After the unexpected discovery a few months ago of a series of Futurist frescos by Giacomo Balla in a former Rome nightclub, a forgotten Cagli wall painting is also regaining lost limelight. The huge mural, which occupies an entire wall of the Rome National Academy of Dance, risked being destroyed during the Fascist regime and was only preserved because a group of the artist's friends erected a fake wall to hide it.
Commissioned in 1935 by the Fascist government to decorate the library of what was then the House of Italian Youth, designed in the Rationalist style by the architect Gaetano Minnucci, the riotous scene of a traditional Roman carnival with the famous Race of the Berber horses charging down the Via del Corso, did not meet the approval of the Ministry of Education which ordered it to be eliminated. The concealing wall was only removed at the end of the war.
The Rome National Academy of Dance took over the building in the late 1940s and will celebrate its 70 anniversary this year with the restoration of its hidden jewel, the Corrado Cagli mural, in what is now the Academy rehearsal hall.
Info: Tel.: +39.06.57177771-www.accademianazionaledanza.it
