Paragone: notes on hegemony and realism in the 1950s

Officina: experiments in engaging with the arts

“…If Gramsci had to be scrutinised and reconfigured in order to solve the problem of the ‘ nazional-popolare ’, the Cultural Commission was also, in the same years, moving from an orthodox position on culture, seen as organically growing from a given group or class, to a more nuanced and less dialectic understanding of it, which took into account individuality and subjectivity as tenable forms of artistic expression. But it also took into significant account the role of intellectuals and journals in facilitating cultural production in its own terms and not as shaped by party politics (Vittoria 1992, 120–121; Billiani 2016, 87–88). This is why, when, on 19 July 1955, Leonetti wrote to the militant, intellectual, established father figure Elio Vittorini about Officina ’s overall structure and the merits of his Einaudi series ‘I gettoni’, 25 he could state that:As you have certainly deduced, we are trying very hard to give Officina ’s first part, ‘Our History’, a rigorous structure that we see as a discreet critical revision, with a gently historiographical note and in direct correlation with the poetics and ideology of the first half of the century.…”