This book introduces a compelling new personality to the modernist canon, Marisa Mori (1900-1985), who became the only female contributor to The Futurist Cookbook (1932) with her recipe for “Italian Breasts in the Sun.” Providing something more complex than a traditional biographical account, Griffiths presents a feminist critique of Mori's art, converging on issues of gender, culture, and history to offer new critical perspectives on Italian modernism. If subsequently written out of modernist memory, Mori was once at the center of the Futurism movement in Italy; yet she worked outside the major European capitals and fluctuated between traditional figurative subjects and abstract experimentation. As a result, her in-between pictures can help to re-think the margins of modernism. By situating Mori's most significant artworks in the critical context of interwar Fascism, and highlighting her artistic contributions before, during, and after her Futurist decade, Griffiths contributes to a growing body of knowledge on the women who participated in the Italian Futurist movement. In doing so, she explores a woman artist's struggle for modernity among the Italian Futurists in an age of Fascism.

This book introduces a compelling new personality to the modernist canon, Marisa Mori (1900-1985), who became the only female contributor to The Futurist Cookbook (1932) with her recipe for “Italian Breasts in the Sun.” Offering something more complex than a traditional biographical account, Jennifer S. Griffiths charts Mori's studies with Felice Casorati, her meeting with the Futurists in 1931, and her complex engagement with Magic Realist and Futurist themes throughout the 1930s. She provides a feminist critique of the art, converging on issues of gender, culture, and history to offer new critical perspectives on Italian modernism. Contributing to a growing body of knowledge on the women who participated in the Italian Futurist movement, this book highlights Mori's artistic contributions before, during, and after her Futurist decade. It also details her fascination with the expressive potential of the female nude, analyses how her work evidences an early interest in the politics of the body, and situates her most significant artworks in their critical context looking through the historical, political, and cultural framework of interwar Fascism. Mori worked outside the major European capitals, fluctuated between traditional figurative subjects and abstract experimentation, and occupied a marginal place in a history that privileges the masculine, the urban, and the abstract; thus her art can help to re-think and re-situate the margins of modernism. It explores a woman artist's struggle for modernity among the Italian Futurists in an age of Fascism.

This book introduces a compelling new personality to the modernist canon, Marisa Mori (1900-1985), who became the only female contributor to The Futurist Cookbook (1932) with her recipe for “Italian Breasts in the Sun.” Providing something more complex than a traditional biographical account, Griffiths presents a feminist critique of Mori's art, converging on issues of gender, culture, and history to offer new critical perspectives on Italian modernism. If subsequently written out of modernist memory, Mori was once at the center of the Futurism movement in Italy; yet she worked outside the major European capitals and fluctuated between traditional figurative subjects and abstract experimentation. As a result, her in-between pictures can help to re-think the margins of modernism. By situating Mori's most significant artworks in the critical context of interwar Fascism, and highlighting her artistic contributions before, during, and after her Futurist decade, Griffiths contributes to a growing body of knowledge on the women who participated in the Italian Futurist movement. In doing so, she explores a woman artist's struggle for modernity among the Italian Futurists in an age of Fascism.

This book is the first critical interdisciplinary examination in English of Italian women’s contributions to intellectual, artistic, and cultural production in modern Italy. Examining commonalities and diversities from the country’s Unification to today, the volume provides insight into the challenges that Italian women engaged in cultural production have faced, and the strategies they have deployed in order to achieve their objectives. The essays address a range of issues, from women’s self-identification and public ownership of their professional roles as laborers in the intellectual and cultural realm, to questions about motherhood and financial remuneration, to the role of creative foreign women in Italy. Through critical analysis and direct testimony from new and typically marginalized voices, including an Arab-Italian writer, an Italian-Dominican filmmaker, and a transgender activist, new forms of ongoing struggle emerge that redefine the culturally diverse landscape of female intellectual and creative production in Italy today. The volume rethinks a solely national “Made in Italy” reading of the subject of female intellectual labor, demonstrating instead the wide network of influences and relationships that have existed for Italian women in their professional aspirations.

The special issue of International Yearbook of Futurism Studies for 2015 will investigate the role of Futurism in the œuvre of a number of Women artists and writers. These include a number of women actively supporting Futurism (e.g. Růžena Zátková, Edyth von Haynau, Olga Rozanova, Eva Kühn), others periodically involved with the movement (e.g. Valentine de Saint Point, Aleksandra Ekster, Mary Swanzy), others again inspired only by certain aspects of the movement (e.g. Natalia Goncharova, Alice Bailly, Giovanna Klien). Several artists operated on the margins of a Futurist inspired aesthetics, but they felt attracted to Futurism because of its support for women artists or because of its innovatory roles in the social and intellectual spheres. Most of the artists covered in Volume 5 (2015) are far from straightforward cases, but exactly because of this they can offer genuinely new insights into a still largely under-researched domain of twentieth-century art and literature. Guiding questions for these investigations are: How did these women come into contact with Futurist ideas? Was it first-hand knowledge (poems, paintings, manifestos etc) or second-hand knowledge (usually newspaper reports or personal conversions with artists who had been in contact with Futurism)? How did the women respond to the (positive or negative) reports? How did this show up in their œuvre? How did it influence their subsequent, often non-Futurist, career?

This publication offers for the first time an inter-disciplinary and comparative perspective on Futurism in a variety of countries and artistic media. 20 scholars discuss how the movement shaped the concept of a cultural avant-garde and how it influenced the development of modernist art and literature around the world.