Guttuso vignettista de «l’Unità», 1944-54

From June 1944 to December 1954, Renato Guttuso was an assiduous presence in the Communist newspaper «l’Unità» as an artist, critic and militant. For the Rome edition, however, he also played the role of illustrator, focusing on current events as well as on the Party’s battles. In that decade, Guttuso produced about 30 drawings that have so far remained on the margins of historiographical interests. Concentrated in two periods equally decisive for the history of the PCI (1944-45; 1950-51), the artist’s ink and pencil drawings possess a satirical and ideological character only partly comparable to that of coeval paintings. This article attempts to examine Guttuso’s stylistic choices, his relations with the editorial staff and the reasons that led him to end his activity as an illustrator for «l’Unità» in the mid-1950s.