Gianna Scavo

Contours of Belief: Theological Resonance of Drawing in 20th c. Italy

Supervised by Dr Caroline Levitt

Advised by Professor Jo Applin

My doctoral research proposes a new account of Italian artists’ approach to religion in 20th c. art, through an analysis of drawing practices that incorporate art historical and religious tradition. Through archival research and visual and material analysis focused on the drawing practice of three Italian sculptors – Adolfo Wildt, Giacomo Manzù and Fausto Melotti – I argue for a materially and temporally complex approach to Italy’s historical heritage and contemporary culture. I shed new light on these artists, expanding narratives that have reductively claimed them resistant to categorisation and/or have focused on painting produced within the well-known Futurist and Metaphysical Art groups. I propose a more nuanced understanding of Italian modern art, one that tempers narratives of technological and cultural rupture by foregrounding these artists’ embrace of continuity with Italy’s religious and artistic past to produce a new kind of religious vernacular.

Alongside religious iconography, central to my research agenda is the interplay of materiality and meaning. I aim to illuminate the enduring significance of visual and material culture as repositories of belief and unravel how materials serve as a locus for the negotiation, expression and transmission of belief systems.