Zevi su Asplund. La riscoperta di un maestro per la nuova critica italiana (1930-1948)

Erik Gunnar Asplund, written by Bruno Zevi and published by the Italian publisher Il Balcone, was the first Italian monograph on the work of the Swedish architect, born in 1885 and died in 1940, and one of the main authors of 20th Century Scandinavian architecture. This small yet in-depth work was part of a larger editorial project - the book series on «The Masters of the Modern Movement» -, edited by the Italian architects BBPR, that collected monographs on contemporary architects from the first publication in 1947 to the closure of the publishing house in 1964. Bruno Zevi’s book on Asplund was published one year after his well known monograph on Frank Lloyd Wright and it became the Italian main bibliographic reference regarding Asplund, whose name was still too much tied to the memory of the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. Thus, the volume had the aim of overcoming some former wrong opinions on the Swedish architect, thanks to Bruno Zevi’s keen historiographic work and his readings of some earlier Italian critics that dated back to 1930s and the early 1940s. This paper aims to retrace the role of this volume in the Italian Postwar architectural critique and the special contribution by Bruno Zevi, both in the re-discovery of Asplund’s career and in the making of a historical connection between the works of Asplund and the rising of an organic architecture.