The language of war

Salon 8, Hamburg

An exhibition dedicated to the artist books of the Italian artist, playwright and publisher Fabio Mauri (1926-2009). They were created in a closed phase of work dealing with the iconography of dictatorship and war between 1973 and 1979. 

Traumatic experiences at the end of the Second World War led Mauri to explore the themes of fascist propaganda and ideology in his works. He did this in an excessive analysis of visual language, which was functionalized in the media for what he considered to be a manipulation of the masses. Significantly, Mauri often addressed his image-critical works with German subtitles to an audience in the homeland of the fascist regime of the National Socialists, who have admittedly not taken any notice of his work to this day.

This research exhibition is the first to attempt to identify the sources of historical propaganda illustrations used by Mauri and to relate them to the works derived from them. It aims to illustrate Fabio Mauri's practice of using excerpts, methods of superimposition, combinatorics and the assignment of laconic subtitles to provide an illuminating reading of the hegemonic visual order of domination, which is ultimately capable of abolishing it.