There are two souls in the long activity of Renato De Fusco, who left us this morning at his home in Posillipo at the age of 95. The first – the youthful one linked to the creative enthusiasm that followed the end of the Second World War – saw him as a first-person protagonist, as a painter, of the artistic movements of research that marked Neapolitan life in those years. The second, following his university studies at the Faculty of Architecture of Palazzo Gravina, increasingly directed him towards what would be his lifelong vocation: dedicating himself with passion to the role of historian of architecture and art more generallya mission accompanied by his teaching skills in the Faculty of via Monteoliveto, where he graduated in 1953 at the time of the unforgettable Roberto Pane.
And so this one prestigious figure of scholar, among the most accredited in Italy and Europe, should be remembered initially for participation in the Southern Group and subsequently in the MAC (Concrete Art Movement). In the first was the protagonist of that season linked to the Prussian Blue Gallery and connected to the contemporary «Sud» magazine founded by Pasquale Prunas in 1945 and around which young intellectuals established themselves, who later became famous writers, directors and journalists, such as Francesco Rosi, Luigi Compagnone, Raffaele La Capria, Anna Maria Ortese, Antonio Ghirelli, Maurizio Barendson and Tommaso Giglio. While the artistic section immediately emerged as a place of comparison between positions closer to the figurative story and others more tempted by the abstractionist renewal of that period. And so soon, in 1950, the group split between neorealists (De Stefano, Florio, Lippi, Montefusco and Tarchetti) and abstractionists, with Barisani, Tatafiore, Venditti and De Fusco himself ready in 1954 to join the Concrete Art Movement, founded in Milan in 1948 by Atanasio Soldati, Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, Gianni Monnet, Augusto Garau and Ettore Sottsass.
But De Fusco’s fate was evidently not that, as he himself said: «Without a highly creative intelligence, or rather an inclination, you have to do something else». And so it was because from then on the theoretical vocation, in particular historical-architectural, decidedly took over. He studied with Zanuso, collaborated with the «Casabella-continuità» directed by Ernesto N. Rogers and from 1955 with the Institute of History of Architecture of the University of Naples, directed by Roberto Pane. In 1961 he became a free professor of «Characters of modern architecture» and in 1972 full professor of «History of architecture». In the meantime, in 1964, he founded the creature to which he was perhaps most attached, the magazine «Op.cit.selezione della critica d’arte contemporano», dedicated to architecture, design and the visual arts, born in the cultural climate of Arturo Carola’s «Il Centro» gallery, and which was awarded the Inarch Prize in 1967. In 2008 he then received the «Compasso d’Oro», Lifetime Achievement Award for his activity as a historian and critic of Design. And then, having finished his activity at Federico II, where he would however become professor emeritus, he began his collaboration with Sister Orsola Benincasa where he taught «History of design».
Among his many publications we remember «The floral in Naples» of 1959, «Errico Alvino, Neapolitan architect and urban planner of the 19th century» of 1962, «The idea of architecture. History of criticism from Viollet-le-Duc to Persico” of 1964, “Architecture as a mass medium, notes for an architectural semiology” of 1967, “The code of architecture, an anthology of treatise writers” of 1968, “Signs, history and project of architecture” of 1973, “History of contemporary architecture” with 6 editions from 1974 to 2007, “A thousand years of architecture in Europe” 1999, “History of design” of 1985, “Made in Italy. History of Italian design” in 2007 and “History of twentieth century architecture” in 2014. We also remember his collaboration with the Corriere del Mezzogiorno, at the beginning of the 2000s, with the column “Napoli nobilissima”.
Mayor Gaetano Manfredi remembered him today as «a friend and a colleague. An exemplary person, a researcher and a great architectural historian”. And again: «It was a privilege to be able to benefit from his expertise and boundless knowledge. I am deeply saddened by his passing and I express my deepest sympathy to my family, the Administration and the entire city.” His wife Emma and children Luca and Carlotta finally inform them that the funeral will be held tomorrow 1 May, at 11 am, in the church of San Luigi Gonzaga in Naples, via Francesco Petrarca 115.
