Curzio Malaparte & the Visual Arts

Please note:
This event takes place at
CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art (421 Broome St.)

Co-organized with
Istituto Italiano di Cultura
CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art

In collaboration with
Bard College

International Conference
Curzio Malaparte & the Visual Arts

Italian author Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957) has been celebrated and ostracized worldwide for his controversial politics and for the impressive success of novels such as Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949). In his writings, Malaparte witnesses the fall of Europe during WWII by illuminating the racialized, gendered and biopolitical aspects of modern political power, even beyond fascism. At the same time, his name is indelibly associated with Casa Malaparte (1938-40, revised until 1950), the outstanding modernist mansion perched atop a solitary rock in Capri, which the author himself designed in collaboration with rationalist architect Adalberto Libera. A fabled subject and setting for countless photographers and filmmakers, Casa Malaparte has become a paradigm of luxurious minimalism and an international icon of Italian style, famously portrayed in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Contempt.

Malaparte’s unique interpretation of arts, architecture, and landscape in his visionary writing and beyond—from Casa Malaparte, to the piercing photographs he shot as a war correspondent in Ethiopia, the Balkans and Ukraine, to his anti-picturesque film The Forbidden Christ (1951)—are at the center of “Curzio Malaparte and the Visual Arts.”

PROGRAM
DAY 2 (Morning)
CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art (421 Broome St.)

9:30AM – Welcome Remarks by CIMA Director Nicola Lucchi

9:45 AM – PANEL 1: A House Like Me: Casa Malaparte in Capri
Chair: Davide Spagnoletto (CIMA Fellow)
Michelangelo Sabatino (Illinois Institute of Technology)
Casa Malaparte and the Landscape of Vernacular in Italy
Jean Francois Lejeune (University of Miami, Florida)
Case come me: Malaparte’s and Pasolini’s Islands
Davide Spina (ETH Zurich)
Unfit for Modernity

11:30 AM – PANEL 2: Casa Malaparte and the Arts: Design, Photography, and Architecture
Chair: Filippo Bosco (CIMA Fellow)

Petra Liebl-Osborne (University of Miami, Florida)
Artists at Casa Malaparte
Alessandro Melis (New York Institute of Technology)
Determinismo e non-determinismo in architettura: l’esempio di Casa Malaparte
Simone Sfriso (TAM Associati)
Casa Malaparte’s legacy in contemporary architecture
Cherubino Gambardella (Università della Campania)
The Impossible Malapartes: One House, One Thousand Architectures

In ENGLISH

Concept
FRANCO BALDASSO, Bard College, New York

Advisory Committee
STEFANO ALBERTINI, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò – NYU
FRANCO BALDASSO, Bard College, New York
MARIA PIA DE PAULIS, Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III
FABIO FINOTTI, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New York
NICOLA LUCCHI, Center for Italian Modern Art, New York