Satirical cartoons from “La Libertà” (1927-1934)

At the Museum of Satire in Forte dei Marmi on Saturday 27 November (5.30 pm) opens the exhibition of the satirical cartoons that appeared in “La Libertà”, the Antifascist Concentration newspaper, published in Paris between 1927 and 1934.
The exhibition is based on a study by the art historian Franco Franchi, which has been considered worthy of being published by the Museum.
The Antifascist Concentration was a trust of associations and parties that came about in Italy when the Leggi Eccezionali (Excpetional Laws) suppressed civil and political rights between 1925 and 1926. In France there was a large community of Italian workers and in 1922 the Lega per i Diritti dell’Uomo (League for Human Rights) was formed: a Masonic style association based on the model of the French organisation of the same name.
The Lidu was the organisational motor around which the Italian Socialist Party, the Italian Workers Socialist Party, the Italian Republican Party, the General Confederation of Employment, the anarchists, and, from the end of the thirties, also the Justice and Freedom movement gathered together. Neither the Italian Communist Party joined the Concentration, because of its links with Komintern, nor the Italian Partito Popolare, due to the Concentration’s aversion towards the growing convergence between the papacy and Fascism. These satirical images are to be interpreted in the light of this republican, anti-clerical, anti-fascist and anti-Bolshevik context.
La Libertà employed Pierre Dukercy, Marcolon and Evariste; who belonged to a new generation of engage artists who had opposed the general consensus to war and were drawn towards daily newspapers such as Le Matin, L’Humanité and Le Journal du Peuple, and above all political and satirical journals such as L’Oeuvre, Le Canard Enchainé, Le Carnet de la Semaine, Les Hommes du Jour, Candide, Cyrano, Voltaire and Le Grand Guignol.
Mussolini and the Pope were not the only targets of these cartoonists; they were also “suitably” accompanied by Vittorio Emanuele III: the “little” King.
La Libertà also hosted cartoons from other European and American newspapers that supported the International battle against the multiple forms of Fascism, including Henry Monier (1901-1959), Pedro, Tick, Paul Ordoner and Robert Fuzier.
This exhibition aims to recount, through a selection of drawings published in this newspaper, the events of a “crucial period” in Italian history, when Fascism took power, suppressed democratic institutions and began to expand in Europe.