Date:
Location: United States Online via Zoom
The Institute for the Study of International Expositions (ISIE) presents its first Speaker Series lecture of 2025 “Building Italy: The Italian Pavilion at L’Exposition Universelle d’Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, Paris 1937,” presented by Sasha Goldman online via Zoom, January 29, 2pm EST. For more information: https://www.isie-global.org/.
Registration link: https://arizona.zoom.us/meeting/register/rh8ZyUbbT2m2TsnMtMFH2g
Lecture Description: The Italian Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle d’Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne
(Paris, 1937) serves as a revealing case study of Italian Fascism’s
aesthetic and ideological contradictions. Intended to showcase Fascist
Italy’s cultural and technological prowess, the pavilion instead
highlighted internal fragmentation and international marginalization.
This paper examines how the pavilion’s design, blending Rationalist
modernism with traditionalist Italianità, reflected Mussolini’s policy
of aesthetic diversity while undermining the regime’s effort to define a
cohesive Fascist style. Its muted reception, overshadowed by the
ideological spectacle of Soviet and German contributions, reflects
Italy’s diminishing influence and peripheral role in the international
order. Ultimately, the pavilion encapsulates the broader dissonance
within Italian Fascist cultural production, offering insight into its
role in shaping Italy’s fraught position in pre-World War II Europe.
