L’INSOSTENIBILE LEGGEREZZA DELL’ESTERO

THE UNSUSTAINABLE LIGHTNESS OF THE FOREIGN – POLITICAL SATIRE 1950 – 1991

Exhibition of cartoons from the Giulio Andreotti Archive

The personal archive of Giulio Andreotti (1919-2013), preserved since 2007 at the Luigi Sturzo Institute in Rome, represents a unicum in the panorama of contemporary personal archives due to the richness of the papers and the variety of contents. Six hundred linear meters of institutional and personal documents, correspondence, writings and notes, photographs and printed matter, collected methodically and consistently over sixty years spent uninterruptedly at the top of national and international politics. Alongside these, demonstrating Andreotti’s curiosity and intellectual vivacity, we can find different kinds of sources capable of opening very particular insights and research perspectives.

The materials on display come from the collection of caricatures and satirical or humorous cartoons collected by Giulio Andreotti from 1948 to 2004 and concerning himself.

There are almost 4000 documents classified and preserved in his personal archive in the form of press clippings extracted from newspapers, magazines, reproductions taken from catalogs and publications, or even original drawings sometimes reproduced on photographic paper, objects, garments and clothing. The archive classification is generally also placed on the individual cartoons, based on a selection of the documentation made by Andreotti himself with indications written in autograph form on the cards.

The exhibition itinerary retraces, from a satirical perspective, the role of Italy in the European and International community from 1950 to 1991, through the political action of Giulio Andreotti as minister and Prime Minister: forty years that changed the history and the geography of the European continent, East-West relations and the fragile Mediterranean balances.

Four thematic chapters – Western Bloc and Soviet Bloc, International Crises, Diplomacy Without Borders, Europe – describe Italy’s directions and choices in foreign policy, the pro-European option and participation in supra-national bodies, the positions taken towards the Mediterranean and Euro-Atlantic partners, highlighting the contingency of events and, at the same time, highlighting the behaviors and defects of politicians and the contradictions of relations between States.

A documentary nucleus that demonstrates how history can also be narrated through the caricatural representation of its most influential characters.

INSIGHTS

Giulio Andreotti – Chronological biography

WESTERN BLOCK AND SOVIET BLOCK

INTERNATIONAL CRISES

DIPLOMACY WITHOUT BORDERS

EUROPE

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