The magazine Corrente di vita giovanile

Besides being an art studio, the Corrente movement also focused on the publication of a magazine forcefully desired (and financed) by Ernesto Treccani. Thanks to his family’s prestige, the son of Giovanni, founder of the Treccani Institute for the Italian Encyclopedia and senator, was able to prevent the magazine from having ties with any of the collateral organizations of the Fascist Party, immediately making the publication a place of relative independence in which to express ideas that could not have been aired elsewhere in Italy at the time. Though amidst balancing acts to appease the regime (but also some sincere expressions of faith in Fascism and its ideals), the short but intense experience of Vita giovanile began on 1 January 1938, as a magazine aimed at people young «in years or spirit» who felt they had «something new to say and wanted to express it out loud.» Already with its second issue the publication became a fortnightly, and soon also began to increase in size. Starting on 15 October 1938 the magazine took on a new title, Corrente di vita giovanile, maintained until the last issue (31 May 1940).

Politics, art in its various expressions, literature, but also philosophy, offered food for thought and discussion in the magazine, though painting was clearly the dominant theme, due to the connection with the Galleria di Corrente which refined and applied the tastes and critical tools of the contributors. Reading the section on politics, which passed from Antonio Bruni to Ernesto Treccani, as well as the articles on philosophy, one gains a more vivid appreciation of the progress of the orientation of the magazine towards positions against the system, on the one hand shifting towards Marxism, while on the other opposing idealism of Giovanni Gentile, embracing a critical rationalism of greater breadth.

Besides the founder, among the most assiduous contributors we find names now recognized as part of the ranks of the protagonists of Italian culture in the postwar era and beyond, such as Carlo Emilio Gadda, Elio Vittorini, Giansiro Ferrata, Carlo Cassola, Ernesto Rogers, Raffaelle De Grada, Sebastiano Timpanaro, Dino Del Bo, Eugenio Montale, Carlo Bo, Luigi Comencini, Alberto Vigevani, Giancarlo Vigorelli.

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