Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Soriano: Mussolini

Benito Mussolini dominated the cover of New Masses for the August 9, 1938 number, illustrating the second part of "Inside Fascist Italy" by Margareta West. The illustrator signs only Soriano, which presents us with a bit of a mystery. We could tentatively identify the artist as Rafael Soriano (1920-2015) but he would have been seventeen and living in Cuba in the summer of 1938. Well, it might have been Juan Soriano (1920-2006), who would also still have been seventeen although he was a prodigy. But he resided in Mexico. It seems more than likely there's some other illustrator named Soriano who was, we hope, slightly older and slightly nearer to New York. 



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