Non è questione di geni. La scultura nell'interpretazione storica di Mario De Micheli

Sculpture was a constant concern throughout Mario De Micheli's career, yet it is today overshadowed by other aspects of his work. This essay examines his major publications on Italian sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Storia della scultura italiana del dopoguerra (Schwarz, 1958), the three booklets for Fabbri's series "I Maestri della Scultura" (1966), and the two UTET volumes, La scultura del Novecento (1981) and La scultura dell'Ottocento (1992). By comparing his approach with those of other historians and critics of sculpture, including Marchiori, Crispolti, Barilli and Krauss, the essay shows how De Micheli differs from them. Where they tend to write the history of sculpture through individual personalities and formal developments, he adopts a historicist and Marxist perspective that places sculptors and their work within their social, political and cultural context, and refuses to write a "history of geniuses." The essay also discusses the limits of this teleological, ideologically oriented model and its legacy for current research.