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The role of modernist interior design in the construction of Italian nationalism

Along with the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design and furnishing practices. While the regime’s politics were overtly manifest in monumental government architecture, Furnishing Fascism examines the subtler yet effective role of household goods and decor in the cultivation of Italy’s exclusionary sense of national identity.

Presenting a fresh look at the work of various architects and designers, including iconic figures such as Gio Ponti and Carlo Enrico Rava, Ignacio G. Galán explores how seemingly neutral products of everyday life contributed to the propagation of fascist ideology. Through extensive promotion in popular magazines and department stores, on the film sets of Cinecittà Studios, and throughout the country’s colonial territories, Italy’s modernist design practices were part of a larger political project that aimed to produce a totalizing image of cultural hegemony.

Interweaving design theory, architectural history, and media scholarship, Furnishing Fascism reexamines the period’s so-called minor arts to reveal the political entanglement of modernism in early twentieth-century Italy and offers valuable insight into the complications of cultural production under the auspices of authoritarian power.

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"A testament to masterful scholarship, Furnishing Fascism is a superb exploration of the intersection of furniture history and sociopolitical forces across disciplines. Ignacio G. Galán transcends the confines of Italian and European histories, tracing the journey of furniture and interior design across borders and colonial spaces to reveal their profound influence on cultures worldwide."—Pamela Karimi, Cornell University

"Furnishing Fascism is an indispensable work that puts forth an inspired new approach to the mutual constitutions of interwar Italian design and fascist politics. It takes modernist views on interior furnishings as the lens through which to scrutinize Italian nation-building (instead of building elevations or finishings), showing how cinema, advertising, and other consumer arenas were integral to designers’ political commitments."—Mia Fuller, author of Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism

"In this adroit, innovative history of Italian fascism from the inside out, Ignacio G. Galán takes the reader up and down the architectural scales, from furniture to territory and back. Showing how fascism puts homeland and house together by furnishing both with stylized objects and stylized subjects, Galán rewrites the history of dark times, one of interacting hegemonies: bourgeois, cinematic, leisurely, and colonial. An exemplary contribution to a whole new generation of scholarship on the fascist past that shines a bright light on its unresolved contradictions and their afterlife."—Reinhold Martin, Columbia University