Marisa Mori and the Futurists: A Woman Artist in an Age of Fascism

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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 Moris 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 Moris 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 artists struggle for modernity among the Italian Futurists in an age of Fascism.

Reviews

This volume broadens current debates on Futurism by offering a ground-breaking study on a female artist actively involved in the destruction and dismantling of consolidated feminine stereotypes in Italian art and society. Maris Mori deserves recognition for the exuberant dynamism and sensitivity of her painting. Griffiths critical reading based on solid documentary evidence offers a more precise chronology of her life and works and, above all, of her conceptual elaboration of the feminine, located by her in the creative power of the maternal body. This volume will prove invaluable for all scholars of Futurism, modern art and gender studies. * Gnter Berghaus, General Editor of the Bibliographic Handbook of Futurism and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, UK *
The first English book on this unjustly neglected artist, and a delightful read, Marisa Mori and the Futurists will introduce Mori to a greater public and encourage further scholarship that understands feminism as a historical enterprise. Exploring the complexity of what a feminist intervention in modernism means, Griffithss book refuses to pin down, once and for all, the contributions of Morisurely, a feminist gesture in itself. * John Gerard Champagne, Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University, USA *
This book is a well informed and thoughtful case study about an intriguing Italian futurist female artist, seen in the historical context of Italian fascism and analyzed through a powerful feminist lens. It is a welcome contribution to the growing body of criticism that is making Italian avant-garde women better known internationally. * Lucia Re, Research Professor of Italian, University of California, Los Angeles, USA *

Author Bio

Jennifer S. Griffiths completed a PhD in the History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, USA. She has been lecturing on Italian art in Italy for over a decade. Her articles on gender, art, and representation have appeared in the International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Design and Culture, Womans Art Journal, Art Journal, Womans Studies Quarterly, Annali dItalianistica, and elsewhere.