Benedetta Cappa Marinetti: "Donna Generatrice"
Item
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Title
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Benedetta Cappa Marinetti: "Donna Generatrice"
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Identifier
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AAI3135589
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identifier
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3135589
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Creator
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Panzera, Lisa M.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Jack Flam
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Date
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2003
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States | Women's Studies | Biography
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Abstract
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The writer and painter Benedetta Cappa Marinetti occupies a unique place within Italian Futurism and among the ranks of its female participants. Benedetta represents an amalgam of positions that are not only complex, but inseparable---Futurist artist, wife, mother, autonomous individual, and political subject. This complexity is reflected in Benedetta's works, which both embrace and deviate from Futurist and Fascist ideologies. Benedetta's philosophical and aesthetic conceptions of the world center on notions of resolution and harmony, the individuation of the self from the universe, and maternity as a font of creativity. They reflect varying concerns and influences, particularly the context of post-World War I Italy, deep divisions occurring within the Futurist movement, and her developing ideological construction of woman.;This study examines Benedetta, her work, and her varied roles in order to establish her personal, cultural, and political beliefs. This investigation shows how Benedetta was able to function successfully as a Fascist and as an avant-garde artist and how she advanced her artistic ambitions despite the constraints on women inherent in both Futurism and Fascism. Though largely undiscussed in contemporary literature, Benedetta's contribution to Futurism was significant. She wrote three well-received works of fiction, created a small but important body of paintings, and assisted her husband, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of Futurism, in presiding over the movement. By contrast, under the Fascist regime, a woman's official role was that of mother. This study reveals how Benedetta not only adopted this view, but advocated it by developing a theory of creativity centered on motherhood that allowed her to meld her political, personal, and artistic beliefs. In addition, this investigation explores the way in which Benedetta's spiritualism---a blend of Christianity and Theosophy---is revealed in her works. In retrospect, Benedetta's roles seem contradictory, but are less so when understood within the context in which she worked: namely that of Futurism and Fascism in Italy, in themselves inconsistent movements that embodied ideological stances that, like Benedetta's, shifted over time.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
