Still Life with Dead Fascists: April 29, 1945, the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress and bodyguards, were captured and executed by partisans and then hung from the superstructure of an Esso petrol station in the Piazzale Loreto, Milan. This brought to an end the regime of a man who called for the end of liberalism while glorifying war, militarism, and ultra-patriotism as something viral and culturally cleansing; who air-bombed poorly armed Ethiopian villagers in revenge for previous Italian military loses under a predecessor; who jailed and murdered Marxists and anti-fascist labor leaders; who demonized feminists and forced journalists and artists to tow the party line; and who insisted the Italian people literally worship his State as if it were a truly mystical enterprise. These digital photo images are based on a scale model sculptural reconstruction of Mussolini and Clara Petacci’s public hanging made from archival photographs.

This website and its content is made available for educational, scholarly, and communal purposes. Likewise, all illustrations are included here solely for educational purposes. You are free to copy and distribute its content, but never for commercial profit. Please attribute the author whenever quoted or cited.