bergamo Prize for completely abstract topics, the first laureate of which was Mario Maffai for his painting Models in workshop”, written in a very free manner. Among its laureates was Renato Guttuso, a well-known anti-fascist. And throughout the fascist period, modernist art developed.
NFWhy historicism, which to one degree or another became the official style of the USSR and Germany, did not take root in Italy under Mussolini?
AB: Because he was too associated with the eclecticism of the pre-war period, 1910s. In Italy, Art Nouveau was not widespread, and therefore a magnificent academic style was associated with the reign of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, who was a political enemy of Mussolini. In contrast, under Mussolini, they were looking for a synthesis of ancient, classical architecture with modern - because architecture was supposed to express the idea of the modernity of fascism.
NF: But at the same time, no style was implanted - or not? Could Adriano Olivetti build a factory and a colonnaded city, eclectic? I understand that he also had modern values, and the architecture expressed this. But in principle - did he have the freedom to build a city in historical styles?
AB: There was an example, Tor Viscosa is a corporate city not far from Venice, and the customer, SNIA Viscosa, is also a large Italian company of those years. But this is not Stalinist Empire style or historicism, it is red brick, marble columns, marble sculpture, rather laconically. Once in the archives I came across instructions on the design of Italian schools abroad: eclectic decor in the style of the 19th century was prohibited.
NF: It turns out that almost everything could be done, except for absolutely magnificent eclecticism. If we return to the liberality of the artistic taste of the Mussolini regime, then we can assume that this is a reflection of its, in general, not as totalitarian as in Germany and the USSR.
AB: I would say - not liberalism, but omnivorous. Because futurism also claimed to be a fascist style. And Marinetti condemned the organization of the exhibition "Degenerate Art" in Germany, which showed as negative examples of the work of modernist artists condemned by the Nazi regime.
AB: We must also remember that Mussolini came to power much earlier than Hitler and Stalin, in 1922, so he managed to identify with his early associates. For Stalin, the Russian vanguard was Trotsky's comrades-in-arms.
SC: Stalin came to power in 1929, Hitler in 1933. Naturally, aesthetically, they opposed themselves to their predecessors. Mussolini, who came to power much earlier, contrasted his style of government - as more progressive - with belle epoque, art nouveau or liberty, as it was called in Italy.
AB: Throughout the 1930s, a common thread runs the idea that a style of fascist architecture should be created. The expression arte fascista, fascist art, is 1926. But regarding the official style of architecture, this topic arises in connection with the competition for the 1934 Littorio Palace.
NF: Continuing to criticize German and Soviet architecture as a tasteless imitation of the classics, Italians nevertheless joined the trend of finding an official style. And after the Second World War, they immediately turned to free, original modernism - that is, very quickly an allergy arose to what was done in the interwar period, and they decided to be cured of it with silence.
AB: Yes, the architecture of Mussolini's regime was not explored until the 1980s.
AB: But at the same time, most of the buildings built then are fully used. The official Mussolinian style is absolutely recognizable, it cannot be confused with anything. You can see these municipal services, post offices, Pension Fund offices in every city, they all work. In Berlin, the Reich Chancellery was demolished, although it was not easy to do. Or the Munich House of Art - just now they are going to remove the trees covering its facade.
AB: There was a moment in Italy when they thought what to do with the EUR area - to demolish it? But then they decided to finish building, and found a reason: there was an agricultural exhibition of 1953, it was for it that the buildings already started earlier were completed in the same style as it was conceived under Mussolini.
NF: How do these buildings "live" - in everyday life, in the perception of people?
AB: On the one hand, in Italy, according to the law on cultural heritage, all buildings over 50 years old become monuments. And in order to do something with such a building, it must be removed from the vault of these monuments. The Via dei Fori Imperiali, built by Mussolini, which runs through the Roman imperial forums, is very much criticized. But it cannot be dismantled, because it has already become a monument: it was opened in 1932, respectively, since 1982 it is a historical monument. But it cannot be said that there is no ideological problem at all. The ATRIUM "Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes of the 20th century in Europe's Urban Memory" Association, which is engaged in the revalorization of the 1930s heritage and finds funds for the restoration of these buildings, is periodically accused of aestheticizing these objects that you need to understand that this is the legacy of the regime, and not just beautiful architecture.
AB: But its participants talk about the legacy of the regime. Their route through the totalitarian monuments of Europe begins in Forlì - practically, the hometown of Mussolini, he was born in a village nearby and was very concerned about its reconstruction. Of course, in their activities there is a certain aestheticization, but, in my opinion, all the points are set quite clearly.
In general, this is similar to what Maria Silina does in relation to Stalinist art. All historical and social meanings and circumstances are taken into account, architecture is studied as part of it all. All relationships in a totalitarian society are ideological. From my point of view, another approach is also possible. Architects are victims of the regime just like everyone else. The people at whose expense it was all delivered have already suffered, but we are left with these buildings. You can value them both as monuments to those who had the misfortune to live at this time in this place, and as architecture that took place in such monstrous circumstances. I wonder which of the architects was in solidarity with the authorities, and which did not. We already know about some of them from private documents or family stories that they terribly hated the authorities, but at the same time they fully cooperated. Probably, it is normal when these layers of research run in parallel - studies of history, ideology and architecture itself. It is unnatural to condemn this architecture on the grounds that it was created by a terrible regime.
NF: Maria is a pioneer in the sense that she is developing a very difficult topic of the specific circumstances of the work of artists in a totalitarian society. They are indeed victims. But I myself have come across the fact that the "transition to personalities" causes rejection: how can a wonderful N be a totalitarian master, why do you write him there? Although he successfully worked for the regime, he received Stalinist prizes. Fans of socialist realism do not want to think about who, how, under what circumstances created these buildings and these canvases.
AB: We do not have a tradition of analyzing a problem from a certain historical distance.
AB: This historical distance - is it stretching or shrinking? I tried to study Stalinist architecture right after university. I had a diploma about pre-revolutionary neoclassicism, and I started writing a dissertation on cinemas of the 1930s, I was interested in how this historicism began to "work" again. And then I was faced with the fact that it was impossible: in that post-Soviet situation it was too hot a topic, a lot of suffering was associated with it. I thought that in 20 years all this would go out, become irrelevant, and then it would be possible to study this heritage. But I was wrong, because after 20 years a situation arose with VDNKh. When we defended this ensemble from redevelopment, I said: look what an interesting architecture, although, of course, built in cannibalistic interests. And then it suddenly turned out that there was no historical distance, that all this could be used for its intended purpose to express ideological meanings close to the original, a kind of "imperial ideology." Maybe due to the fact that this historical period is not reflected, its legacy lends itself to reuse, and for the same reason it does not lend itself to impartial study, because if you write about this architecture, you seem to agree with its ideas and meanings as if you support them.
NF: For example, reviews sometimes appear on foreign exhibitions of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s, where the author urges: "Do not forget that it was a terrible regime, that these beautiful, incredible works are the product of that regime and the people who supported it in one way or another." With regard to avant-garde artists, this is fairly true, but it is still very insulting for this art.
AB: And what was the moral character of the popes for whom Michelangelo worked, and what does this tell us about the quality of the artistic products created by their order?
NF: But it was created not only for the glory of the popes, but also for the very institution of the Catholic Church.
AB: And then imagine the institution of the Catholic Church in the 16th century from the point of view of the Germans who staged the Reformation - including the way that church took in the Renaissance. But at some point this ceases to matter for the perception of art.
NF: It turns out that the 20th century has hardly been reflected yet, especially if we take into account the current political situation in many countries of the world. That is, chronologically those events are postponed, but the historical distance, on the contrary, is shrinking. I remember when you, Anna, wrote your diploma and dissertation, the topic of fascism caused great excitement among Moscow professors.
AB: As I understand it, it was a concern that since these art and architecture are being investigated, it means that they like them, so they want to set them as an example. I, of course, had no such intention. I wanted to understand what was happening in the architecture of Italy under Mussolini, because in the early 2000s nothing but the articles of A. V. Ikonnikov, on this topic was not. And then, quite by accident, I found Rempel's book, Architecture of Post-War Italy, 1935, in the library. And the last date of issue was marked there: 1961, and the sculptor Oleg Komov took it.
NF: That is, the professors put an equal sign: study is rehabilitation. That is, you can't even touch this topic in any way.
AB: But this applies to officially condemned fascism. To the Stalinist architecture one could only hear some kind of "Fu, how can you do this." Although I don't think that in the 1960s or 1970s anyone could defend a thesis on the 1930s. As in Germany, where the process of reworking the past was just beginning then.
AB: Another important point: in our country, even in a professional environment, you can hear that Zholtovsky is a good architect, and Ginzburg is a bad architect - only because he built in the mainstream of constructivism. In general, such attempts at comparison, as well as their result, seem strange.
AB: This is connected with another of our problems: the entire system of domestic aesthetic education after Stalin was never dismantled.
NF: In other words, after the revival of the School of Fine Arts, Ecole de Beauzar, based on the Moscow Architectural Institute in the 1930s.
AB: I mean not only architects, but also an ordinary high school. Until recently, and maybe even now, we are taught like in a gymnasium at the end of the 19th century: this system was restored under Stalin, and it did not disappear anywhere either in the 1960s or in the 1970s. Khrushchev said: "As far as art is concerned, I am a Stalinist." And in all school textbooks the same Itinerants were reproduced. And, most importantly, the very method of teaching drawing is passed down from generation to generation with the same tastes, with the same ideas: the more it looks like reality, the better. And in architecture it is the same: with columns it is better than without columns.
But it still seems to me that now the public is much more omnivorous and open due to the horizontal spread of culture through social networks: it is no longer possible to exercise such control and impose taste in such a way as under totalitarianism. Another thing is that the taste itself will not develop much. However, all genres and trends have a sufficient number of fans. If there are people willing to go on excursions to typical microdistricts, then everything is possible.
