"The Art Club was created in Rome in 1945 as an expression of a strong desire among artists around the world to regain the contact and collaboration that the war had interrupted. At its inception, it declared itself politically neutral and artistically independent of types of artistic expression, but in the past five years it has shown through its intense and effective activities that it did not therefore want to be without conviction or indifferent.

Of course, the strong cosmopolitanism that seems to be a necessary consequence of today's wars has contributed to The Art Club's founding and its success, but its character and goals are not directed at such a vague and uncertain cosmopolitanism, but at a more positive and concrete internationalism. This word internationalism has a very precise meaning and value in modern art history. The visual arts were the first to discover the inadequacy of national traditions as the basis of culture; already forty years ago, with cubism, the possibility of an international imagery existed.

Rational architecture was also directed against internationalism, declaring the great social problems as its basis. It is because of its internationalism that modern art has been called degenerate and condemned by the reactionary regimes that came to power in Italy and Germany - in itself a proof of the connection between the international character and the social function of modern art.

These attempts at internationalism have easily been ironized. Cubism has been called the "Esperanto of the visual arts". There has been contemptuous talk of modern art's attempts to give humanity a clearer and more authentic view of the world. But internationalism is neither an abstract formula nor an easy compromise between different cultures and traditions. It is an actual condition which in the consciousness of the individual has arisen through a hard and often dramatic struggle to overcome the various national traditions. And while nationalism leads to isolation, internationalism leads to intercourse and cooperation. Therefore, it is necessary to exchange, with an interest in everything that happens outside the borders, with a constant comparison of the results achieved.

Against this background, The Art Club emerged, directly linked to the most vibrant artistic movements of the post-World War I period, only to be interrupted by the victories of the barbaric powers. The association has therefore also targeted the artists and groups who felt the need to uphold the European traditions and defend the human and social ideals that the war sought in vain to destroy. That the initiative for a renewal of artistic exchange has come from Italy will not surprise those who know the history of Italian art from futurism, and who know how isolated Italian artists have been in the last forty years.

It is true that futurism broke the continuity of the academic tradition, but it very dramatically left open all the problems it had presented. It is enough to remember that it was at the same time international and fiercely national-minded, romantic and fiercely anti-romantic, anti-traditional and obsessed with tradition, to understand that it could probably give new impulses, but never a solution to the Italian art problem. It consisted of finding a connection between the local tradition and the tradition of Impressionism and the directions that emanated from it.

The direction that followed futurism, "The Metaphysical School", tried to stand outside and over history through a connection to myth. Its foremost masters managed to provide a happy poetic solution, almost a new classicism, but it is clear that their "escapism" removed them far from the increasingly dramatic European problems. And it was easy to go from the metaphysical school to "Novecento", a worship of "the Italian tradition" and its immortal classical character.

The real Italian art history of our time is not the story of these movements, but of the Italian artists' efforts to free themselves from them and get back in touch with the European art ideals and problems..."

Giulio Carlo Argan.