Anti-communism at Home, Europeanism Abroad: Italian Cultural Policy at the Venice Biennale, 1948–1958

Abstract

Using the fine arts exhibition of the Venice Biennale as a case study, this article considers the role of the Italian national government's cultural policy in pursuing its key domestic and foreign concerns between 1948 and 1958. These were, respectively, suppressing communism at home, and promoting Western European unification and Italy's role within it. By scrutinising their involvement at the Biennale, it aims to show the importance placed not only by the Italian Christian Democrats but also by their European counterparts on constructing the idea of a culturally integrated Western Europe as a vital complement to analogous economic and political initiatives.