During the First World War, millions of soldiers felt the need to recount the horror and daily life at the front through writing and drawing.
The exhibition Dal fucile alla matita, curated by Sara Visintainer and Andrea Casna in collaboration with the Forte delle Benne Association of Levico, explores this lesser-known aspect of the conflict, giving voice to ordinary men who turned pencils and pens into tools of memory and testimony.
The Great War was a traumatic event that profoundly transformed European society, not only from a geopolitical and social perspective, but also culturally. In this context, alongside writing, drawing became for many soldiers an immediate way to capture experiences, emotions and fragments of life at the front, a form of expression often overshadowed by written accounts.
The exhibition features digital reproductions from the archives of the Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino, the Italian War History Museum in Rovereto and the private collection of Franco Margon from Novaledo. The drawings, often accompanying and enriching diaries and memoirs, tell the story of the war through the eyes of five authors: two Italian soldiers and three Trentino soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian army.
The Trentino artists Franchini, Valle and Cicona document the Austro-Hungarian front through scenes of battle, hospitals and captivity, offering powerful images of military life. Alongside these works are those of two professional artists: Pietro Morando, who explores the suffering of Italian infantrymen and prisoners, and Anselmo Bucci, who depicts the everyday life of volunteers through drypoint engravings.
Together, these works create a moving and collective visual narrative of wartime experience across different fronts, offering a perspective that also invites reflection on the present, still marked by conflict and tension.
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