Friday, April 26, 2019, 6:00 PM EDT. CIMA - Center for Italian Modern Art, 421 Broome Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10013. The Metafisica Solution: How to Discuss Fascist-Era Architecture Without Controversy. The term ‘metaphysical’ associated with the paintings of de Chirico and Carrà has, beyond its origins in the early 20th century, played an epiphenomenal role in post-World War II discussions of fascist-era architecture.

Finding the 1934 Rationalist-designed town of Sabaudia too ‘good’ simply to be called ‘fascist,’ in the 1970s intelligentsia figures Pasolini and Moravia whitewashed the regime from it rhetorically, using the term città metafisica to describe the town and thereby placing it in an artificially apolitical zone of architectural history.