Plastic Values: Mario Broglio’s artistic group
The Valori Plastici artistic group, founded by Mario Broglio in 1918, represents a decisive turning point in 20th-century Italian art. Born as a reaction to the avant-garde movements, the group promoted a return to form, classicism, and spirituality in imagery, marking the rebirth of figurative tradition in a modern key.
Origins of the Valori Plastici group
The historical context
At the end of World War I, there was a widespread need in Europe to restore order, balance, and spirituality in art. In Italy, this sentiment took shape through Mario Broglio, a painter, critic, and intellectual who founded the magazine Valori Plastici in Rome in 1918.
The magazine as the hub of the movement
The magazine – published between 1918 and 1921 – soon became the group’s main vehicle for disseminating its aesthetic ideas. It featured essays, programmatic manifestos, and critical analyses promoting:
-a return to drawing as the foundation of art,
-attention to plastic and volumetric form,
-the rediscovery of the great masters of the past (Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Masaccio),
-and a spiritual and meditative vision of the work of art.
Mario Broglio: the promoter of “new values”
Mario Broglio was the theoretical and organizational soul of Valori Plastici. Together with his wife Edita Walterowna, also an artist, his goal was to form a new Italian artistic consciousness, free from both the frenzy of Futurism and the excessive abstraction of the European avant-garde.
Broglio conceived of a “pure,” essential art that would combine modernity and tradition, spirituality and formal rigor. This vision attracted some of the greatest artists of the time.
The artists of the Valori Plastici group
Among the protagonists of the movement are key figures in the history of 20th-century Italian art:
Giorgio de Chirico
The founding painter of Metaphysical Art, De Chirico profoundly influenced the Valori Plastici group with his suspended atmospheres, classical architecture, and return to formal solidity, becoming an essential reference point for Italian Neoclassicism.
Carlo Carrà
After his Futurist phase, Carrà adhered to the principles of a return to order. His metaphysical and then classical painting style integrated perfectly with the aesthetics of Valori Plastici, emphasizing balance, proportion, and rigorous composition.
Alberto Savinio
Fratello di De Chirico, artista poliedrico e visionario, Savinio portò nel movimento una componente letteraria e simbolica. Le sue opere uniscono mito, ironia e classicità reinterpretata con linguaggio moderno.
Giorgio Morandi
One of the greatest interpreters of 20th-century Italian art, Morandi perfectly embodies “plastic values” thanks to his essential still lifes, meditated upon and constructed with rigorous attention to form and light.
Felice Casorati
Casorati contributed to the climate of return to order with his rational and clear painting. Figures, portraits, and geometric compositions reflect a modern, suspended, and architectural classicism, perfectly in line with the group’s poetics.
While maintaining their own stylistic autonomy, these artists shared a common idea: the need for art without frills, based on form, calm, and moderation.
The aesthetic principles of Plastic Values (Valori Plastici)
The group’s program was based on a few fundamental principles:
Back to tradition
The return to tradition represents the theoretical core of Valori Plastici. The movement does not propose a simple revival of past models, nor an exercise in nostalgic imitation. On the contrary, it looks to the history of Italian art as a reservoir of perennial values, valid in every era: balance, measure, harmony of composition, rational construction of forms.
The artists of the group—from Morandi to Carrà—reinterpret these principles with modern language, demonstrating that dialogue with the masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Masaccio) can generate a new contemporary classicism. The past thus becomes a foundation rather than a constraint, a model of rigor and spirituality capable of opposing the instability of the avant-garde.
The centrality of plastic form
The aesthetic research of Valori Plastici attaches great importance to plastic form, understood as the essential structure of the image. Every object represented must possess consistency, volume, and solidity, as if sculpted in space.
Form becomes the generating element of the work, and every superfluous detail is eliminated to bring out the purity of geometric and luministic relationships. This approach leads to measured, clear compositions, constructed with an almost architectural balance. In an era dominated by expressive deformations and cubist decompositions, Valori Plastici reaffirms the need for a form of painting that recognizes the role of form in guaranteeing the stability of the artistic image.
Spirituality of the image
The work is seen as a place for meditation, silence, and inner exploration. The aesthetic research of Valori Plastici attaches great importance to plastic form, understood as the essential structure of the image. Every object represented must possess consistency, volume, and solidity, as if sculpted in space.
Form becomes the generating element of the work, and every superfluous detail is eliminated to bring out the purity of geometric and luministic relationships. This approach leads to measured, clear compositions, constructed with an almost architectural balance. In an era dominated by expressive deformations and cubist decompositions, Valori Plastici reaffirms the need for a form of painting that recognizes the role of form in guaranteeing the stability of the artistic image.
Surpassing the avant-garde
One of the stated objectives of Valori Plastici was to surpass the avant-garde movements. For Mario Broglio and the artists involved, movements such as Futurism and Cubism were perceived as ephemeral phenomena, too closely linked to the fashion of the moment or the celebration of technological modernity.
The group proposed an alternative to the frenzy of Futurism and the fragmentation of Cubism: an art that could recover stability, durability, and universality. The return to tradition and the centrality of form were therefore interpreted as tools for bringing art back to its classical foundations, striking a balance between modernity and the past.
It was not a question of rejecting all innovation, but of constructing a more solid artistic language, capable of withstanding the test of time and offering a new visual order after the discontinuity of the historical avant-garde movements.
Plastic Values and the Return to Order
In the 1920s, many European movements, from German Neue Sachlichkeit to French Rappel à l’ordre, promoted a return to figurative art. Valori Plastici represented the Italian version of this phenomenon, also influencing the birth of Margherita Sarfatti’s Novecento Italiano.
The movement was not just an artistic interlude, but a true cultural bridge between the avant-garde and the stability of the new classicism.
Heritage and historical significance
Although the magazine and the group were short-lived, Valori Plastici had a lasting impact on Italian art:
it redefined the relationship between modernity and tradition, contributed to the consecration of artists such as Morandi and Carrà, and established new theoretical foundations for Magic Realism and 20th-century classicism.
Today, Valori Plastici is considered a key movement for understanding the transition from the avant-garde to the balanced and reflective modernity of the last century.
Conclusion
The Valori Plastici group, led by Mario Broglio (Piacenza, 1891 – San Michele di Moriano, 1948), represents a milestone in 20th-century Italian art. His search for order, spirituality, and formal solidity had a profound impact on the artistic landscape, offering a new way of reconciling innovation and tradition. In the historical panorama of art, Valori Plastici remains an emblematic example of how modernity can dialogue with the past in a fruitful and creative way.