Summary

Richard Etlin's sweeping, generously illustrated study explores the changing idea of modernism in Italian architecture over the five crucial decades that saw the birth and crystallization of modern architecture. Systematically treating the major architects and movements of the period--such as Raimondo D'Aronoco and Art Nouveau, Antonio Sant'Elia and Futurism, Marcello Piacentini and the modern vernacular, Giovanni Muzio and the Novecento, Giuseppe Terragni and Italian Rationalism--this book also explores the ways in which the original ideals of the various movements were transformed by working for the Fascist state.

Modernism in Italian Architecture examines the legacy of the romantic revolution, which confronted architects with the dilemma of how to create an architecture that was both modern and national. It challenges accepted opinion on a variety of issues. Etlin argues against too close an association of Sant'Elia's architecture and manifesto with Futurism by demonstrating a broader context for its themes. His study of Novecento architecture chronicles a movement whose use of classical detailing created a "postmodernism" contemporaneous with the pioneering buildings of the International Style elsewhere in Europe and preceding its arrival in Italy. Etlin undermines the notion that the architects of Italian Rationalism blindly followed an antihistorical credo, by bringing to fight the profoundly contextual nature of the abstract geometries of the best Rationalist architecture.The final section, devoted to Fascism, focuses on Terragni's famous Casa del Fascio in Como and the Danteurn project by Terragni and Lingeri. Etlin concludes with a consideration of the anti-Semitic attacks on modern architecture during the Fascist racial campaign of 1938.

Choice Review

Etlin's book offers the most complete account to date of the development of modern architecture in Italy in the 20th century. The author is an authority on modern architecture who teaches at the University of Maryland School of Architecture. The work is more complete than Dennis P. Doordan's Building Modern Italy: Italian Architecture 1914-1936 (1988), because it covers the 25-year period prior to WW I including Art Nouveau. It is also longer, better illustrated, and more thoroughly documented than Doordan's very readable account. Etlin writes for the scholar not the public library patron. His text is strewn with references and ideas requiring advanced knowledge and preparation. His account of Italian architecture up to WW II is complemented by Manfredo Tafuri's History of Italian Architecture, 1944-1985 (CH, Feb'90), which brings the story up to the present. For advanced undergraduate and graduate students.-P. Kaufman, Boston College