Art: Anything Goes

With a resounding pop, Italy blew off the lid that Mussolini had clamped on modern sculpture more than a score of years ago. At Varese, in the first all-Italian sculpture competitions in many a year, top honors went to a thin-faced, little-known Venetian named Alberto Viani for one of his highly abstract nudes.

Because of Fascist art censorship, 43-year-old Viani had never dared show his radical variations on the human form before 1945, although for 16 years he plugged away at them in the privacy of his Venice studio, smoothing their voluptuous plaster curves...

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