Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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Further reading
Gundle, S. (1996) ‘The Rise and Fall of Craxi’s Socialist Party’, in S.Gundle and S.Parker (eds),
The New Italian Republic: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to Berlusconi, London: Routledge.
Hine, D. (1986) ‘The Craxi Premiership’, in R.Leonardi and R.Y.Nanetti (eds), Italian Politics: A
Review, vol. 1, London: Pinter.
JAMES WALSTON
crime
Like most countries, Italy is afflicted with a range of socially deviant and legally
delinquent behaviour that comes under the heading of crime, understood as non-
conformity to a given set of norms accepted by a significant number of people in a
community. However, even if the international notoriety achieved by the mafia has
tended to suggest that Italy is a country controlled by criminals, and in spite of Italy being
undoubtedly afflicted with its own share of political corruption, white-collar crime, street
delinquency and property crime, comparative statistics suggest that the incidence of
crime in Italy is slightly below average for comparable countries of the European Union
and the Western world. In 1994 the international crime statistics of Interpol relegated
Italy to fourteenth place, with about 4,000 crimes committed per 100,000 population,
well behind countries like Sweden (over 12,000), Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands
(each about 10,000), Germany, France and the United States (each between 6,000 and
8,000). However, the systematic comparison of crimes like murder, theft, burglary and
sexual deviance remains unreliable due to different methods of making inquiries and
different forms of calculation as well as changes in the reference period. Nevertheless,
crime in Italy might be considered under the following headings.
Organized crime
Organized crime refers both to the activity and to the formal structure of interactions
between individuals involved. Although the Sicilian mafia is the best-known organized
criminal association in Italy—and with good reason since, as the Mani pulite (Clean
Hands) investigations showed, there were very strong and extensive links between the
mafia and the political class during the First Republic—there are other equally
formidable organizations, such as the Neapolitan Camorra, the Galabrian ‘Ndrangheta
and the Puglia-based Società Onorata (Honoured Society).
In earlier times, loosely organized gangs of brigands were not unusual in the Italian
countryside. Banditismo (brigandism) was often a form of collective self-defence and a
protest against political or economic oppression. Gangs of brigands were still active in
Sicily, Sardinia and Calabria after the Second World War (see Salvatore Giuliano),
although brigandism was largely stamped out or became incorporated into the mafia in
Sicily and Calabria by the late 1940s.
Entries A–Z 201
The expansion of the mafia after the Second World War led to a diffusion of what had
traditionally been a rural organization into urban areas, targeting largely the public
money which the government was devoting to developing the South (see Cassa per il
Mezzogiorno). The mafia’s infiltration of the public bureaucracy, legal authorities and
the political parties all date from this time. In addition, some of the Sardinian gangs had
been able to survive and also expanded their activities to the mainland, especially to
Tuscany, in the 1960s. The ‘Anonima sarda’ (Anonymous Sardinian) or, alternatively,
‘Società anonima’ (Anonymous Society), with its ironic reference to a legally constituted
limited company, became notorious for its kidnapping and blackmailing activities in
cities.
Such criminal organizations do at times collaborate, but what most unites them is their
similar organizational structure and their value system. They also appear similar in their
history as responses, at the end of the nineteenth century, to the unwillingness or inability
of the Italian state to enforce the executive power against existing social oppression and
economic exploitation. Thus, in the absence of a strong state, for a long time the activity
in family-bound mafia networks was regarded as honourable and prestigious. Honour and
the imposed silence of omertà are, in fact, two basic values traditionally connected with
historic brigandism in Italy, and both still play a relatively important role in rural areas
where forms of the traditional vendetta (revenge) between families can even today lead to
bloody showdowns. Family and territory are further traditional elements crucial for
understanding historical brigandism and the roots of modern organized crime in Italy.
Yet if the threat of mafia violence continues to worry foreigners and Italians alike,
there is no doubt that the effective influence of organized crime has been reduced in
recent times. This has been in part due to the activities of judges like Falcone and
Borsellino and the gradual uncoupling of the links between crime, government and the
judiciary. At the same time, and perhaps more importantly, the public itself has turned
against the ‘men of honour’. A large proportion of the Italian population now openly
condemns organized crime and is more willing to mobilize against it, a dramatic shift in
attitude towards crime which is itself an sign of profound social change.
White-collar crime
Despite comparative statistics, it is likely that the incidence of white-collar crime in Italy
may be above the level of comparable countries, since in Italy many infringements of the
law are commonly regarded as peccadilloes, that is, punishable but not defamatory. The
major forms of this sort of crime include political corruption, financial embezzlement, tax
evasion, illegal marketing and environmental crime.
The Mani pulite investigations demonstrated a vast network of exchange between
organized crime, finance and industry and the political class, amounting to a very high
incidence of white-collar crime. Tax fraud or evasion (evasione fiscale) is also high. In
1991, for example, more than 240,000 individual cases of tax evasion were discovered
and approximately 261,000 billion lire of earnings were estimated to have not been
declared (see taxation). In order to limit tax evasion the government has from time to
time declared tax amnesties, although the most significant counter-measure has been the
strict imposition of the scontrino fiscale (tax receipt) whereby every financial transaction
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 202
requires a scontrino to be issued and kept by both seller and customer, under pain of
criminal prosecution.
Illegal marketing, the sale of dangerous products and working under illegal conditions
constitute another group of common white-collar crime. The building industry in postwar
Italy became proverbial for permitting poor working conditions, using illicit labour and
undertaking construction work without any permits (for example, an estimated 61 per
cent of all new buildings between 1971 and 1981 were erected without building permits).
Better legal regulations and controls were introduced at the end of the 1970s but, just as
tax evasion could be legalized through an amnesty, so illegal construction could be
legalized through a condono edilizio (building amnesty), with the result that most illegal
constructions have become legalized through amnesties over the years.
Illegal environmental practices such as the indiscriminate dumping of waste materials
were also long accepted in Italy and committed by private individuals as well as by major
companies. The most tragic symbol of this criminal behaviour was the accident at
Seveso, although on the positive side, the incident dramatically demonstrated the dangers
of such criminal behaviour towards the environment and led to a decreasing tolerance of
such practices as well as to calls for a stricter and better enforced environmental policy
(see also environmental movement; Verdi).
Other crimes
New forms of delinquency such as throwing rocks from overpasses at cars and a high rate
of minor crimes like theft and pickpocketing are often juvenile behaviour motivated by
boredom and a number of other factors which Italian society shares with other Western
countries. Thus, although theft of bags by youths on motorcycles, the so-called scippi,
came for a time to be strongly associated with Italy, subsequent research showed that this
was a widespread activity in tourist centres of other countries as well.
The age of criminal responsibility in Italy is eighteen years, as in comparable
countries. A relatively high rate of unemployment draws many young Italians into a
criminal career or into the large underground economy which offers illicit work. Over
four million Italians and an increasing number of immigrants (see immigration) now
earn their living illegally in activities such as child labour, drug trafficking, prostitution
or smuggling. Street crimes such as theft, drug trafficking and assault as well as burglary
and organized robbery are, in recent times, more often carried out by illegal migrants
exploited by other groups. Since no way has been found to effectively stem this influx of
illegals, this sort of criminality seems destined to grow.
As with the total number of crimes, the Italian incidence of murder is relatively
modest. With an average yearly rate of 4 murders per 100,000 population between 1985
and 1995, Italy is close to France and Germany and remains well below the official rate
of the United States (9 per 100,000). The average annual rate of thefts of private cars
between 1985 and 1995 at 524 per 100,000 is lower than in France (595) and the United
States (650) but higher than in Germany (173).
Due to the varying definition of drug offences in different countries and the variety of
social attitudes against people involved in drug-related crimes, comparable statistics may
again be unreliable, but countries like the Netherlands show an average rate of less than
Entries A–Z 203
100 cases a year per 100,000 inhabitants, while Sweden and Denmark easily reach
average numbers between 300 and 400 cases. The number of drug offences prosecuted in
Italy is lower than in France or Germany.
A similar unreliability regarding comparative statistics is likely to apply in the case of
sexual offences, which show European countries like Denmark, Germany, the
Netherlands and Sweden in leading positions with their rates of about 50 to 70 per annum
per 100,000, surpassed only by Canada with over 100. With an average of 1 case per
annum per 100,000, Italy is behind Japan (4 cases) and thus statistically among the
countries with the lowest rate of sexual crime in the world. However, this encouraging
but rather surprising result may depend more on the deficiencies of Italian laws than on
an actual low incidence of sexual violence. It is important to note that until September
1995, when the Chamber of Deputies (see Parliament) finally passed a law which the
women’s movement had been advocating for over fifteen years, sexual violence was still
legally an offence against public morality rather than against a person and thus more a
form of disorderly conduct than assault (see also feminism). A number of other cultural
factors would also have served to mask the incidence of sexual crime. According to
Church law, for example, rape within marriage was impossible since it was the women’s
duty to obey her husband in every respect. Furthermore, rape could only be denounced by
the raped woman who thus risked ‘losing her honour’ and suffering shame, all of which
would have undoubtedly contributed to such crimes not coming to light. Significantly, the
late 1990s have seen a rise in the incidence of denunciations of sexual violence.
Further reading
Centorrino, M. (1995) Economia assistita da mafia (Economy Helped by the Mafia), Messina:
Rubbettino.
Ginsborg, P. (1994) Stato dell’Italia (The State of Italy), Milan: Mondadori.
Violante, L. (1997) Storia della criminalità in Italia (History of Criminality in Italy), Turin:
Einaudi.
JAN KURZ
critical currents
In order to understand the specific developments of critical currents in Italy after the
Second World War, it is necessary to recall the overwhelming influence exercised over
almost every aspect of Italian culture during the first part of the century by Benedetto
Croce. Croce’s dominant hold over the Italian critical scene in the early 1900s was to
have an ambivalent effect on Italian culture as a whole. His magisterial authority
originally blocked any fruitful exchanges between Italian criticism and that of other
European cultures, although it is undeniable that his critical theory, revised and
modernized, later opened the way to some of the major critical approaches which have
flourished in the second part of this century.
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Croce’s idealist philosophical method focused both on the clear identification of the
quality and purity of the poetic form within the works of an author as well as on the
definition of literary criticism as a means of reconstructing the paths of the creative inner
life. For Croce, this twofold approach was needed to isolate that which was to be
considered genuine ‘poetry’ from the merely dogmatic or propagandistic aspects of a
work of art and to decide if the artistic world of an author—feelings, intellectual beliefs,
literary images and creations—should be regarded as poetic at all. Without reopening the
debate on the Crocean consistency of Italian culture, which is well closed by now, one
needs to note that Croce’s system, while prone to idealism, offers the possibility of
exploiting either one of its components depending on one’s own ideological and cultural
interests and intellectual formation. In fact, Croce’s theory supports both a critical
approach which privileges the close reading of the text as well as one centred more on the
author’s ideological intent. In other words, one aspect of his theory selects the literary
text as the main object of the critical survey, the other promotes the context (historically,
sociologically, ideologically) as a major component of the critic’s interest.
After the Second World War and in the wake of the work of scholars such as Natalino
Sapegno (1901–90) and Luigi Russo (1892–1961), who had merged Croce’s
hermeneutical ideas with the nineteenth-century historical current founded by Francesco
De Sanctis (1817–83), Italian literary criticism took a dramatic ideological turn, in
parallel with the rise of neorealism in literature, art and cinema. The sociological line of
scholarship, which developed in the first two decades after the war, split essentially into
three branches. One, anchored to the teachings of Marx and Engels, is best represented by
Carlo Salinari (1919–77), whose works, especially those on Italian postwar narrative,
explore the possibility of defining the realistic current of Italian culture. Another aspect
of this strongly sociological approach to literature was represented by Carlo Muscetta (b.
1912) and Sebastiano Timpanaro (b. 1923), the latter favouring a solid philological
approach while Muscetta wanted to join more concretely the Crocean approach with
Marxist ideology to construct a broader historical interpretation of Italian literature.
Finally, a third stream sprang from a better understanding and knowledge of new
sociological theories, such as those of the Frankfurt School or Marxist scholars such as
Georgy Lukacs. This third current, open to an anthropological perception of the literary
events, found one of its best promoters in Alberto Asor Rosa, whose critical works are
centred on the connection between ideology and literary forms, an approach exemplified
in his recent multi-volume History of Italian Literature published by Einaudi. Other
active and influential scholars belonging to this current are Cesare Cases (born in 1920),
Romano Luperini (born in 1940), who has recently flanked his ideological approach with
a more psychoanalytical one, and poet-critic Franco Fortini, whose essays display a
sharp and insightful combination of textual analysis and sociological interpretation.
The other component of Croce’s cultural inheritance, the attention to the form of the
literary text, was also extensively developed in the second part of the century, following
the examples already set by Crocean scholars such as Attilio Momigliano (1883–1952),
and independent intellectuals like Giuseppe De Robertis (1888–1963). Two major
currents came from this more openly textual approach, one philological and the other
‘stylistic’. The first saw philology not only as a basic instrument for grasping the genesis
of a text but also as an indispensable critical tool for exploring its artistic form. This
approach in the 1950s and 1960s was strongly fostered by Vittore Branca, whose studies
Entries A–Z 205
of Boccaccio and humanism are a conspicuous and convincing example of how philology
and literary analysis can be successfully combined to achieve a balanced critical insight
into specific authors and subjects. The stylistic approach, according to the lesson of
famous foreign scholars of Italian culture such as Leo Spitzer (1887–1960) and Erich
Auerbach (1892–1957), is solidly based on indispensable philological critical skills but is
more openly interested in scrutinizing the stylistic elements of a literary work in order to
understand the creative dynamics an author uses to achieve aesthetic goals. Besides the
cornerstone works on stylistic criticism by scholars of different backgrounds such as
Mario Fubini (1900–70), Benvenuto Terracini (1886–1968) and Alfredo Schiaffini
(1895–1971), it is imperative to remember Gianfranco Contini’s robust and profound
stylistic surveys of both medieval and modern romance literatures. Contini’s ability to
penetrate a text and an author’s creative process has pointed the way for generations of
scholars and has marked the rediscovery and re-evaluation of the experimental current of
Italian literature from Dante to the present. The work of other important scholars also
moved freely between philology, stylistics and linguistics such as Gianfranco Folena’s
(1920–90) studies on eighteenth-century language and literature, Aurelio Roncaglia’s (b.
1917) works on medieval literature, or Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo’s (b. 1936) publications
on twentieth-century Italian poetry.
While many stylistic analyses led to psychoanalytic approaches (already in Spitzer, for
instance) and despite the active presence of a scholar of the calibre of Giacomo
Debenedetti (1901–67), a direct psychoanalytic criterion never really found a fertile
current in Italian criticism. The stylistic method was further revitalized in the 1960s and
1970s by a series of cultural events which brought Italian criticism into close contact with
other cultures and ideas, in particular by the rediscovery of the Russian formalists of the
1920s, whose theories on the importance of closely analysing texts in order to fully
reconstruct the ideological itinerary of the literary work had a deep impact on Italian
scholarship. Other major critical steps were the translation of Ferdinand De Saussure’s
1916 Treatise of General Linguistics, the circulation of the works of Roman Jakobson on
the importance of the phono-symbolic structures of a text, the spread of works by other
prominent structuralists such as Juri Lotman and, finally, the reception of new ideas
coming from other disciplines such as anthropology and psychoanalysis, in particular the
works of Lévi-Strauss and of Lacan. All these new (at least for Italy) critical assumptions
and information on how to read literary texts generated a genuine and strong interest in
new methods and theories such as structuralism and semiotics. Scholarly attention began
to switch more and more from an ideological and contextual approach to methods which
would focus on the relationship between the phonetic and the semantic structures of
literary texts aimed at identifying their own special linguistic code. It is not a coincidence
that some of the most innovative scholars who introduced structuralism and semiotics to
Italy and who actually proposed an original school of Italian structuralism were also well
versed in philological studies. Cesare Segre, Maria Corti (co-editors of a seminal work
on the subject, I metodi attuali della critica in Italia (The Current Critical Methods in
Italy), 1970), D’Arco Silvio Avalle and Dante Isella are the four founders of the journal
Strumenti critici (see literary journals), devoted mainly to studies of a semiotic nature.
Amongst the many scholars who have, in different ways, pursued a semiotic and
structuralistic approach are Stefano Agosti, Marcello Pagnini and the linguist Gian Luigi
Beccaria. The continued and vital presence in the Italian academic world and in the
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Italian publishing industry of Umberto Eco, one of the major thinkers in contemporary
semiotics as a critical means of literary and artistic interpretation, has been of
fundamental importance in the growth of the discipline.
In recent years, in part because of the fading or the rethinking of philosophical
currents developed in the last decades, such as Derrida’s deconstructionism or Vattimo’s
pensiero debole (weak thought), and also as a result of the rediscovery of literary theories
such as that of Bakhtin’s ‘dialogism’, there has been a more controlled meditation on
some of the new scholarly theories. Especially with the development of interdisciplinary
studies which have changed previous conceptions regarding entire cultural periods (for
example, the intensification of studies on the relationship between literature and art
during the Renaissance or the relationship between cinema and literature) and of cultural
studies themselves (gender, ethnic, popular culture and so on), scholars have felt the need
to confront literary texts with more open and flexible critical tools. In a few noticeable
cases, some critical tendencies have pointed to new roads which combine the
phonosemantic and phonosymbolic values of a text with more traditional sociological and
philological approaches. The contact between deep textual analysis and the recuperation
of the aesthetic world expressed by the author allows for a more thorough definition and
interpretation of literary works. In this direction, we can recall the works of Ezio
Raimondi whose critical tendency falls somewhere between a sociological, an
anthropological and a symbolic approach. Raimondi, moving from the perspective that
literary works’ special linguistic codes are part of the rhetorical universe, opens his
scholarship to the most modern and varied critical experiences continuously rediscussing
them in his publications. Other active scholars whose works, in these last few years, tend
to combine textual analysis with either anthropological or sociological methods more
suitable for exploring various topics across a number of disciplines and cultures are
Remo Ceserani, Carlo Ossola, Giulio Ferroni, Paolo Valesio, Mario Lavagetto, Andrea
Battistini and Bruno Basile.
One should note the fundamental distinction between the critical currents as proposed
by academic scholarship and those promoted directly by the authors themselves and
expressed through articles and essays in specific literary journals or debates. Since the
early years of neorealism, the idea of literature propounded by most authors and most
scholars did not always coincide (one could think of the polemic between Muscetta’s idea
of realism on one side and Pratolini’s and Salinari’s on the other). There were even
moments in which a specific literary movement openly proposed critical theories which
differed from any of the preceding scholarly tendencies. This was the case, for instance,
with the neoavantgarde period, when young writers such as Arbasino, Porta, Balestrini
and others, exploiting the critical methodology proposed a few years earlier by Luciano
Anceschi, sustained a critical current which minimized the difference between the
creative act and its critical interpretation. Many authors, on the other hand, were and are
also successful and highly influential scholars (and vice versa, one famous example being
Umberto Eco), and have often directed the cultural debate of their times toward an idea of
literature which in their minds corresponded to a specific critical theory or current.
Witness, for example, the decisive effect on the theoretical currents of the time of
Pasolini’s 1950s writings in favour of expressiveness in literature or, on the other side, of
Mario Luzi’s essays in defence of the existential current which was under attack
precisely because of the position of more realistic writers like Pasolini himself. It is no
Entries A–Z 207
mere coincidence that their intellectual debate in the 1950s solicited, on the one hand,
major critical regard for expressiveness and realistic style different from the neorealistic
one, and on the other, more hermeneutic attention for the existential and lyrical quest
proposed by the former hermetic poets (see poetry).
One last and final consideration would be the inevitable relationship between cultural
trends (and therefore critical currents), and the social, political and economic situation of
the country. It is fair to say that Italian culture has shown that the critical currents which
prevail are usually those more compatible with the social and cultural status of the nation.
It is not by chance, for instance, that the importance of the once prevailing sociological
current has substantially diminished during the last two decades, during which Italy has
slowly but steadily blossomed to the status of an economic power in the West.
See also: literary journals; narrative
Further reading
Cecchi, O. and Ghidetti, E. (eds) (1983) Sette modi di fare critica (Seven Ways of Conducting
Criticism), Rome: Editori Riuniti (a reconstruction, in the form of review articles written by
different scholars, of various critical approaches and debates; includes a bibliographical guide).
Corti, M. (1978) An Introduction to Literary Semiotics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Corti, M. and Segre, C. (eds) (1980) I metodi attuali delta critica in Italia (Present Critical Methods
in Italy), Turino: ERI (a landmark volume, pub-lished originally in 1970, subdivided into a
number of sections, each devoted to a specific critical current—sociological, symbolic,
psychoanalytic, stylistic, philological, formalistic, structuralistic, semiotic—introduced by a
specialist, and followed by selected readings).
Lucente, G. (ed.) (1996) Italian Criticism: Literature and Culture, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan
Romance Studies.
Segre, C. (1988) Introduction to the Analysis of the Literary Text, trans. J.Meddemen,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
ANDREA CICCARELLI
Croce, Benedetto
b. 25 February 1866, Pescasséroli, Abruzzo; d. 20 November 1952, Naples
Philosopher, historian and literary critic
From the 1960s until recent years, Croce’s reputation was in eclipse and his philosophical
and critical methodology often maligned. Yet for the entire first half of the twentieth
century, Croce had been the most important and most imposing presence in many aspects
of Italian life and culture. An eclectic philosopher in the tradition of Western idealism
who developed and articulated his own highly individual system, Croce was also a
wideranging historian and an erudite literary scholar whose approach to literature
influenced several generations of writers and literary critics.
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In public life, Croce was made a senator in 1910, and was Minister for Education in
1920–21 in the last pre-Fascist government of the so-called ‘Giolitti era’. As a public
intellectual, he took his distance equally from the universities, the Catholic church, and a
post-Enlightenment ‘liberal humanism’ in so far as this could be considered part of any
system of received ideas. Following the murder of socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti in
May 1925, however, Croce abandoned the studied neutrality he had observed towards
fascism as both doctrine and regime, and issued a counter-manifesto to Giovanni
Gentile’s ‘Fascist(ic) Intellectuals’ Manifesto’, thus taking on the mantle of leader of the
anti-fascist intellectuals, a role he continued to play until the end of the war.
As a scholar and a researcher, he cultivated the solitary demeanour that he so admired
in the eighteenth-century thinker Giambattista Vico. Enabled by independent means, he
founded the influential journal La Critica (1903–44) which was to remain a touchstone of
Italian cultural life for four decades. He was antithetical alike to D’Annunzio’s debased
romanticism, to the inherent irrationalism of Marinetti’s futurism, and to the prevalent
positivism, whose attempt to apply the methodologies of the natural sciences to human
affairs in their historical reality he believed to be mistaken.
Historicism was Croce’s alternative to both the positivism of science and the
irrationalism of religion. Conceived as the ‘science of history’, historicism was a
guarantee of certain knowledge, though of a different kind from that yielded by the ‘hard’
natural sciences, and on an equal footing with its ‘consort’, philosophy. Significantly,
Croce was, together with another equally anti-positivist thinker, Antonio Labriola (1843–
1904), one of first Italian intellectuals to make use of the writings of Karl Marx, even if
Croce was never a Marxist.
Croce’s presence in Italian culture for almost five decades has meant that his influence
and importance have been matters for debate. Some, like Norberto Bobbio, acknowledge
Croce’s example and influence in terms of anti-fascism, but believe his thought is to be
identified more with a method or an ‘approach’ than with any systematic doctrine.
Literary critics such as Giorgio Bárberi Squarotti, however, suggest that Croce’s
ahistorical theory of the ‘lyric’ wellspring of art did Italian culture more harm than good
by preventing any understanding of literary modernity. Some have further argued that, in
insisting that the practice of historiography is ‘by its very nature’ liberal, Croce had put
fascism outside history and therefore beyond explanation or understanding, a dangerous
position for any historian. And yet, Croce’s famous statements in History as the Story of
Liberty (1938) that ‘all history is contemporary history’, and that ‘universal histories are
always particular histories’, continue to have epigraphic value for historians of widely
differing schools.
Croce has also sometimes been assimilated to a resurgent culture of the Right in the
1970s, a cooption perhaps affirmed in more recent years by the reissue of fourteen of
Croce’s books by Adelphi, a publisher considered to have cultural affiliations to the right
wing in Italy. Croce’s works have also been reissued in recent times by his original
publisher, Laterza, many of them in new editions, while since 1989 the publisher
Bibliopolis has been issuing the national critical edition of Croce’s voluminous and
varied works.
Entries A–Z 209
Further reading
Roberts, D.D. (1987) Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism, Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
SUZANNE KIERNAN
Cucchi, Enzo
b. 20 September 1949, Morro d’Alba, Ancona
Artist
During the 1970s Cucchi experimented with conceptual art, although by 1980 he was
working in a figurative, neo-expressionist style and being identified with the new
transavantgarde. Since then his themes have broadened: roosters have made way for
other birds and animals, human heads, arms, and feet, skulls, landscapes and townscapes.
Critics profess to see a dialogue with nature in his imagery, an ethical concern to return a
sense of meaning to things, and an apocalyptic vision. Cucchi has himself described light,
or flame, as the central element in painting, and indeed used a flame in his Untitled-Roma
(1990).
Cucchi now works in many media. He has produced bronze fountains, frescoes,
mosaics and marble reliefs, artist’s books, and innumerable small drawings. He has a
penchant for innovative gallery installations, such as suspending works from steel wires
like so much washing.
Further reading
Turner, J. (1993) ‘Painting with Fire’, ARTnews 92 (10): 96–9 (a summary of Cucchi’s career).
MAX STAPLES
Cucchi, Maurizio
b. 20 September 1945, Milan
Poet and editor
Maurizio Cucchi lives in Milan and worked as editor of the prestigious series ‘Quaderni
della Fenice’ at the Guanda publishing company house, before becoming editor at
Mondadori. He published his first collection of poems, Paradossalmente e con affanno
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