Art, Régime and Youth. The Modern Art Gallery of Littoria/Latina and the Cult of Modernity in the Thirties
The foundation of Littoria (now Latina) in 1934 had outstanding symbolic and propagandistic meanings extolling such themes as agricultural labour, re–employment of war veterans, reclamation of the marshes, on the background of the new Italy progress.
Such a program also affected the decision to inaugurate a Modern Art Gallery in order to increase the prestige of the city. Artists were invited to give the new Gallery their works. When the Museum opened in December 1936, it already owned about 350 items. The collection was somewhat heterogeneous because no preliminary screening was made and a wide range of different artistic trends was included. Many works celebrated the rural myth, the birth of the city, the family, the personality of Mussolini. The Roman lyric current (Capogrossi, Ceracchini, Cavalli, Cecchi Pieraccini, Cagli, Pincherle) turned out to be representatives, but exponents of other schools were also present (Semeghini, Spazzapan, Bartolini, Saetti), besides old masters (Nomellini, Ghini) and sculptors such as Martini, Fontana, Marini. However, the surprising absence of as great artistic movements Novecento and the Metaphysical painting was due to their faint interest in fascist emphasis.
Thus the collection was characterized by an high value of modernity, in spite of presence of second–rate local painters, unfortunately more and more frequent in the following years. The downfall of Fascist Régime, on the 25th of July 1943, and the following events caused the almost total scattering of collection, that narrowed so far to number only 55 works, as it appears from a partial inventory dated 1949.
In recent years the City Council has launched a research project in order to establish the real consistency of the Gallery, restoring the historical catalogue, and to recover missing works.
