Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
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Further reading
Allum, P.A. (1990) ‘Uniformity Undone: Aspects of Catholic Culture in Post-war Italy’, in Z.
Baranski and R. Lumley (eds), Conflict and Culture in Post-war Italy: Essays on Mass and
Popular Culture., Basingstoke: Macmillan (provides excellent insight into the Italian Catholic
mentality in an age of ‘triumphalism’).
Bedani, G. (1994) ‘Church and State in Italian History: Origins of the Present Crisis’, in M.
Donovan (ed.), Italy, Aldershot: Ashgate, vol. 1 (a useful overview).
Garelli, F. (1991) Religione e Chiesa in Italia (Religion and Church in Italy), Bologna: Il Mulino
(the standard work on Catholic religious behaviour).
Iadanza, M. (ed.) (1992) Chiesa e Società Civile nel Mezzogiorno (Church and Civil Society in the
South), Rome: Borla (Catholic discussion of the role of the Church in the South).
Pollard, J.F. (1989) ‘Post-war Italy: the Papal State of the Twentieth Century’, in E.A. Millar (ed.),
The Legacy of Fascism, Glasgow: Glasgow University Press (a brief study of the impact of the
Lateran Pacts on postwar Italy).
Riccardi, A. (1994) ‘La vita religiosa’ (Religious Life), in P. Ginsborg (ed.), Stato Dell’Italia (State
of Italy), Milan: Bruno Mondadori (the best short survey of religious activity and the Catholic
Church in Italy).
Webster, R.A. (1960) The Cross and the Fasces: Christian Democracy and Fascism in Italy,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
JOHN POLLARD
Ciampi, Carlo Azeglio
b. 9 December 1920, Livorno
Economist
A central banker who entered politics at a late age (although in his youth he had actively
supported the Partito d’Azione, a small left-wing party), Ciampi played an outstanding
role in promoting economic and financial recovery in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s. As
governor of the Bank of Italy between 1979 and 1993, he fostered major reform of the
Italian financial system and won greater independence for the Bank from the Treasury. A
believer in European monetary integration (see European Union), he strongly supported
Italy joining the European Monetary System in 1979 and played a significant role in the
long negotiations which finally led to the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in the early
1990s. Thanks to both his international standing in financial circles and his independence
from political parties, he was appointed prime minister of a so-called ‘technical’
government in April 1993, after the Tangentopoli inquiries had taken the political
system to the verge of collapse. Following the victory of the Olive Tree coalition (see
l’Ulivo) in the 1996 elections, he became Minister of the Treasury in the Prodi
government; in fact, he was a sort of super-Minister of the Economy, since he not only
fought inflation successfully, improved the national budget and finally led Italy into the
European single currency in 1998, but also played a critical role in the privatization of
large state-owned companies (see privatization and nationalization) such as ENI and
Entries A–Z 161
Telecom (see STET) and the preparation a new set of general rules for corporate
governance.
A fervent Catholic but strongly opposed to any confessionalism—an attitude that
provoked a certain coldness towards him in some Catholic circles—he was elected
President of the Republic in 1999 on the first ballot on the basis of a wide agreement
between the ruling centre-left parliamentary majority and the centre—right opposition, a
unanimous acknowledgement of both his meritorious services to the country and his high
international reputation.
STEFANO BATTILOSSI
Cicciolina
b. 1950, Hungary
Porn queen and politician
Ilona Staller, better known by her stage name ‘Cicciolina’, became Italy’s most famous
porn queen in the postwar period and, from the 1970s onward, achieved a reputation
throughout Europe for explicit sex shows on stage and screen. Her ultimate exploit was to
be elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1987 as a member of the Radical Party,
subsequently serving on a parliamentary committee for defence (see also Parliament).
She also contested the 1992 national elections at the head of her own ‘Party of Love’, but
this time proved unsuccessful. Meanwhile she had married American sculptor Jeff Koons
and had a son by him. Koons fanned his own notoriety with provocative paintings and
sculptures of Cicciolina but eventually filed for divorce, which he was granted in 1994,
together with custody of the child. Cicciolina appealed long and vehemently against the
decision but was unsuccessful in having it reversed.
GINO MOLITERNO
Cima, Annalisa
b. 20 January 1941, Milan
Poet and painter
Cima began as a painter in the early 1960s, and published her first book of poetry, Terzo
Modo (Third Way), in 1969. Her poetry springs from an investigation of two main
themes of the Western tradition: love and time. Through a lyrical exploration of human
will and desire, Cima comes to the conclusion that only love can make sense of the
chaotic and magmatic mutations of life. Love becomes, therefore, the sentiment which
offers to the poet the opportunity to identify the only moments in which life is not
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subjected to the incessant passage of time, which Cima defines as a ‘predator’. This
confrontation between time and love is well represented in Cima’s best poetry collection,
Ipotesi d’amore (Hypotheses on Love) (1984) where love becomes indeed a ‘hypothesis’
or theorem that needs to be proven by the very existence of poetry, the artistic medium
which challenges the omnipotence of time. Cima’s poetic works have been translated into
many languages, and a bilingual anthology, in Italian and English, has been published in
Milan by Scheiwiller.
ANDREA CICCARELLI
Cinecittà
With nineteen modern and well-equipped studios spread over an area of 400,000 square
metres, Cinecitta or ‘Cinema City’ is the largest film studio complex in Italy. Constructed
in record time on the outskirts of Rome as a replacement for the Cines studios, which had
burnt down in mysterious circumstances in September 1935, the complex was privately
built but generously subsidized by the state, and was officially inaugurated by Mussolini
on 27 April 1937 as proof of the strong commitment of the Fascist regime to the renewed
development of the Italian film industry. Two hundred and ninety-seven films—more
than half of them light comedies or what would later come to be called ‘white telephone’
films—were made at the studios between 1937 and 1943 before Allied bombings
extensively damaged the buildings and much of the equipment was looted by retreating
German troops. Following the liberation of Rome the complex came to be used as a camp
for refugees, and it only began functioning as a film studio again in 1947.
However, by the 1950s all facilities had been fully restored and new Italian
government regulations obliging foreign film companies to reinvest part of their profits in
Italy led to filming at Cinecittà becoming an attractive option for many of the American
companies. This led to a decade of major American films being made in Rome with
Cinecittà crowded with American directors and stars and thus deservedly earning the
sobriquet ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’. By the late 1950s Italian directors like Rossellini
and Visconti also returned to Cinecittà, and from 1959 Fellini almost took up residence
there, making all his subsequent films in Studio 5 (which would be named in his honour
after his death in 1993).
By the late 1970s, however, as part of the general crisis that overtook the Italian film
industry at the time, film production at Cinecittà fell disastrously, prompting suggestions
that the complex might be closed altogether in order to make way for residential housing.
Fortunately the mid-1980s brought a reprieve, largely with an increase of production for
television.
In the early 1990s an effort was made to revive the fortunes of both the studios and the
Italian industry with the establishment of Cinettà International, a state-owned company
meant to promote Italian film interests abroad. However, the company lost money and
appeared to achieve very little, and it was liquidated in 1996. In July 1998, under the
Prodi centre-left government, Cinecittà itself was finally privatized, allowing the Cecchi
Gori Group and De Laurentis to take an 11.5 per cent share each but with a 40 per cent
Entries A–Z 163
share firmly held by Cinecittà Holding, a company controlled by the State Treasury and
headed by veteran filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo.
See also: film industry
GINO MOLITERNO
cinematographers
Giuseppe Rotunno, Italy’s most eminent specialist in colour film photography, once
pointed out that it is the cinematographer who provides the vital link between a director’s
inner vision and its materialization on the screen, and postwar Italian directors have been
well-served by a number of great artists in this field. Rotunno himself is one of Italy’s
prominent cinematographers and has had a long and fruitful collaboration with Federico
Fellini. In fact, much of what viewers normally identify as the baroque idiosyncrasies of
the Fellinian universe are in large part the result of the brazenness of Rotunno’s framing
and lighting strategies.
Fellini’s first feature-length colour film, Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits)
(1965) was nonetheless photographed by Gianni Di Venanzo (1920–66). Paradoxically,
however, it is primarily Di Venanzo’s black and white photography that led the former
neorealist cameraman to collaborate with some of the most distinctive Italian film
directors (Antonioni, Fellini). His prestigious career was tragically ended by premature
death in 1966.
Di Venanzo’s former assistant, Pasqualino De Santis, the younger brother of film-
maker Giuseppe De Santis, quickly carved out a name of his own, especially thanks to
his lasting collaboration with Francesco Rosi. His uniform talent for improvisation and
stylization made him as equipped for hand-held camerawork, as in Rosi’s Il caso Mattei
(The Mattei Affair) (1972) as for the polished sophistication of Visconti’s La caduta
degli Dei (The Damned) (1969), Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice) (1971) or
L’innocente (The Innocent) (1976). Interestingly, the De Santis brothers never
collaborated.
It is instead Otello Martelli (1903-) who is most closely associated with the cinema of
Giuseppe De Santis and with the tragic purity of the neorealist image in films such as
Caccia tragica (Tragic Pursuit) (1947) and the more notorious Riso amaro (Bitter Rice)
(1949). In fact, although Martelli is well remembered for his luminous participation in
Anita Ekberg’s midnight ablution in Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960), the Roman
cinematographer was inseparable from the neorealist movement. With Roberto
Rossellini, Martelli participated in the birth of neorealism, along with the other major
cinematographer of neorealism, Aldo Tonti (1910–), who photographed Visconti’s
Ossessione (1942), Lattuada’s Senza Pietà (Without Pity) (1948) and Rossellini’s Il
miracolo (The Miracle) (1948).
Also starting his career in the aftermath of the Second World War, Tonino Delli Colli
later established himself as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s cinematographer, giving life, thanks to
the classical perfection of his photography, to the innovative plasticity and the sense of
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the sacred in Pasolini’s vision. Equally capable of conveying Sergio Leone’s epic
humour, Delli Colli also photographed Fellini’s last three films.
Representing the new generation of Italian cinematographers, Vittorio Storaro is
known as a maverick conjurer who combines a high degree of technical expertise with a
virtuosity that at once explores and renews the art of cinematography. Such gifts led him
to become the partner of Bernardo Bertolucci in the 1970s. Capitalizing on his
collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now, Storaro has been working
exclusively in Hollywood since 1980.
Further reading
Masi, S. (1983) Storie della luce nel cinema (Stories of Light in the Cinema), Rome:
Savelli/Gaumont (a detailed study of Italy’s major cinematographers).
Prédal, R. (1985) La photo de cinema (Photography in the Cinema), Paris: Editions du Cerf (a
general study of cinematography with a useful appendix listing 100 prominent
cinematographers).
DOROTHÉE BONNIGAL.
Citati, Pietro
b. 20 February 1930, Florence
Critic, essayist and translator
Pietro Citati distinguished himself in the mid-1950s as translator of the French author
Marivaux. In addition to his countless contributions to such literary journals as
L’Approdo and Paragone, and to the widely-circulated newspapers Il Corriere delta sera
and La Repubblica, his literary achievements include numerous essay collections on
classical and modern literature, and the fictionalized biographies of Goethe, Manzoni,
Katherine Mansfield, Tolstoy, Kafka and Proust. An intellectually subtle, linguistically
refined and stylistically versatile writer, Citati also published a book on humour with the
poet Attilio Bertolucci (Gli umoristi moderni (The Modern Humorists), 1961).
Particularly successful was his 1989 novel Storia prima felice, poi dolentissima e funesta
(Story, Happy at First, Then Very Sorrowful and Fatal), in which Citati retraces the story
of his great-grand-parents’ love and death as documented in his family’s letters.
FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI
Entries A–Z 165
citizenship
Citizenship has both formal and substantive dimensions: on one hand, there is the
definition of who is, and can become, a citizen and the civil, political and social rights
legally attached to that status; on the other hand, there is the distribution and exercise of
those rights in practice, which usually produce invidious distinctions between citizens
who are formally equal. The development of citizenship in Italy as an idea and practice
has historically been hampered by the political and cultural barriers to features which
have underpinned the growth of citizenship elsewhere: a sense of nationhood, thriving
economy and confidence in state institutions. However, the emergence of Italy as an
increasingly multicultural and Europeanized society in the 1990s has made the definition
and content of citizenship a renewed concern.
The definition of citizenship
For most of the twentieth century, the attribution and acquisition of citizenship were
regulated by Law no. 555 of 1912. Citizenship was transmitted by men (women by
default), dual citizenship was largely excluded, and a residence period of ten years in
Italy was established for any foreigner to qualify for citizenship. Children of the many
emigrants who had already renounced Italian citizenship in favour of their new state were
nonetheless considered citizens. Special categories of citizenship were later added to
cover Italy’s colonial empire in North and East Africa and the Dodecanese. In 1983 the
disparities as transmitters of citizenship between men and women married to foreigners
were reduced. Overall revision of the 1912 law was not undertaken until 1992 when—in
response to increasing immigration, the creation of a European citizenship and the
pursuit of closer links with the descendants of former Italian citizens who had emigrated
after 1870 (see emigration)—new criteria for citizenship were established. The new
regulations eliminated the remaining disparity between genders, shortened the residence
requirements for descendants of former citizens and for EU citizens, and facilitated both
the recovery of citizenship and the acquisition of dual citizenship. The importance of
residence (jus soli) was thus reduced for all except non-European immigrants, and the
significance of descent (jus sanguinis) was enhanced. Italy shifted towards a cultural
rather than territorial definition of formal citizenship.
The substance of citizenship
The content of the political and social rights available to those who share the common
status of ‘Italian citizen’ has been extremely uneven. Until 1945, state provision of
universal social and economic protection was limited by a backward economy and by the
deliberate creation of space for Church initiatives and institutions. After 1945, when
women acquired political rights for the first time and began to demolish the legal barriers
to levels of participation available to men (see feminism), rapid economic development
supplied the resources to expand the content of citizenship. However, its expansion
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followed a highly particularistic route, rewarding social and occupational groups
differently according to their bargaining power and political importance and producing a
patchwork of highly unequal rights and privileges. In general, the distribution of
resources available as citizenship rights—favouring cash subsidies rather than universally
accessible services—tended to mirror rather than modify the individual and regional
inequalities produced by the market economy (see Southern Question). In the 1970s
efforts were made to respond to demands for greater political and industrial participation
and to standardize basic levels of citizen entitlement (see health service). However, these
efforts to offer common substantive citizenship to all Italians have had to combat the
increasing financial pressures on the state to curtail social protection and the devolution
of many health and welfare responsibilities to regional authorities of unequal wealth and
institutional capacity. In addition, the persistence of a sizeable informal economy,
swollen by immigrants who since 1992 must wait ten years before becoming eligible for
formal citizenship, simultaneously deprives its participants of rights and the state of
taxes. At the close of the twentieth century, the content of substantive citizenship
continues to vary considerably across Italy; the extent of social protection remains
heavily dependent on place of residence, the local weight of private initiatives and
religious institutions, and the support of the family.
Further reading
Ascoli, U. (1997) ‘Volunteering for Human Service Provisions: Lessons from Italy and the USA’,
Social Indicators Research 40:299–327.
Ferrera, M. (1986) ‘Italy’, in P. Flora (ed.), Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare
States Since World War II, vol. 2, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Zampaglione, G. and Guglielman, P. (1995) La cittadinanza. Diritto e pratica consolari, vol. 3,
Rome: Stamperia Reale.
DAVID MOSS
Civiltà delle macchine
Established originally as a bi-monthly house magazine for the IRI-owned Finmeccanica,
Civiltà rapidly became one of the most important Italian postwar design magazines.
Together with other more established and reputable journals such as Casabella, Domus
and Stile Industria, it helped to foster a healthy debate on design issues. Edited until
1959 by the poet, writer and engineer, Leonardo Sinisgalli, it often hosted articles on
mathematics, poetry and industrial design. It thus elevated design to the status of ‘high
culture’, while also often taking sides on fundamental design issues such as the conflict
between needs and production.
While some magazines focused on updating styles and some, like Stile industria,
maintained neutrality on ideological questions of design, Civiltà approached design and
industry as vectors of contemporary cultural values. This attitude allowed it to
Entries A–Z 167
compensate for the lack of a national plan regarding the transformation of contemporary
design methods until it ceased publication in 1978.
See also: architectural and design magazines; industrial design
FASSIL ZEWDOU
Clemente, Francesco
b. 23 March 1952, Naples
Artist
With little formal training and always regarding himself as a dilettante, Clemente has
contributed much to the rejuvenation of Italian art following the conceptual dead end of
modernism. In 1979 he was named as part of a new grouping called the
transavantgarde, but his use of figurative elements in a imaginative, non-realist way
leads him to be more often placed within neo-expressionism, an identification he makes
himself.
With the financial support of his family, Clemente was able to practise as an artist
from the age of eighteen. He did not attend art school, but chose rather to train himself by
producing thousands of drawings between 1971 and 1978. Although self-taught, or
possibly because of this—given the radical nature of art schools in the 1960s and
1970s—Clemente was strongly influenced by traditional art and looked to the Italian
masters as well as the art of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.
After an early association with arte povera and conceptual art, his drawings began to
suggest a way forward in their use of both figurative and abstract forms. Clemente sought
something more personal than the political art then in vogue. The big breakthrough
occurred in 1980, when he exhibited as part of the transavantgarde at the Venice
Biennale. These artists signalled a rejection of modernism and the myth of constant
progress by revisiting and reusing the art of the past, and returning to traditional
techniques of painting. For inspiration, they looked back to some of the more wayward
figures in art history. Clemente found inspiration in the sixteenthcentury mannerists, and
in de Chirico and his brother Alberto Savinio with their kitsch combination of classical
and contemporary motifs. He also studied the Quattrocento Italian frescoists, with their
flat areas of colour and simple, monumental figures.
This marked eclecticism is the most prominent feature of Clemente’s art. He consumes
not just fragments and pieces but entire iconographies, which is what gives his work its
richness. He finds inspiration in the juxtaposition of cultures, and travels regularly
between studios in Rome, Madras and New York. The influence of Indian art can be seen
in India, a book chronicling ‘the working life of the artist’ during 1985, with its black
outlines around figures, flat areas of colour, patterned backgrounds, stylized landscapes
and decorative symbols. His ‘Three Worlds Exhibition’ of 1990–1 was devoted to works
on paper, including watercolours, drawings, lithographs and pastels, which use imagery
derived from the cultures of Italy, India and the United States.
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Clemente’s work often presents strong elements of autobiography and self-
investigation. His subject matter includes plants and animals, the female form, the face
and the hand, and also his own image. He takes his themes from the life processes,
including procreation. The ‘Black Paintings’ of 1994 are an example of what has been
called Clemente’s sexual mysticism.
India, he explains, is in some ways like ancient Italy: ‘The gods who left us thousands
of years ago in Naples are still in India, so it’s like going home for me’ (Percy, 1990:50).
In India, he uses local craftsmen to paint the backgrounds of his works, such as the Indian
Miniatures of 1980–1. Prolific and internationally appreciated, Clemente is widely
represented in collections around the world.
Further reading:
Percy, A. and Foye, R. (eds) (1990) Francesco Clemente: Three Worlds, Philadelphia Museum of
Art (includes articles, illustrations and bibliography).
Politi, G. (1984) ‘Francesco Clemente’, Flash Art 117:12–21 (interview).
MAX STAPLES
Clementi, Aldo
b. 25 May 1925, Catania
Composer
Clementi is one of the leading figures of the postwar Italian avantgarde. His initial studies
under Sangiorgi in Catania led to an interest in twelve-tone techniques, an interest further
developed in the directions of advanced serialism and electronics under the guidance of
Petrassi (1952–4), Maderna (1956–7) and Stockhausen (1961–2). Clementi’s early style
is characterized by a strict concern with form and structure bordering on terseness (for
example, Concertino (1956) or Compozitione no.1 (1957)), and it was only gradually that
other influences combined to mitigate this acerbity. The discourse of contemporary non-
figurative painting was to prove important in Collage (1961), a collaboration with artist
Achille Perilli, in which scenic elements were introduced for the first time, and also in the
aleatoricism of the three Informels (1961–3). The pursuit of varying techniques of
indeterminacy is the key to Clementi’s work during the 1960s and 1970s. Collage 3 (Dies
irae) (1966–7) subjects four Beatles’ songs to a radical electronic metamorphosis, whilst
the action of Blitz (1973) is dependent on the moves of eight chess players. Clementi
teaches at the Milan Conservatory and at the University of Bologna.
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Further reading
(1970) ‘Scheda 10: Aldo Clementi’, Collage 9:77 (contains biography, worklist, writings,
discography and bibliography).
JOHN KERSEY
clientelism
Clientelism (also called patronage) is the selfinterested distribution of state resources
(jobs, pensions, licences, subsidies) by political parties to citizens in return for their
votes. Party allegiance therefore comes to depend more on gratitude for personal benefits
received or anticipated than on disinterested endorsement of programmes or policies.
Clientelist politics rest mainly on the social ties and obligations of family, kinship and
friendship through which the powerful distribute resources, build their individual
clienteles and mobilize electoral support. Obtaining privileges by loyal service to patrons
usually appears more desirable and secure than claiming rights attached to citizenship.
In postwar Italy, the confrontation with communism encouraged the recently
established and weakly organized governing parties—in particular the DC—to bolster
their own positions by using for private advantage the public resources which the
economic miracle placed at the disposal of governments and new welfare state agencies
(see social welfare). Party and factional struggles over the occupation of ministerial and
managerial offices with control over lavish budgets frequently engaged more passion
than disputes over policy, which were in any case devalued by the high turnover rate of
postwar governments. Since the PCI was not regarded as a democratically reliable
alternative government, real pressure for accountability in the use of public funds
declined, which permitted the unrestrained growth of the public debt and encouraged
widespread corruption (see Tangentopoli).
Clientelism has generally been regarded as having damaging consequences for both
society and the economy in postwar Italy. Deference towards the powerful is always
conservative, demeaning and anti-egalitarian; attachment to individual patrons has
hampered collective action by clients to achieve social reform and has undermined
respect for the law; and the relentless pursuit of party advantage has eclipsed economic
efficiency and social justice in determining how state resources should be allocated. The
difficulty of achieving sustained development in the South, where clientelism is
especially widespread, is often attributed to such features. Nonetheless, a positive case
for clientelism has also been argued in terms of its role in reducing the sense of social
exclusion, attracting resources to otherwise powerless groups and regions, providing a
means of bypassing the inefficient workings of an archaic state, and stabilizing a society
marked by deep ideological and economic conflicts.
See also: Mani pulite
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