«Il Contemporaneo»: l’arte attraverso gli occhi del Partito Comunista Italiano (1954-1964)
Livia Garomersini
Since the post-World War II period, the PCI’s relations with the art world have strongly characterised the national cultural scene. The magazines have always been a privileged starting point for understanding this relationship, including the cultural policy of the party itself. And it is precisely in this perspective that this study has set itself the objective of a preliminary analysis of one of the Italian Communist Party’s main cultural magazines: «Il Contemporaneo». Born in 1954 at the dawn of the “thaw”, only to end ten years later, a few months after Palmiro Togliatti’s death, «Il Contemporaneo» contained within itself all the contradictions of a complicated season, which we have attempted to outline here, dwelling on the main themes and personalities that appeared within its pages, including the implications on the political level.