1 Alessandro Del Puppo From avant-garde to nationalism. Ardengo Soffici as cultural mediator Cultural mediators in Europe 1750-1950 (CEM 2014, Leuven, 5-7 June 2014) Working paper 1. This talk is devoted to the work of the Florentine painter, poet, writer and critic Ardengo Soffici as a cultural mediator. To give a short outline of his role of intermediary between French and Italian culture during almost the first three decade of 20 Century, I will focus on two crucial text: Picasso and Braque (1911) and Beyond Cubism (1913), and their consequences for the image of European modernism in Fascist Italy. But, first of all, let me give you a brief account of his biography. Soffici was born in 1879 in Rignano d’Arno, a small hill city near Florence. He belongs to a generation of young Italians nourished by the progressive ideals of the recent unification of Italy (1861) and, at the same time, disillusioned by the failure of political and cultural agenda of that time. As other Italian intellectuals Soffici grew in a country where the breakdown of colonial adventure in Africa, the uprising of the lower level of working class and the subsequent repression, coexisted with the greatest industrial and economic growth occurred during the long government – almost the first decade of the 20 th Century – of Giovanni Giolitti. Like many others, Soffici identified culture as a form of cultural religion able to inspire the moral and political regeneration of Italian society. 2. Soffici lives in Paris from 1900 to 1907 [Richter 2000]. He spent his first years working as illustrator for some journals, such as “Gil Blas”, “L’Assiette au Beurre”, “La Revue Blanche”, “La Plume” [1]. He also realized some cover illustrations for “La Chimère” and “Sans Gêne”, or “L’Europe Artiste”, and one for the pocket edition of Jean Moréas Les Cantilènes [2].