Il culto del corpo tra figurazione ed astrazione: il colosso del Duce
The Cult of Body between Figuration and Abstraction: the Duce's Colossus
From shaping the Mount Athos in a portrait of Alexander the Macedonian, proposed by Dinocrates and described by Vitruvius, to the Colossus of Rhodes and its Neronian follower, repeatedly adapted to depict the raising dominus; from the Statue of Liberty to the Indian statue of Unity, passing through Mount Rushmore, the physical and dimensional exaltation of human body is a fundamental representation of power, especially in authoritarian regimes. The statue of Lenin on the top of the mighty mass of the Palace of the Soviets, first in Armando Brasini’s proposal (1932) and then in Boris Iofan’s project (1934), contributes to celebrating one of the autocracies of the 20th century through the use of the symbolic power of classical figuration and its inevitable hold on the collective imagery, setting aside the cold anti-rhetorical figurations of European Rationalism. In 1933, Renato Ricci, President of the National Balilla Opera, proposes to move the place of the Duce’s “epiphanies” from Piazza Venezia to the slopes of Monte Mario. The new vast Arengo delle Nazioni is expected to imitate Hitler’s oceanic gatherings directed by Albert Speer and Leni Riefenstahl in the Nuremberg Zeppelinfeld. The project is entrusted to the young Luigi Moretti, who has recently replaced Enrico Del Debbio in the role of coordinator of the interventions in the Foro Mussolini. The immense esplanade has in the background a bronze colossus depicting Hercules, a divinity connected to the birth of Rome, which would have obscured the anti-figurative marble monolith designed by Costantini and erected only a few years earlier, in 1932. Few documents survive of this project through which to understand the statue, 87 meters high, entrusted to the sculptor Aroldo Bellini and modeled directly on the body of Mussolini. The building-basement intended to house the materials of the famous Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, is instead the subject of an invitation competition endorsed by Ricci himself. The embargo following the invasion of Ethiopia in 1936 and the consequent autarkic regime freeze the work when only the head and one foot of the statue had been shaped. While waiting to resume the work, Mussolini’s body finds a second incarnation in his private gymnasium, conceived by Ricci and Moretti as a luxurious dress sewn onto the Duce’s body, in an extraordinary synthesis between figuration and abstraction.
06 Сентября 2021
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