Marisa Mori and the Futurists : A Woman Artist in an Age of Fascism. Jennifer Griffiths
In English. Softcover, 176 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 1.2 cm. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024
This book introduces a captivating personality to the modernist canon, Marisa Mori (1900-1985), who was the only woman to contribute to The Futurist Cookbook (1932) with her recipe for "Italian Breasts in the Sun". Offering something more complex than a traditional biographical account, Griffiths presents a feminist critique of Mori's art, converging on issues of gender, culture, and history to offer new critical perspectives on Italian modernism. Although she was later erased from modernist memory, Mori was at the center of the Futurist movement in Italy; however, Mori worked outside the major European capitals and oscillated between traditional figurative themes and abstract experimentation. As a result, his "in-between" images can help rethink the margins of modernism.
By situating Mori's most significant artworks in the critical context of fascism, the interwar period, and by highlighting her artistic contributions before, during, and after her Futurist decade, Griffiths contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the women who participated in the Italian Futurist movement. In doing so, she explores a female artist's struggle for modernity among Italian Futurists in an era of fascism.
