ZEVI’S ARCHITECTS

On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, MAXXI is devoting a major exhibition to the figure of Bruno Zevi and his multifaceted work as historian, lecturer, occasional designer, politician and radio and television broadcaster.

On show, together with magazines, books, posters and audio and video documentation of his work, the designs of 38 of the architects he promoted from Carlo Scarpa to Pier Luigi Nervi, from Franco Albini to Maurizio Sacripanti, from Piero Sartogo to Renzo Piano.

No to the architecture of repression, classicist baroque dialectal.
Yes to the architecture of freedom, dangerous anti-idolatrist creative.
–Bruno Zevi

Architecture is not composed solely of building, projects and drawings, there are also certain intellectuals, theorists and historians who with their critical, civic and also political commitment helped influence national and international architectural affairs throughout the 20th Century. The exhibition ZEVI’S ARCHITECTS. History and counter-history of Italian architecture 1944-2000—produced with the Fondazione Bruno Zevi and curated by Pippo Ciorra and Jean-Louis Cohen—presents materials drawn from MAXXI’s invaluable archive resources, the Fondazione Bruno Zevi and other authoritative national institutions such as the IUAV of Venice, CSAC in Parma, the Fondazione Michelucci and many other private archives. It focuses on the multifaceted figure of Zevi—lecturer and histories, critic, politician, designer, indefatigable “agitator” of the cultural debate and great communicator—and the architects who, in the various phases of his life, he chose to support and promote. Among the themes emerging from the exhibition are also the crucial role played by Zevi in various phases of the national and international architectural debate and the vital importance for him and for the whole of Italian architecture, of the relationship between architecture and political activism.

ZEVI’S ARCHITECTS has been organized across three principal levels of narration. The first is an “illustrated” summary of Zevi’s biography, reconstructed through his words and his public actions. The second presents a selection of projects and architects published in his books and magazine, commented on in his own words. The third level tackles his acrobatic activism in the field of the communication of architecture: writer, editor, consultant to broadcasters and publishers, curator of epochal exhibitions (such as those of Michelangelo and Brunelleschi), Bruno Zevi explored the length and breadth of the communicative possibilities of architecture and in many cases proved to be a pioneer, particularly in the field of low cost publishing and radio and television broadcasting.

Franco Albini, Giovanni Michelucci, Carlo Mollino, Sergio Musmeci, Pier Luigi Nervi, Luigi Pellegrin, Mario Ridolfi, Maurizio Sacripanti and Carlo Scarpa are just a few of the 38 architects featured in the exhibition. Their projects, published and supported by the critic, accompanied Zevi through over the 50 years of his critical and militant career. 
ZEVI’S ARCHITECTS also sheds light on the role of Bruno Zevi within a essential phase of the history of post-war Italian architecture, a period of incredible vitality and commitment to which the Roman historian played a leading role in all the crucial moments. The exhibition also documents Zevi’s direct and militant activism in the political life of the country and the battle to bring democracy to Italy in the years of the Second World War. Active in spreading anti-fascist propaganda in the years of his exile, from Boston and London, an unrepentant member of the Partito d’Azione from its birth, a Socialist, a member of parliament with Pannella’s Radical Party, ever open to polemics and debate, Zevi was a pioneer of the techniques of communications, introducing media and instruments never previously used to talk about architecture such as radio, television and low cost and ultra-low cost publishing.

This exhibition is part of the programme organized by the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Centenary of the birth of Bruno Zevi.