The doctoral project Avant-garde Propaganda. Colonialism and Futurism investigates the connections between Italian colonialism on the African continent and the Futurist movement, from the 1910s to the mid-1940s. The research aims to trace two specific strands within Italian Futurism: the racialized and stereotypical representations of Africa, and imagery related to colonial warfare. Although the project starts from visual representations, it also engages with various areas of the broader cultural history of Futurism, including literature, performing arts, ephemera, and cultural politics (such as exhibition organization and participation). The primary goal of the research is to highlight the avant-garde’s contribution to the construction and dissemination of an Italian “colonial consciousness,” allowing for a broader analysis of the dynamics between art and politics during the Fascist period. The project seeks to shed light on new aspects of Italy’s colonial history in Africa, a field that has only recently begun to attract deep scholarly interest. Deconstructing long-standing stereotypes—such as the notion of Italian colonialism as “weaker” and less violent than that of other European powers, or the tendency to reduce colonialism to Fascism while overlooking the legacy of the liberal period and postwar continuities—is central to this study. The research also aspires to offer concrete insights for the present, questioning how colonial-era collections might be presented in museums or studied in academia today, and how to develop a postcolonial and decolonial context.

Giulia Beatrice was a fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte from 2021 to 2023.

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The event will take place in the auditorium.
Free admission until capacity is reached.

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Giulia Beatrice is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the University of Zurich, where she is working on a thesis on Africa and colonialism in Italian Futurism. Her doctoral research has been funded by the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome (2021 – 2023), the Swiss National Science Foundation (2023 – 2025) and the Beinecke Library at Yale University (2024). She is currently a member of the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s research unit “Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture”. She has organized the international conference New Leisure for a New Nation. Art and Entertainment in Italy, from Nation-building to Liberation (1861 – 1945) (Rome, November 2023), and she has published articles and book chapters on the art critic Carl Einstein, Italian Futurism and the links between art, visual culture and Italian colonialism.


Cover image: Elio Randazzo, Paesaggio libico (Pozzo nell’oasi), 1934, oil on jute canvas, Museo delle Civiltà – MPE Luigi Pigorini, Rome