Carla Badiali, Cordelia Cattaneo, Carla Prina. La contribution des artistes femmes de Côme à l'abstraction italienne entre les deux guerres

[Autom. eng. transl.] The history of abstract art at its origins, in Italy as in the rest of Europe, is essentially a male story. An important exhibition curated by the critics Lea Vergine entitled The other half of the avant-garde in 1980 brought to light for the first time women who had hitherto been completely forgotten by the history of art. Among those artists there were also some protagonists of Italian abstract art, such as Carla Badiali, included in the exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan Kandinsky and Italy (...), who was part of the group of Como abstractionists and who played a role relevant in the context of research on abstraction in Italy. For many years relegated to the role of "student" of Manlio Rho, in reality in her work she shows an autonomy and an originality of research that is not present in her male colleagues. In fact, in Como, in the 1930s, a cenacle of artists had formed, gravitating around the figure of the rationalist architect Giuseppe Terragni, who, together with the Milan Million group, constituted the only true abstract research center in Italy. of fascism. In 1941 they also created, together with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the Primordiali Futuristi Group, which also included two other women, Carla Prina and Cordelia Cattaneo. Both have not yet enjoyed due critical recognition, perhaps also because they are linked, for family reasons, to architects who have certainly tarnished their notoriety. The first was married to the Swiss architect Alberto Sartoris, and together with him she contributed to creating an important point of connection between autarchic Italy and the European artistic environment: the second was the sister of the rationalist architect Cesare Cattaneo. An interesting aspect of the abstract art of these artists, in particular of Carla Badiali, concerns the involvement of applied arts. Like her, other women between the end of the thirties and the beginning of the forties in fact applied themselves in the design for fabric, collaborating with the flourishing silk textile industry, for which the city Como has always been an exceptional pole in Italy. . The contribution intends to examine for the first time with an in-depth and comparative vision the work of these artists, who represent the only example of Italian abstract art in the Thirties, a pole of great interest to understand the sense of resilience of these artists. women who worked in a decidedly male-dominated society.