Eugenio Battisti e gli Stati Uniti d'America: uno storico dell'arte transnazionale

In order to better understand the pre-eminence that Italian art of the 20th century has acquired on the international stage, it is necessary to conduct an examination that questions both the way in which American art was received in Italy and the passage made by the latter in the United States. Especially since the second half of the twentieth century, artists, critics and gallery owners have moved between Italy and the United States, weaving a series of fruitful links. These connections have made it possible to broaden the attention on what was culturally relevant in our country, receiving and conveying creative stimuli in a crucial century for the redefinition of the idea of modernity. My intervention aims therefore to analyze one of the essential figures to this interchange, the art historian and critic Eugenio Battisti. Multifaceted and dynamic transnational receptor between Italy and the United States of America, in 1964 he moved from Rome to Pennsylvania, where he remained until 1970, after being called by the state university to occupy a chair of Art History. However on the other side of the ocean he continued to maintain profitable contacts with Italy and above all to direct the historical journal of contemporary culture "Marcatrè", which he had founded in 1963. Therefore in my contribution I will focus on the cultural influences that fell on Battisti's thinking in America, on his methodologies and his scientific research directions and on the consistency with which these elements came together in the journal "Marcatrè", with particular attention to the relationship with the contemporary artistic production. Battisti's stay in the United States of America in fact will be analyzed through a study of archival sources such as the more than ten thousand letters sent and received by the art historian and other types of documents kept in the Eugenio Battisti Archives at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. In according to this, the paper proposes to underline the institutional and professional relationships that he established with the United States of America, as well as the projects that he conducted in the American territory for the promotion of Italian artists and art scholars and, regarding "Marcatrè", the sponsorship strategies in the American territory to bring the local public closer to Italian culture. Occupying a privileged position as he was very close to the dynamic New York City, Battisti in fact tried throughout his career to act as a bridge between the two countries, aware of the importance of exchange as a means of cultural advancement.