Italian Studies Program and Art History and Visual Culture Program Present

Continuous Revolution: Mussolini's Profile between Futurist Spin and Fascist Propaganda

Emerging from relative obscurity, the young sculptor Renato Bertelli (1900–1974) made his mark with one of the most widely disseminated portraits from Fascism’s 20-year rule. The Continuous Profile of Mussolini (1933) renders its subject in the round, such that the Duce’s visage appears redoubled from nearly any angle. Patenting the design almost immediately, Bertelli set about mass-producing it in a range of sizes and materials—a reproducibility that resulted in a striking assortment of owners throughout the 20th century, from Mussolini’s son-in-law to the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The talk discusses Bertelli’s sculpture both as an allegory of Fascism’s self-styled “permanent revolution” and as a synthesis of the regime’s cultural paradoxes embodied in the Duce.  

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For more information, call 845-758-7377, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102

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