Vintage fashion magazines can offer us a great way to rediscover the history of fashion, but, if you're lucky, you'll find some magazines that also included architecture and interior design features. The images in this post are taken for example from the July issue of a 1960 Italian magazine that had a long section on fashion, architecture and holidays in Capri.
The fashion shoots focused on beachwear, if you know your architecture you may guess which building the magazine featured. Some clues? Well, it was featured in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) and in Liliana Cavani's La pelle (1981) and we mentioned it here and there in previous posts. Yes, you got it, it's Villa Malaparte, built by writer Curzio Malaparte (real name Kurt Erich Suckert).
Attracted by some aspects of Fascism, Malaparte became an ideologue of the movement and, after he bought the land on Punta Massullo, he obtained the licence to build through his friendship with Galeazzo Ciano, husband of Edda, daughter of Mussolini. As the years passed Malaparte changed his ideas and, in 1933, after writing what was considered as an anti-fascist essay, he was exiled on the Island of Lipari.
He started building his villa on Capri in 1936 and the building, completed in 1940, soon became the favourite meeting place of many artists and intellectuals. Malaparte went to live there in 1943, after Mussolini's fall.
Godard in Le Mépris used the exterior of the building and its roof in particular as a dramatic yet poetic set for his characters, while Cavani mainly used the interior, with the four large windows of the main salon opening on the surrounding landscape. Vintage images regarding the interior of the villa are a bit rare.
There is one main reason: when Malaparte died in 1957 he left a will in which he stated he left the villa as a place where Chinese artists passing through Capri may have stayed, studied and worked. Malaparte matured this decision after he became an admirer of the People's Republic of China. His heirs didn't accept the contents of the will, they appealed and managed to get the villa reassigned to them.
The villa became therefore a private house and to this day it is not open to the public, which is an absolute shame as this building is considered a masterpiece of modern architecture and a very inspiring design for creatives working in different industries, fashion included (a few years ago its clean lines even inspired the Persol Capri Edition sunglasses).
A combination of rationalist architecture with some elements borrowed from Le Corbusier, the "Casamatta" (blockhouse), as Malaparte also used to call it, included twenty rooms. The images featured in this post relate to the living room with a huge fireplace with a window in the place of the fire, minimalist furniture, huge bas-relief by Pericle Fazzini and four iconic windows offering different views on the surrounding landscape; the dining area with its white and blue antique ceramic stove, the study, and one of the bedrooms.
The images were taken with a special permission granted by the court as at the time the magazine was published the legal dispute about the will hadn't been resolved yet.
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