La représentation de l’identité sicilienne dans les bâtiments publics du Ventennio fasciste

The intervention, included in the panel of the Conference dedicated to the monumental forms of political and cultural identities, proposed the analysis of some artistic decorations of monumental public building made in Sicily during the fascist regime, such as the pictorial cycle of the Palace of the Prefecture of Ragusa, the bas-reliefs of the Casa del Fascio in Messina and the mosaic of the Maritime Station of the same city. The institutional representation of the collective – the Conference’s main subject of interest – was considered in the light of traditional themes of fascist ideology, such as Labour, and by episodes related to the local context, such as Mussolini’s visits or mythicized historical moments of the island. In the group scenes represented, the tensions between the persistence of individual and regional stylistic intentions and the aesthetic codes of the regime, such as the stylization of the roman past or a certain stylistic rendering of the bodies, were also highlighted.