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Even in the delicate phase of the first post-war years – in a phase which represented a turning point in the art system after the collapse of the system supported by the fascist regime – the presence of women artists in the Roman art scene appears considerable. But who were they? And how did the art critics respond to their work? Was it any difference in the reception of the artworks of abstract and figurative women artists? Focusing on the art criticism of that time, we can recognise both the topoi and new narratives adopted to talk about their artworks, and some prejudices on femininity.  It will be equally interesting to stress the discrepancies between the consideration that involved their work in the years under review and their subsequent critical fortune. The cases of Antonietta Raphaël, Pasquarosa, and Nwarth Zarian exemplify the various degrees of appreciation – ranging from long-term recognition to more or less long oblivion, sometimes interrupted by recent rediscoveries – experienced by women artists.  Concerning the period between 1944 and 1955, this paper aims to offer some new elements to consider the hard path undertaken in this decade, even by the few women artists still celebrated today for their artistic value, such as Carla Accardi and Bice Lazzari. At the same time, it will give the opportunity to have a more complex view of the Roman art scene, bringing back attention to the frequently omitted presence of women artists and their valuable contributions.&nbsp

The text analyzes the work by Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti at the turn of the Seventies and Eighties, it is focused on her critical and intellectual activity related to art and feminism. These last, unlike what happened in Carla Lonzi and Lea Vergine, coexisted effectively and stubbornly in the thought of Sauzeau, who traced a third critical path compared to them. In this text are analysed her numerous contributions published on specialized press, like Data magazine, movement magazine and general press, from Il Manifesto to the broadcast for RadioTre. It is examinated also the role she had at the publishing house Edizioni delle donne, that she contributed to found in 1974 (the first issue was “L’occupazione fu bellissima”, 1976). In both those experiences Anne Marie Sauzeau Boetti did a fundamental work. Through a language and writing able to transmitting a deep and manifold thought, infact she was the one who updated the Italian art system about the teorethical debate on feminism, informing and bringing in Italy what was happening on the international scene and she employeed her critical work in support of her contemporary women artists (such as Elisa Montessori, Marisa Merz and Carla Accardi). Until arriving at the beginning of the Eighties, to suggest a possible way to read the works of female artists of the past.

Griselda Pollock, author of the seminal book Vision and Difference (1988), is among the most influential voices of critical reflection on the representation and presence of women in art and in its history. Her rigorous research path through the practices and institutions of art which in the museum has found a place for confrontation and verification for a thought that declares itself to be "feminist" and "situated”. Encounters on the Virtual feminist museum (2007) is a complex cartography of the extensive investigation that Pollock has been conducting for years on the museum institution and its dynamics of exclusion and integration, on the processes of fetishization and the construction of memory that affect art of women, a critical itinerary that also crosses the question of the archive and the figure of the atlas. It is in the light of this theoretical framework that Pollock then analyzed the reception of the artists' work and their museum destiny in individual cases: The missing future: Moma and modern women, published in the collective volume Modern Women. Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art (2010), follows that setting, for instance. The essay aims to analyze the theoretical knots of Griselda Pollock's feminist museological reflection and its influence on the debate that today affects the social role and the ethical, as well as cultural, value of the museum.

Giorgio Manganelli and Achille Bonito Oliva draw a productive and luminous theoretical and textual constellation of conceptual intersections, guided by joining the Gruppo 63 which marks the broad orbit of a common operational space - the incipit of an itinerary covered from different locations «through the avant-gardes».   The oblique, cross-eyed and mannerist gaze that nourishes the critical operations of Bonito Oliva - Don Giovanni of Italian art criticism of the last half century - is reflected by the elusiveness and histrionics, the ambiguity and the artifice of the Manganelli’s works. The essay, reflecting on some theoretical nodes that attract the two writers - mannerism, falsehood, metamorphosis, nomadism, to name a few - tries to set up a «parallel reading» that allows the echo of Manganelli's literary research to emerge in the «criticism ad art» by Bonito Oliva.

Indagine sul rapporto intercorso tra il collezionista Vittorio Cini e lo storico dell'arte Bernard Berenson, attraverso l'analisi di materiale edito e inedito, lettere, fotografie e resoconti di viaggio.

Il contributo analizza e ricostruisce alcune le vicende e il dibattito che ha coinvolto la critica d'arte italiana fra gli anni sessanta e settanta, ponendo l'accento sul convegno Teorie e pratiche della critica d’arte, organizzato da Pier Luigi Tazzi ed Egidio Mucci fra il 1977 e 1978, poi sintomaticamente nominato "critica 0", da leggersi come numero zero, alludendo a un azzeramento della critica o a un nuovo avvio; oppure come vocale disgiuntiva. La restituzione del convegno, degli interventi è posta in dialogo con le animante vicende critiche del decennio precedente, sottolineando la contrapposizione sempre più evidente fra gli artisti e i critici e il cambio metodologico a cui la critica era chiamata.

Che differenza c'è fra un'immagine e un progetto artistico? L’arte può cambiare un individuo? In questo saggio l'autore conduce il lettore lungo l'arco che si tende fra il gesto dell'artista e lo sguardo dello spettatore. Riflessioni e domande costruiscono un percorso critico che permette di accostarsi in modo semplice al mistero poetico custodito in ogni opera d'arte, per ricordare come essa sia una sintesi spontanea capace di trasformare un'immagine esemplare in universale., What is the relationship between a group of Eskimos and an egg? What needs push mankind to conserve a special memory? What is the difference between an image and the design of an image? How can you choose without judging? Through a few simple questions, accumulated by analyzing the history of art transversally, it is possible to get closer to the poetic mystery preserved in every artistic project.

In light of the intense critical debate on the role of Giulio Carlo Argan that has been recently increasing (Gamba, 2009; 2012; Dantini, 2013), my proposal aims at studying the specific perspective of Filiberto Menna about the design. Thought he started his career embracing the lesson of Argan, he achieved an autonomous stance which aimed at harmonizing “rules” and “chances”, “freedom” and “constraints” (Menna, 1970). The studies on the theory of architecture, the design, and the italian “arte programmata” have been the subject matter of the Menna’s analysis since 1962. At that time, he published his first investigations about design remarking that the design is a “specialized project of human environment”. The Argan’s lesson concerning the school of Bauhaus emphasized the moral aspect of the design, and, more in general, the failure of the avant-garde utopian project. Filiberto Menna has never openly contested the Argan perspective although his stance has not been comparable to that of the master. As a matter of fact, by comparing the numerous essays by Argan (p. ex. “Progetto e destino” wrote in 1964) and those by Menna (p. ex. “Design d’ambiente” wrote in 1968), it’s evident that the old master was keeping on thinking to the “project” as a “structure” while Menna has brought forward the design matter into the post-industrial society. The Menna thought about the design is connected to an issue that plays a central role in all his works and it is broadly explained in the book Profezia di una società estetica, published in 1968, and in the preface of the second edition thereof (1983). Menna considers that the problem is the “disentanglement of the artistic issue from the aesthetic one” and the design could constitute a solution. In the Menna’s essays, the major investigation focuses on the problem of the subject that is no longer founded on an ontological basis but, at the same time, it doesn’t give up “reconstructing itself on temporary, unstable, ephemeral bases”

Edizione critica delle Memorie per servire alla storia de' scultori, pittori e architetti milanesi di Antonio Francesco Albuzzi, la prima storia mai tentata sulle antiche scuole artistiche di Milano, parzialmente redatta nella seconda metà del Settecento e rimasta manoscritta. Con ampio commento introduttivo, apparato di note critiche e documenti inediti pubblicati in appendice.

Atti del convegno dedicato a Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri, storiografo, direttore e ispettore museale a Milano e Bologna.

Vengono ricostruiti gli anni centrali della rivista "Rassegna d'arte", caratterizzati dalla direzione di Guido Cagnola e Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri. Di quest'ultimo sono presentati i carteggi con Corrado Ricci e lo stesso Cagnola.