Enriching the existing scholarship on this important exhibition, Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today (1950-53), this book shows the dynamic role art, specifically sculpture, played in constructing both Italian and American culture after World War II (WWII).
Moving beyond previous studies, this book looks to the archival sources and beyond the history of design for a greater understanding of the stakes of the show. First, the book considers art-s role in this exhibition-s import-prominent mid-century sculptors like Giacomo Manz-, Fausto Melotti, and Lucio Fontana were included. Second, it foregrounds the particular role sculpture was able to play in transcending the boundaries of fine art and craft to showcase innovative formalist aesthetics of modernism without falling in the critiques of modernism playing out on the international stage in terms of state funding for art. Third, the book engages with the larger socio-political use of art as a cultural soft pow
