Demolitions and the Roman School

Art works and artists chronicling the gutting of Rome and its transformation

Antonietta Raphael su Egidi MadeinItaly
Veduta dalla terrazza di Via Cavour

What do we mean by the demolitions of Rome?

The demolitions refer to the period of extreme “gutting” that Rome was subjected to from 1924 to 1940. 

The Italian government and the Holy See reached an agreement in 1935, putting in charge of the works the Governorate of Rome, which hired the architects Marcello Piacentini and Attilio Spaccarelli to plan suggested interventions.

Mussolini and Pope Pius XI approved their project, and the demolitions got under way.

The demolitions as seen through the eyes of the Roman School and Via Cavour School

The artists of the Roman School, especially those of the Via Cavour School, harbored a shared deep distaste for the idea of art as an expression of the fascist regime. 

They were eyewitnesses to the drastic changes that Rome was undergoing and used their art to immortalize the city as it was disappearing before their eyes with the evisceration of Rome’s historic center. 

Chronicle painting

The theme of the demolitions was approached as a type of “chronicle painting,” conveying feelings and impressions that told the story of a hidden, secret Rome, steeped in ancient myths and baroque sensibilities.

The demolitions were famously depicted in art works by Mario Mafai, Giovanni Omiccioli, Caterina Katy Castellucci, Eva Quajotto, and Afro Basaldella.

Their works present a melancholic Rome in its endless transformation, taking it towards modernity, a city at twilight on the verge of disappearing under the “renovating axe.”

Major artworks by the Roman School on the demolitions

The artists of the Roman School addressed the theme of the demolitions extensively. Many evocative works by the Roman School on the theme of the demolitions convey a deep sense of bittersweet nostalgia. 

The theme of demolitions in Rome

In the 1930s, Rome underwent exceptional urban expansion, mirroring the ideology of Fascist “Romanity.”

The areas around the Capitol, the archaeological area of the Republican Forum, the Imperial Forums, and parts of Renaissance and Baroque Rome, underwent major gutting. Demolitions removed the layers that had been added on the remnants of the classical age.

Many Roman artists living in Rome worked on urban landscape paintings that depict the destruction of the medieval city to make way for Fascist Rome. 

Among the most noteworthy of these painters were Orazio Amato, Orfeo Tamburi, Duilio Cambellotti, and Antonio Barrera. All of these artists witnessed the cultural and physical transformation of Rome.

Eva Quajotto

The works on the theme of the demolitions by Eva Quajotto (Mantua, 1903 – Vallerano, 1952) echoed the subjects of Mario Mafai.

Both bore witness to the urban transformations to which the fascist regime subjected Rome. 

Three of these works are Demolizioni a Piazza NavonaDemolizioni intorno all’Augusteo, Il Circo Massimo prima delle demolizioni. [Demolitions in Piazza Navona, Demolitions around the Augustan, The Circus Maximus before the Demolitions.]

Mario Mafai and the Demolitions

“These were Mafai’s ruins; they were not noble aqueducts or clusters of sulphureous columns, but humble little rooms that have been gutted, with tattered French wallpaper, the cone-shaped smoke of chimneys; they were broken rooms, still warm from having been lived in, to the point that it demands delicacy to peek at them, so eviscerated, from the outside.” Cesare Brandi

This is a description of the wonderful Demolizioni di via Giulia [Demolitions of Via Giulia] from 1936 by Mario Mafai.

It depicts the 1930s demolitions with which the fascist regime changed the layout forever, destroying the Spina dei Borghi and opening the way to the Imperial Forums. 

Scipione

Scipione was a member of the Via Cavour School who left us with this 1930s work, La via che porta a San Pietro [“The Street to St. Peter’s”] before the demolition of the Borghi, the present-day Via della Conciliazione.

Scipione su Egidi MadeinItaly
La via che porta a San Pietro

Giovanni Omiccioli

San Pietro prima delle Demolizioni della Spina dei Borgi [St. Peter’s before the Demolition of Spina dei Borgi] by Giovanni Omiccioli, dated 1934

In Rome, on October 28, 1936, demolition works began on the Spina dei Borghi, the name of the collection of buildings across from St. Peter’s Square. 

Giovanni Omiccioli’s painting (Rome, 1901-1975) clearly shows the section of the Borgo before the demolitions. 

Giovanni Omiccioli in vendita su Egidi MadeinItaly
Giovanni Omiccioli San Pietro prima delle Demolizioni

Orazio Amato

Orazio Amato (Anticoli, 1884 – Rome, 1952) was a prominent Italian painter between the wars. Our gallery features a beautiful portrait of a young girl signed Orazio Amato.

 

Orazio Amato su Egidi MadeinItaly
La meta sudante Orazio Amato

Antonio Barrera

Antonio Barrera, (Rome, 1889 – Forlì, 1970), was a Roman painter, a student of Pietro Gaudenzi. His art focused on representing the very specific historical period between the two world wars, the 1920s and 1950s in particular. 

The Roman painting landscape underwent profound changes in these years, and Barrera was closely involved in these changes. 

His works, especially the Roman landscapes painted between the 1940s and 1950s capture the daily life on the backdrop of monumental Rome, reflecting its social world in an era of great upheaval.

Antonio Barrera was a member of the Roman atelier with the artists Orazio Amato, Orfeo Tamburi, Carlo Alberto Petrucci, Duilio Cambellotti, and Diego Angeli.

Tina Tommasini 

Tina Tommasini (Treviso 1902 – 1985) painter, ceramist.

With her brother and sister, Anna Maria and Nino, she took painting lessons from Aldo Voltonin (1892–1918), the divisionist and impressionist painter.

In 1930 she settled in Rome. She and her sister Anna Maria specialized in the depiction of scenes in Rome before the 1930s demolitions.

Tina Tommasini su Egidi MadeinItaly
La spina di Borgo da Piazza Pia

 Antonio Donghi e il Ponte di Ferro

Scuola Romana su Egidi MadeinItaly
Antonio Donghi Il ponte di ferro ai Fiorentini

Where can we admire art works on the demolition of Rome?

At the exhibition in Rome Artiste a Roma percorsi tra secessione, futurismo e ritorno all’ordine [Women Artists in Rome: Paths of Seccession, Futurism, and the Return to Order], we can admire some of Eva Quajotto’s paintings of the demolitions. 

The exhibition Artiste a Roma [Women Artists in Rome] at the Casino dei Principi di Villa Torlonia, displays hundreds of works including paintings, sculptures, and photographs, covering the artistic creations of many women artists active in Roman cultural life in the early 20th century. These include members of the avant-garde and Futurism and Expressionism movements, spanning the 1920s to the post-World-War-II period. 

Permanent exhibition at Palazzo Braschi

The Museum of Rome has rooms about the city of Rome as seen through photographs, paintings, and artefacts that let us reconstruct monumental buildings and complexes that were layered over the centuries and demolished during the drastic changes to the urban fabric. These changes transformed the centuries-long image of the papal city starting in the late 19th century and becoming particularly intensive in the 1930s and 1940s. 

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