Raccolta:

A new exhibition was arranged on the occasion of the commemoration of the centenary of World War I. It presents a selection of works from the iconographic and documentary collections of the Istituto. Indeed, these collections partly go beyond the era of the Italian Risorgimento, rather covering a longer time period: from the insurrection of Genoa against the Austrians in the Old Regime (1746) to WWII and the Liberation.
The collections on the Great War – consisting of paintings, drawings, posters, photographs, archival documents, weapons and relics – began to form as early as the first months of the Italian entry into the war on the side of the Triple Entente: more precisely, in September 1915 the City agreed to the request of the Ministry of Education, through the President of the National Committee for the history of the Risorgimento, Paolo Boselli, to collect evidence and historical documents on the war, entrusting the task to the Office of Fine Arts and History. It was then that these pieces started being exhibited in museums, mostly in the Istituto Mazziniano, albeit after a series twists and turns following the Liberation.
The largest part of the collection is made up of posters, postcards and printed sheets produced by the impressive propaganda system that existed also in Italy throughout the war, with different tones, themes and objectives according to the different phases of the conflict: at first, a predominantly interventionist propaganda; then, a ruling propaganda directed not only to the soldiers on the front, but also to civilians, aimed to stigmatise the assaults and demonise the enemy.
The representation of the war in the trenches is featured in the large collection of drawings, made mostly by the artists-soldiers engaged on the fronts, and presented as part of exhibitions organised to raise money for the families of the fallen.
The collection includes works by Eugenio Baroni, Giovanni Ardy, Giuseppe Giglioli, Agostoni detto Cirillo, Riccardo Lombardo, and A. G. Santagata. A series of war photographs is also on display, including 3D pictures exhibited in wooden stereoscopic equipment, realised in Milan by photographer Luigi Marzocchi for the Press and Propaganda Office of the Army General Command.