This book examines the work of several modern artists, including Fortunato Depero, Scipione, and Mario Radice, who were working in Italy during the time of Benito Mussolini's rise and fall. It provides a new history of the relationship between modern art and fascism. The study begins from the premise that Italian artists belonging to avant-garde art movements, such as futurism, expressionism, and abstraction, could produce works that were perfectly amenable to the ideologies of Mussolini's regime. A particular focus of the book is the precise relationship between ideas of history and modernity encountered in the art and politics of the time and how compatible these truly were.

Anthony White is Senior Lecturer in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Chapter 1 - Introduction: Modernism, Fascism and Cultural Rebirth; Chapter 2 - The Folk Machine: Fortunato Depero's Cloth Pictures, 1919 - 1927; Chapter 3 - The Men Who Turn Around: Scipione and Religion in 1930; Chapter 4 - Mario Radice: Abstraction and Architecture, 1934 - 2014; Chapter 5 - Conclusion: Recreations and the Fascist Age