1938-1943: Fascist Racial Laws, Joseph Beuys, and Margherita Sarfatti in Art

The article examines key art events from 1938-1943, framed by the 75th and 80th anniversaries of the Nazi-fascist roundup of Rome's Ghetto (October 16, 1943) and the enactment of Italian racial laws (September 5, 1938). The 4th edition of the Festival delle Letterature Migranti in Palermo (October 15-22, 2018) opens with Claude Lanzmann's documentary 'Shoah' and closes with a live soundtrack for D.W. Griffith's 1916 film 'Intolerance'. Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan, aged 88, creates 'Il Giardino che non c'è' (The Garden That Does Not Exist), inspired by Giorgio Bassani's novel 'The Garden of the Finzi-Continis', opening October 31 at the MEIS (National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah) in Ferrara. In 1943, Joseph Beuys, then a German Luftwaffe pilot, crashed in Crimea and was rescued by Tartars who covered him in fat and felt, an experience that shaped his artistic practice. A show at Casa di Goethe in Rome (November 10, 2018 – January 20, 2019) documents Beuys' ties to Italy. The 1938 racial laws forced Margherita Sarfatti, a Jewish-born critic and former Mussolini associate, to flee Italy. A dual exhibition at Mart in Rovereto and Museo Novecento in Milan explores her complex legacy.