The New Typography in Fascist Italy. Between Internationalism and the Search for a National Style

After the Second World War, it took art and architecture scholars a number of years to realise how the equations between style and politics (modernism = democracy; fascism = traditionalism and neoclassicism) were far removed from the complexity of historical reality. Today the situation is very different. Studies and exhibitions on art and design under totalitarian regimes have proliferated and the topic of “fascist modernism” has even been called an “academic fad”. As far as Italy is concerned, historians have long addressed the relationship between artists and architects and Mussolini’s regime. However, shifting one’s gaze from art and architecture to the field of design and graphics, it becomes apparent that there are still reservations about investigating the links between the work of designers and the political-ideological climate of the fascist period. The aim of this contribution is to reposition in a political perspective the debate that took place in the 1930s, between the traditionalists and modernists of typography, investigating in particular the contrast between internationalism and the search for a national style, often also identified as fascist.