The initial setting for the exhibition “Terragni and Voices: Novokomum, Como - Club named after Zueva, Moscow. Similarities and parallels in the avant-garde”became the similarity - noticed even at the time of the construction of the Italian house - of these buildings by Giuseppe Terragni and Ilya Golosov in the late 1920s, more precisely, the presence here and there of an angular composition with a cylinder. However, for the curators, Alessandro De Magistris (Polytechnic University of Milan) and Anna Vyazemtseva (University of Insubria - NIITIAG), the main thing was not to clarify the fact whether or not the Northern Italian architect borrowed the idea of a Moscow master. Most likely, it was not, but this is not essential: it is much more important - and more exciting - to outline a broad picture of the ties between the two countries in the 1920s and early 1930s, when the international exchange of ideas and images was very active. Italy as a vis-a-vis Russia in this case is especially interesting, since its development, both political and artistic, proceeded according to its own schedule and with its own characteristics. The fascist regime was established there already in 1922, but the idea of state art emerged much later, and the official style was never as comprehensive and uniform as in Nazi Germany or in the Stalinist USSR. If the ties of Berlin and Paris with Moscow were so many-sided and multidirectional that even the famous exhibitions gave only a general panorama of them, then in the case of Italy there were fewer key contacts, and therefore it is easier to outline them. This is the trip of the founder of futurism Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to Moscow and St. Petersburg before the First World War, the participation of the USSR in the Venice Biennale in 1924, the exposition of Konstantin Melnikov (without the participation of the author, who was not released to Italy) in 1933 at the Milan Triennial, the 13th International Congress of Architects in 1935 in Rome, where an official delegation arrived from Moscow, as well as the book by Lazar Rempel "The Architecture of Post-War Italy" of the same year - the world's first monograph on the architecture of this country of Mussolini's time, published outside its borders. Between the two wars, there were trips of Italian intellectuals to the USSR, who then published, according to Anna Vyazemtseva's calculations, about 150 books about their impressions, and visits to Italy by Soviet architects and artists. Mutual interest in each other's work was always very high, and a common information field was also created by publications in journals of third countries, for example, German, and parallel visits by Italian and Soviet architects to certain events abroad, for example, the Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927 …
In such a situation, it is understandable why conservative Italian critics accused Giuseppe Terragni for his design of the Novokomum apartment building in the center of Como in imitation of “Bolshevik” architecture - they had a good idea of the projects of the Russian avant-garde. They were driven by a desire to hit the stylistic opponent harder, accusing him, in fact, of political unreliability. However, as the exhibition, as well as the documentary film prepared for it, with the participation of leading Italian and Russian avant-garde researchers, there is no reason to "convict" Terragny of imitating Golosov: such a composition could have appeared at that moment in a drawing by a German or French architect, there is nothing in it, tying her exclusively to Moscow (although Ilya Golosov followed his own, completely individual path to the project of the Zuev club). The subject of the exhibition was the cultural atmosphere of the era, which made such formal roll calls possible, given the very large differences between the two authors and the two buildings in all other respects. Terragni, a young architect with good connections, which allowed him to bring to life the incredibly bold and uncompromising modernist projects for Italy of those times - and Golosov, an experienced architect with his own theoretical base, who managed to work "in styles" until 1917, and in the 1930s fruitfully designed in the spirit of heritage development. Residential house for wealthy people "Novokomum" near the embankment of Lake Como, continuing the same construction in the forms of eclecticism - and the workers' club named after the participant of the 1905 revolution Zuev, commissioned by trade unions, a new functional type for a new society. Actually the cylinder - in one case, the living rooms of "comfortable" apartments, in the other - the main staircase. The Italian avant-garde, which merged into the official art (Terragni then also uncompromisingly fulfilled important state orders, part of the exposition of the capital
"Exhibitions of the Fascist Revolution" for the 10th anniversary of the "March to Rome", and Casa del Fasho in Como, "House of Fascism", in fact - a city committee of the party), and the domestic avant-garde … At the same time, in both cases we can talk about totalitarian art, to discuss the topic of the relevance and preservation of avant-garde monuments today, the connection between their preservation and their positive perception by society, as well as about a broader than the state and national context in which there are “cultural objects”: their binding to a specific geographical point or the region only impoverishes them, and the opposite approach does not in the least deprive them of uniqueness.
All these problems are raised in one way or another at the exhibition, but, of course, the main role there is still played by the two buildings in the name. Various drawings and archival photographs for Novokomum were provided by the Terragna Archive, while basic materials for the club. Zuev came from the Museum of Architecture. A. V. Shchusev, where the exhibition will be shown this fall, another source was the RGALI. It is interesting that in both Russian collections directly to the exhibition, never-before-published sheets of Golosov's project were discovered, which demonstrates a paradoxical thing: despite decades of keen interest in the Russian avant-garde (and opportunities for its study that were unrestrained after 1991), even such key monuments like a club to them. Zuev, are far from being exhaustively studied.
The current state of both buildings is presented in the photo project
Roberto Conte (2016–2019): his photographs clearly show the affinity of their formal language, in fact, the common European one.
Separately, I would like to note the participation in the exhibition project
Made In MAARC is a non-profit association for the preservation and promotion of the heritage of abstraction and rationalism in Como. Its president, architect Ebe Gianotti, came up with the idea for the exhibition, she also acted as its coordinator, and another participant of Made In MAARC, Giovanna Saladanna, was the designer. The exposition is housed in an exhibition hall - a former church - San Pietro in Atrio.
Finally, I would like to once again mention the film shot for the exhibition (script - Anna Vyazemtseva, shooting - Anton Ovcharov), where the issues raised by the curators become the subject of live - albeit “remote” - discussion by leading Russian and Italian researchers. As the creators plan, later the tape will be available for viewing on the network.
The exhibition will run until June 30
(San Pietro in Atrio, Via Odescalchi, Tuesday-Sunday 10:30 - 19:30).
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zooming 1/3 Exhibition in Como “Terragni and Voices: Novokomum, Como - Club named after Zueva, Moscow. Similarities and parallels in the forefront »Photo © Anton Ovcharov
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zooming 2/3 Exhibition in Como “Terragni and Voices: Novokomum, Como - Club them. Zueva, Moscow. Similarities and parallels in the forefront »Photo © Anton Ovcharov
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zooming 3/3 Exhibition in Como “Terragni and Voices: Novokomum, Como - Club them. Zueva, Moscow. Similarities and parallels in the forefront »Photo © Anton Ovcharov