CECILIA ROSTAGNI Politecnico di Milano, Italy ABSTRACT Gio Ponti’s work is of particular interest when analyzing the relationships with the visual arts that characterizes the Italian architectural panorama in the years before and after World War II. Architect, painter and designer himself, as well as an organizer and promoter of Italian taste abroad, since the early days of his career, Ponti aims to overcome the traditional boundaries between different artistic disciplines. During his long and varied activity he is in constant pursuit of a blend among the different creative spheres: from decoration of ceramics to furniture and everyday objects’ design; from conception of residential homes to skyscrapers and large-scale buildings construction; from exhibitions to the design of sets and costumes. But it is not just in his design activity that he pursues the synthesis of the arts. The research of the possible relationship between architecture, painting, furniture and applied arts, cinema, literature, music and theatre, is the core of Stile magazine, which he created and directed between 1941 and 1947. Amplifying the action and the original spirit of Domus, the magazine is intended to show the high level of the Italian ‘stile’, by which he meant not a speciic form, but the result of a common expression, of a collective feeling and taste. Stile is therefore a central episode, although little studied, within Ponti’s relection and work. At the same time, it highlights the liveliness of the Italian artistic and architectural debate of the 1940s, on which historiography has rarely focused. The paper aims to reconstruct, through the published writings and the unpublished documents, the synthetic strategies put in place by Ponti in Stile, in the light of the Italian debate of the time, as well as of his project activities. KEYWORDS Ponti, Stile, Domus, magazine, architecture, linea 316 ‘Under the sign of a highly challenging word, “Stile”, we will seek to present works of architecture and furniture, as well as of drawings, paintings and sculpture’. So wrote Gio Ponti in January 1941 when introducing the irst issue of Stile1, the journal he created for the publisher Garzanti after leaving the editorship of Domus2. Lo Stile nella casa e nell’arredamento, the journal’s full title3, was published monthly throughout the entire duration of the war4, and continued until 1947, when, after more than 70 issues, Ponti resumed negotiations with Gianni Mazzocchi to return to the editorship of Domus5. In these six years, Stile was Ponti’s magazine, his creation: he was its creator and general editor6, but also subeditor, layout designer and its most proliic author, signing the more than 400 articles that appeared in it with his own name or with one of his many pseudonyms7. Accompanying him on this new publishing venture were a number of his colleagues from Domus: Carlo Pagani8, hired as managing editor, Piero Gadda Conti, editor of the literary page, Gian Galeazzo Severi, who reported on newly released recordings, Carlo Enrico Rava and Alberto Lattuada, who specialized in articles on cinema and stage design, Sandra Zelaschi Guy and Emilia Kuster Rosselli, in charge respectively of lowers and gardens and embroidery. Others, almost all writers, critics and journalists prominent nationally, were working with Ponti for the irst time on this occasion: Pier Maria Bardi, editor of the Roman section of the magazine, Irene Brin, author of short stories and articles on popular culture, Augusto Donaudy and Rubino Rubini, book and poetry critics, Giuseppe Gorgerino, who reviewed the major art exhibitions, and his daughter Lisa, who was in charge of the Corriere di Stile, as well as the architects Adalberto Libera, Carlo Mollino, Armando Melis and Giovanni Michelucci. In each issue, moreover, being unable to arrange regular monthly contributions, Ponti sought to publish at least one testimony – ‘a challenging text, a special article, impassioned and elevated written for ideal readers’9 – by the artists and intellectuals he ‘most esteemed’, and whose ideas he wanted Stile to express, such as Massimo Bontempelli, Giuseppe Bottai, Raffaele Carrieri, Fabrizio Clerici, Filippo De Pisis, Beniamino Dal Fabbro, Ada Negri, Alessandro Pavolini, Alberto Savinio and Leonardo Sinisgalli. (Figure 1) With regular features, essays and articles covering the most varied aspects of the country’s intellectual and artistic output, as well as trichrome prints and reproductions, pages in colour and painted covers, the review sought to document contemporary Italian style and make it better known. Ponti saw the deinition of ‘style’ not as referring ‘to the formal rigour of buildings, soft and hard furnishings or products’, but rather ‘a broad range of feeling, taste, interrelationships, noble and harmonious exchanges among the many things that 317 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 2.4.5 Gio Ponti’s Stile 318 than in the pages of Casabella.16 Persico himself, militating for a similarly non-ideological vision of modernity, had repeatedly explored the question of ‘style’ in his writings, and some months earlier, in a portrait devoted to Ponti in Italia Letteraria, he recognized in his work the character of a ‘concretely modern style’ or an ‘aspiration to modern art through a problem of culture’.17 Even before Ponti, Persico had deined ‘style’ as the product not of ‘a solitary endeavour’ but of a ‘living collaboration of a whole age’, its way of being, aiming to show this theme – more speciically through the analogies and convergences between works of art and architecture and utilitarian creations from the same period – in May 1930 he had inaugurated the column ‘Stile. Un modo di essere’ in the pages of La Casabella.18 Hence Stile, though addressing topics for a reined and cultivated readership, maintained continuity with the principles and objectives of Domus. Moreover the very idea of the home, from which the latter had started in 1928, seen not ‘only as a problem of art’ but as ‘a problem of civilization’, already subtended a moral conception of style. Over the years Domus, while preserving its fundamental character as a popular organ of modern taste, had been changing, following the changing inspirations and inclinations of its editor-publisher. Then from 1938 on, in conjunction with the experiments in the ‘synthesis of the arts’ developed by Ponti in the projects in Padua for the university buildings of ‘Bo’ and Liviano,19 and with the launch of his collaboration with Daria Guarnati’s review Aria d’Italia,20 Domus began to devote increasing amounts of space to literature, cinema, exhibitions, theatre and fashion, in addition to architecture and furnishings, and all the most recent expressions of culture.21 But though in the same year Ponti was conirmed president and managing director of the Società Editoriale Domus, securing his absolute control over the company and the journal in technical, inancial and cultural terms,22 something must have intervened to thwart his new editorial policy,23 since in March 1940 he resigned and his place was taken by Giovanni Mazzocchi, previously the general manager of the company with administrative duties alone.24 This was conirmed the following November, when Ponti deinitively abandoned his irst publishing venture to create a new one, ‘like Domus, but with class’,25 centred on the home ‘as an expression of taste and as up to date in technology, construction and furnishing’, on the arts ‘as the supreme Italian spiritual expression’, and on artistic products ‘as an expression of the creation of the work of thousands and thousands of Italians’.26 The opportunity was offered to Ponti by Aldo Garzanti, who irst became a publisher only in 1939, and in the same year, with the acquisition of Architettura and of Illustrazione Italiana, began to devote himself to art publications.27 Although he was not, therefore, a specialist publisher – or perhaps 319 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION are the expressions, ornaments or instruments of our lives’.10 The vision of style that was presented in the magazine’s pages was not intended, therefore, to suggest a ‘manner’, a formal vocabulary, but a ‘way of life’, an ‘atmosphere’, an ‘attitude of the spirit’, of the kind that characterised the new Scaglia store in Milan, a house by Asnago and Vender or the ceramics of Mario Morelli; the quality that is instantly visible in the glassware and lamps produced by Fontana Arte, the frescoes of Massimo Campigli or a poem by Leonardo Sinisgalli; or again the approach that marks a sculpture by Arturo Martini, enamels by Paolo de Poli, a radio designed by Livio CastiFigure 1 Cover of Stile 13, January 1942 glioni or the architecture of Adal(Epistolario Gio Ponti, EGP) berto Libera.11 While constituting an experience of limited duration and largely conditioned by the wartime climate, the new review dealt with a theme always at the centre of Ponti’s thought and work: style. Since the early thirties, in addition to personally engaging in various creative ields, as if seeking to verify their shared stylistic elements in the ield,12 he had explored the signiicance of the term ‘style’ and described it as that ‘common and widespread character that makes the works and objects of a given country in a given period recognizable’, interpreting its spiritual impulses, technical methods and customs.13 He subsequently applied the title ‘Stile e Civiltà’ to the ifth Milan Triennale of 1933, the irst to be hosted in the new premises built by Giovanni Muzio in Milan.14 “Lo stile nell’architettura e nell’arredamento” was also the title of a regular feature introduced by Ponti in October 1934 in the pages of Domus, where the word ‘style’ was understood as the ‘discipline’ capable of transforming modern art from an isolated gesture to a collective work, meaning its ‘total stylistic afirmation’.15 Unsurprisingly, the next instalment of this new column in Domus proposed, as a contribution ‘to the formation of a taste of modern architecture’, Edoardo Persico’s famous ‘Punto ed a capo per l’architettura’, his most thoroughgoing indictment of Italian Rationalism, which, one should take note, appeared in Ponti’s journal rather 320 Francini, rather than as general editor.30 Nevertheless, Ponti was actively interested and involved in Bellezza; he wrote a number of articles31 and sought important contributions, including those by Massimo Bontempelli, Curzio Malaparte, Irene Brin and Edina Altara.32 But two years later, in May, 1943, he was forced to resign, being unable to approve the policy of ‘cultural disengagement’ adopted by the review, sharply focused by Oppo’s decision, on fashion and clothing, rather than on what Ponti saw as its true mission: a ‘civilizing mission through the promotion of ways of life (costumi)’.33 In 1941, moreover, Ponti launched a new collection of monographs with Garzanti, to make up for the absence in Italy of an adequate artistic bibliography, capable of documenting the ‘expressions of the culture, spirit and customs of Italian work’ that were not, as he believed, as well known as they deserved to be.34 These were to be the Monograie d’arte di ‘Stile’, a limited edition volume in large format, with 50 reproductions in colour and black and white and introductions by prominent scholars, dealing with the work of leading contemporary artists, including Carlo Carrà, Massimo Campigli, Giorgio De Chirico and Filippo De Pisis.35 Again for Garzanti, in 1943 Ponti created the collection of the Idearii, cheap booklets, mostly devoted to architectural matters, but also conceived as ‘an editorial development’ of Stile, whose slogan was: ‘We do not sell paper, book covers, book jackets, wrappers, cellophane, endpapers, frontispieces, margins, colours, etc. We sell ideas’.36 It is within this broad and varied picture that the adventure of Stile should be seen: a picture made up of both the vibrancy of Italian culture and the artistic and architectural debate in the late thirties and early forties – an issue not yet fully investigated by the historiography – and Ponti’s urgency to ensure that the work of artists would become an integral part of the national life and activities, which constituted for him the measure of the civilization of a country. The review therefore served as a showcase of the Italian arts, which Ponti regarded as unparalleled in Europe, and thus inally capable of producing a modern ‘style’. To achieve this, meaning a truly shared ‘style’, Ponti saw it as necessary to begin by recognizing the ‘style’ of individual artists, in order to be able to draw from their work the canons to be developed and disseminated. This gave rise to the articles entitled Stile di... the review’s true core, largely written by Ponti and devoted to artists (“Stile di Carrà”, “Stile di Morelli”, “Stile di Ciuti”, “Stile di Sironi”, “Stile nell’antica pittura”, “Stile nei nuovi artisti”), to the productions of art (“Stile di Fontana”, “Stile di Scaglia”, “Stile nella manifattura Richard Ginori di Doccia”, “Stile nel ricamo”), furnishings (“Stile negli ambienti per il pubblico”, “Stile di Azzoni”, “Stile di Tempestini”, “Stile sulle pareti di faesite”), ilm (“Stile negli interni di ilm”), and achievements in other 321 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION for this very reason – Garzanti allowed the editor of Stile a completely free and independent line. A draft contract dated 15 November 1940, shows that Ponti was ‘responsible for the technical, artistic and literary policy of the text of the journal’; ‘editorial control and aesthetic decision-making across the range of all the publications (art books) that arise as a corollary of the magazine, as well as the special Christmas issues and those dealing with any particular building or exhibition or event’; ‘full jurisdiction over the aesthetic’ of the advertising pages; and inally the ownership of the drawings, photographs, original writings and other materials used. The Società Garzanti further undertook to advertise and launch the review in the ways accepted by Ponti, including ‘the writing and layout’).28 It was thanks to the complete conidence Garzanti reposed in Ponti that, despite the dificulties of the historical period and the misunderstandings and technical issues that often arose, in the same years he managed to pursue other major publishing initiatives in the arts, with aims analogous and complementary to those of Stile. (Figure 2) First of all, he imagined a second magazine, this time ‘in the style of Harper’s’, meaning Harper’s Bazaar, devoted to high fashion and Italian life, to be called Linea. Like Stile it was aimed at coverage of the arts and major tendencies and events in Italian culture, with chronicles of the theatre and cinema, articles by celebrated writers, and trichrome reproductions of paintings and sculptures, in order to display that taste and climate of which, according to Ponti, fashion is an emanation. For the publication of Linea Ponti and Garzanti set up a dedicated company in October 1940.29 But even before the irst issue came out in January 1941, it was taken over by EMSA (Edizione Moda Società Anonima di Torino) and Linea was absorbed into the magazine Bellezza, leaving Ponti as no more than a member of the editorial board, Figure 2 Letter from Gio Ponti to Giuseppe Bottogether with Cipriano Eisio tai, 18 December 1940, soliciting an article for Oppo, Lucio Ridenti and Alberto Stile (EGP) 322 1 Gio Ponti, “Presentazione,” Stile 1 (1941), 11. 2 Also beginning in January 1941, the general editors of Domus were Massimo Bontempelli, Giuseppe Pagano and Melchiorre Bega, with Giancarlo Palanti as managing editor. The editors remained in office until 1943, when Bega was made sole editor of the review. 3 The subtitles changed over time, lo Stile nella casa e nell’arredamento (1941-2); lo Stile – architettura, arti, lettere, arredamento, casa (1943-4); Stile – rivista per la ricostruzione (1944); Stile – architettura, arti, arredamento – rivista per la ricostruzione e per la casa di domani (1944-5); Stile (1945-7). 4 Stile was one of the few reviews that was published continuously throughout the war. 5 Domus was issued again, under Ponti’s editorship, in January 1948. 6 Ponti officially became the editor from n. 5-6 in May-June 1941, while for contractual reasons the first issues were edited by Aldo Garzanti. The review’s price was 10 Lire. 7 Massimo Martignoni has counted 24, including Archias, Artifex, Catholicus, Mitus, Serangelo and Tipus. See Massimo Martignoni, Gio Ponti. Gli anni di Stile (Milan: Abitare Segesta, 2002), 101. 8 Carlo Pagani was on the editorial staff until n. 30 in 1943, while Francesco Ravaioli was general editor. 9 See for example the letter from Gio Ponti to Massimo Bontempelli, 6 November 1942, in Epistolario Gio Ponti, Milano (hereafter EGP), CAT GP 001. 10 Ponti, Presentazione. 11 These are neither historiographical nor critical interpretations, based on an accurate methodological approach, but the ideas of a ‘communicator’ who felt the urge to externalize, stimulate, provoke and educate readers. In this regard see also Luca Molinari and Cecilia Rostagni (eds), Gio Ponti e il Corriere della Sera 1930-1963 (Milan: RCS-Fondazione Corriere della Sera, 2011). 12 Ponti’s frequent incursions into the other arts (scenography, industrial design, graphic arts, painting), in an attempt to attain an ideal expressive totality, have been interpreted by Annalisa Avon as an early translation of his idea of ‘style’. See Annalisa Avon, “Uno stile per l’abitare. Attività e architetture di Gio Ponti fra gli anni Venti e gli anni Trenta,” Casabella 523 (1986), 44-53. 13 See Gio Ponti, “Gli indirizzi dello stile,” Realtà (1930), and Id., “Arte e industria,” Domus 54 (1932), 323-4. 14 Gio Ponti, “I fascicolo dedicato alla Triennale,” Domus 65 (1933), 223, and Id., “Stile e Civiltà,” Domus 45 (1931), 23. 15 Gio Ponti (ed.), “Lo stile nell’architettura e nell’arredamento. Verso funzioni nuove,” Domus 82 (1934), 3. 16 Edoardo Persico, “Punto e da capo per l’architettura,” Domus 83 (1934), 1-9, introduction by Ponti. 17 Edoardo Persico, “L’architetto Gio Pon- 323 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION countries (“Stile d’oggi nelle riviste”). Starting in May 1942, a long series of these articles was devoted to young Italian architects, whose architectural and professional development was reinterpreted by Ponti to present their characteristic features. The irst of these portraits, devoted to Adalberto Libera, began by saying that ‘reviewing Libera’s work is rather like reviewing the recent history of Italian architecture’. However Ponti also observed that his work involves ‘a clearly identiiable personal character, which in turn enables one to see and identify his personality’: this he termed ‘stile di Libera’, or his ‘example’, his ‘lesson’, his ‘school’.37 After Libera, Ponti turned to the lesson of Mario and Giulio Pediconi, BBPR, Melchiorre Bega, Mario Ridoli, Luigi Carlo Daneri, Giuseppe Vaccaro, Giuseppe Pagano, Asnago and Vender, and Franco Albini,38 in addition to his own.39 Despite the differences between their individual temperaments, Ponti pointed out that the ambiences created by these designers, beyond all formal discussion, were adapted and adhered to the spiritual, practical requirements of the lives of each, being capable of inally becoming – as an expression – the modern ‘style’. The need to remain faithful to this ideal of ‘style’ and beauty that illuminated Italian civilization led Ponti to continue to believe in the review through the war years, despite the destruction that damaged his ofice and the premises of Garzanti during air raids on Milan in the summer of 1943. And even though by this time Stile was beginning to develop a more technical focus on the themes of ‘exact’ housing, of uniication of the elements and industrialization (in February 1944 it even changed its masthead and became Stile – Rivista per la ricostruzione, the meaning of the term ‘ricostruzione’ (reconstruction) was not limited to building but extended to all human activities, in particular the arts understood as the supreme expression of civilization. Ponti did not see it as a contradiction ‘to be at war and speak of art’, because ‘the word that shapes the verse, the veil of colour on canvas or wall that is painting, the form of stone or of folds of bronze are, by the power of Beauty, the most durable’,40 and because, as he wrote on the cover of the July 1943 issue (‘this miracle that emerged from the rubble’, as Emilio Villa termed it41) ‘before the material and moral devastation’ striking Italy, ‘it has only its civilization to save its civilization’.42 324 ers of n. 1, 3, 5. See Silvia Bignami (ed.), ‘Aria d’Italia’ di Daria Guarnati. L’arte della rivista intorno al 1940 (Milan: Skira, 2008). 21 See the programme for “Domus 1938”, published in Domus 120 (1937). On Domus see Charlotte&Peter Fiell (eds.), Domus, 12 vols (Köln: Taschen, 2006). 22 See Società Editoriale Domus, Verbale della riunione del Consiglio di amministrazione della società, 16 July 1938, in Archivio Camera di Commercio di Milano, Registro Ditte, n. 161022. 23 On this date, moreover, Domus was already starting to feel the first pressure from the financial crisis, due to the ‘sharp increase in costs together with the inability to increase the price of the reviews and subscriptions, the fall in advertising revenue and the restricted development of publications as a result of the overall situation’. See Società Editoriale Domus, Verbale dell’Assemblea generale ordinaria e straordinaria, 31 March 1941, ibidem. 24 See Società ‘Editoriale Domus’, Verbale dell’Assemblea generale ordinaria del 30/3/1940, and Verbale della riunione consigliare del 18/4/1940, Ibidem. See also R. Tribunale Civile e Penale di Milano. Causa Editoriale Domus contro arch. Gio Ponti, January 1942, preserved in Fondo Marcello Piacentini, Firenze. Further documentation of the break between Ponti and Mazzocchi was unfortunately lost in the air raids that damaged both the premises of ‘Editoriale Domus’ and Ponti’s office. 25 So Ponti characterized Stile in a letter of November 21 1940 to his former contributor and friend Tomaso Buzzi. See Enrico Fenzi (ed.), Tomaso Buzzi. Lettere pensieri appunti 1937-1979 (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2000), 41. 26 ARCH., “Due nostri nuovi grandi argomenti”, Stile 3 (1941), 1. At the same time it appeared that Domus, to deal with the ‘company competition that particular positions, even internal, have increased’, was forced to ‘improve the edition’, to secure ‘new and more costly contributions’ and to ‘burden the management with unexpected expenses that are not recoverable’. See Società Editoriale Domus, Verbale dell’Assemblea generale ordinaria e straordinaria. 27 The Garzanti publishing house was set up in 1938, following the acquisition of the Treves publishing house by Aldo Garzanti. The official transfer of ownership was made in April 1939. On this date Garzanti took over the review Architettura, which was edited by Piacentini and an organ of the National Union of Fascist architects; since 1941, Architettura also absorbed the Milanese Rassegna di Architettura and was edited by a committee that included Ponti. In 1943 the Garzanti printing works and warehouse were destroyed in the air raids that bombed Milan. See Patrizia Caccia (ed.), Editori a Milano (1900-1945). Repertorio (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2013), 149-50. 28 See the draft of the contract between S.A. ‘Aldo Garzanti Editore’ (formerly Fratelli Treves) and Gio Ponti, 15 November 1940, in EGP GP 019. The contract also stipulated the layout of the review, which was printed in-house by Garzanti but in the Tipografia Alfieri & Lacroix: ‘covers in offset weight 250, size 200, advertising in gloss 130, basic text in gloss 130, with interlayers of rough paper, 100 coloured or not, Gualino paper, offset paper 140, special rough paper’; also ‘a minimum of two pages in colour; a maximum of four (excluding advertising pages in page and full plate); covers in colour with paintings or watercolours in three-colour printing or offset’. 29 The CEIM (Centro Edizioni Italiane Moda) was set up on 30 October 1940: the partners were Gio Ponti, Sante Astaldi, Pier Luigi Gomez and Aldo Garzanti. See R. Tribunale Civile e Penale di Milano. 30 The first issue, in January 1941, was titled Bellezza Linea. By the second issue the world Linea had been eliminated. 31 Oroscopi della moda (n. 1, January 1941, 32), La casa vivente (n. 10, ottobre 1941, 5), Limitazioni e vera eleganza (n. 11, November 1941, 7). 32 See correspondence and documentation of the review in EGP, CAT GP 005. 33 See letters from Ponti to Oppo on 13 February and 19 May 1943 in EGP, CAT GP 005. 34 Dir., “L’attrezzatura bibliografica delle arti,” Stile 19-20 (1942), 24. 35 The volumes published by Garzanti in the series of the Monografie d’arte di ‘Stile’ were: Piero Torriano, Carlo Carrà (1942); Giovanni Scheiwiller, Arturo Tosi (1942); Raffaele Carrieri, Giorgio De Chirico (1942); G.iuseppe Raimondi, Filippo De Pisis (1942); Guido Piovene, L’arte di Lea D’Avanzo (1943). 36 The volumes published were: Archias, Politica dell’architettura (1944), and Armando Melis, Profezia urbanistica della macchina (1944). The correspondence, preserved in EGP, GP 019, shows that in this case Ponti had the full confidence of Garzanti, from the start gaining complete responsibility for production of the review. 37 Gio Ponti, “Stile di Libera,” Stile 17 (1942), 10-19. 38 Dir., “Stile di Paniconi e Pediconi,” 18 (1942), 4-10; Pier Maria Bardi, “Stile di Pier Luigi Nervi,” 19-20 (1942, July-August), 9; Gio Ponti, “Stile di BBPR,” 22 October 1942, 11-18; Id., “Stile di Bega,” 23 November 1942, 14-22; Id., “Stile di Ridolfi,” 25 (1943), 2-15; Id., “Stile di Daneri,” 26 (1943), 10-20; Id., “Stile di Vaccaro,” 27 (1943), 1-9; G.P., “Stile di Pagano,” 32-4 (1943), 21-31; g.p., “Stile di domani. Su alcune architetture di Asnago e Vender,” 35 (1943), 9-22; Gio Ponti, “Stile di Albini,” 38 (1944), 7-23. 39 Gio Ponti, “Invenzione di una architettura composta. Dai ‘cuboni’ alla composizione d’una architettura,” Stile 39 (March 1944), 1-16. 40 “Siamo in guerra e parliamo d’arte”, Stile 13 (1942), 6. The words were repeated in subsequent numbers, to reiterate the purpose of the magazine. 41 See letter from Emilio Villa to Ponti on 9 November 1943, in EGP, CAT GP 001. The July issue, which was destroyed in the air raids, was reprinted complete and distributed in September. 42 See cover of nn. 32-33-34, August, September and October 1943. 325 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION 2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION ti,” L’Italia letteraria, 29 April 1934; republished in Giulia Veronesi (ed.), Edoardo Persico. Scritti d’architettura (1927/1935) (Florence: Vallecchi, 1968), 137-8. Persico polemicized with Ugo Ojetti, who the year before had spoken of Ponti as a creator of a style of luxury art. See Ugo Ojetti, “Lettera a Giovanni Ponti sul lusso necessario,” Pegaso January 1933, 97-9. Ponti, who on many occasions recognized his debt to Persico, replied on May 1, 1934, writing to him: ‘Your way of seeing things, which places my work under the scrutiny of an artistic ethic and an aesthetic as a result of what might be called “the adventure of my success”, confronts me with a responsibility. That you are close to me might be another piece of good luck: let’s hope I deserve it’ (quoted in Giulia Veronesi (ed.), Edoardo Persico. On relations between Ponti and Persico see Fulvio Irace, Gio Ponti. La casa all’italiana (Milan: Electa, 1988), 18-25, and Giorgio Ciucci, “Gli architetti e la guerra,” in Giorgio Ciucci and Giorgio Muratore (eds.), Storia dell’architettura italiana. Il primo Novecento (Milan: Electa, 2004), 476-501. 18 See Edoardo Persico, “Stile,” La Casabella May 1930, 47. 19 In the case of the new building for the Faculty of Letters by Liviano, Ponti asked for a contribution from Massimo Campigli, who painted the large fresco at the entrance in 1938-9; he himself, in the same years, painted the murals in the building of ‘Bo’. 20 Aria d’Italia, edited by Daria Guarnati and published by the Edizioni Guarnati, came out in seven instalments, between 1939 and 1941. An eighth instalment, titled ‘Espressione di Gio Ponti’, wholly devoted to the architect’s work, was published in 1954. It sought to promote the Italian heritage and was undoubtedly an example for Stile. In it Ponti published “Introduzione della vita degli angeli” (December 1939,); “Tutto al mare deve essere coloratissimo” (Summer 1940); “Sirene” (Summer 1940); “Pinacoteca” (Autumn 1940); “Affreschi nell’Università di Padova: studi e particolari” (Autumn 1940); he also designed the cov- ISBN 978-88-8202-048-4