Il PCI tra crisi del realismo e rifiuto dell'avanguardia (1955-1959)

With the end of the 1950s, realism, understood as an artistic category, goes into crisis. The society, on the threshold of the economic boom, changed its face, and with it its cultural references. The Italian Communist Party reacts to the change first by defending its political-cultural model, based on realism as the overall hypothesis of Italian society; then by initiating a cautious reflection on the limits of realism in the face of new cultural stimuli. This article will analyze the debate within the party regarding both its realist option, and the attempts to update it. In particular, two conferences of the Gramsci Institute will be used, in which for the first time the questions relating to the crisis of realism and the relationship between art and decadentism will be openly addressed, thus starting a more mature reflection on the relationship between art and ideology.