The Continuity of Change: Angiolo Mazzoni’s Exile in Colombia (1948-63)

One of the main architects and engineers of the fascist regime for over 20 years, Angiolo Mazzoni (1895-1979) left for a voluntary exile in Colombia in 1948, after the end of the IIWW, where he started a new season of personal and professional life that lasted for about 15 years, until his return to Italy in 1963. Well-known for the realisation of several public buildings in Italy (among them, the Post and Telegraph buildings in Trento, Ferrara, Latina, Sabaudia, Agrigento, and the Railway stations in Trento, Bolzano, Siena, Montecatini, Reggio Calabria), starting from the 1920s, Mazzoni’s work is characterized by a strong aptitude for experimentation with architectural languages and building materials. Pupil of Marcello Piacentini (from whom he inherited Monumentalism influences) and close to Giorgio De Chirico and Filippo Marinetti (with whom he shared his adherence to Futurism), his Italian activity was focused on modernist and functionalist visions, always linked to the political context. The paper aims to analyse the years of Mazzoni’s exile in South America as architect, scholar and consultant for the Ministerio de Obras, trying to understand how his past activity influenced the more recent design experiences. Meeting and progressively learning the local culture, his work seems to gradually show a partial adherence to the Colonial style, without losing the Modernist attitude that characterised the first part of his career. What were the main elements of contaminations with the local culture and how did these change his work? How did the polychromy and multi-materiality that characterised his eclectic activity evolve during his stay in Colombia? Starting from the documentation kept in the MART Archive, the paper deepens the theme of the architect’s exile by analysing the main project designed during the years away from Italy, focusing the investigation on the relationship between the architect's work and his new cultural horizons.