GIUSEPPE TERRAGNI FOR MARGHERITA SARFATTI
Introduction
In 1934 Giuseppe Terragni, the centenary of whose birth is marked by the
present exhibition, designed a monument in the mountain region of Asiago
to commemorate Roberto Sarfatti, the first-born son of the famous Margherita
Sarfatti, who lost his life on the battlefront in 1918.
The exhibition situates this and Terragni’s other monuments within
the larger context of Margherita Sarfatti's role as protagonist of 1920's
and early 1930's debates on art and architecture.
Terragni’s autograph drawings testify to his passionate pursuit
of a modern monumentalism: a monumentality "without style" that
harkens back to an archaic vocabulary of funerary monoliths, cubes, stairs,
crosses, and devises a new sort of rhetoric of commemoration, but that
enfolds the whole of his architectural production including the «Novocomum»
and the «case del fascio» of Como and Lissone.
The first room is devoted to Margherita Sarfatti, founder of the «Novecento»
movement and a leading champion of the modern movement in architecture,
with special attention to her ties to Terragni.
In the second room, the complex of his anti-monumental monuments, built
and unbuilt, is on display: from the 1925/26 Monument to the Fallen in
Como to his 1932 Reclamation Monument to the Danteum.
The third and fourth rooms explore "immaterial" and "material"
aspects of Terragni's new monumentality: the archetypal forms of the Sarfatti
monument – of which the entire design process is documented –
and other monuments are examined with respect to a larger constellation
of modern monuments by architects from Loos to Gropius, from Fisker to
Mies, from BBPR to Figni and Pollini, from Rossi to Scarpa.
The final room provides visitors with a hands-on experience of the materials
that Terragni chose for each of his major projects.
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