In his book, White challenges the willingness of predominately English-speaking historians to dismiss the cultural contributions of Italian artists during fascism.

“The historians that have told the story, particularly in English it’s important to say, have tended to paint fascist Italy as just a cultural backwater,” he explained.

“One of the things I wanted to do in my book … is to just make people, particularly in the English-speaking and English-reading world, really understand the diversity and the richness of art that was produced in Italy under fascism.”

As White explains it, after WW2, several communist movements began to gain popularity in Western Europe. “When it came to matters of art, a lot of the communists … tended to be more kind of like, ‘Let’s have art that speaks to the average person; it should be realism, we should be able to understand what it is, it should have a clear narrative,’” he explained.

“That’s kind of anathema to modern art, essentially.

“So, the Americans and the allies - some of the British thinkers and politicians - were saying, ‘Well, this is a bit of a problem, what can we do? Well, we can sort of say the land of freedom is where communism isn’t in charge, because you can have abstraction, you can have whatever you want - it doesn’t have to be recognisable or tell a story - it can be just art that comes straight out of the artist’s imagination.’

“So, there was this fight after WW2 between modern art and traditional, or classic, art. The Americans, for example, associated the abstract art with freedom, and then everything else got put into this bucket of totalitarianism, which included both communism and then fascism as well.”

For White, this reading is reductive and misses the opportunity to appreciate the way in which some artists sought to process and challenge the path Mussolini was leading Italy down.

Towards the end of the interview, White also shared a little about a three-year study funded by the Australian Research Council that he’s been a part of. The study seeks to map the artwork created by Italian prisoners of war during WW2.

“[While the fact that Australia held Italian prisoners of war is well known], what isn’t known is just how much art and literature and poetry and theatre and music was being created by the prisoners, in Australia and elsewhere,” he said.

In the episode, one of the pieces created by a prisoner named Eliseo Pieracinni in 1946, titled Mary, Mother of Jesus, is shown.

“Pieracinni’s Virgin Mary painting is a very traditional religious iconography,” said White, describing the work.

“[But] in the landscape, you quickly realise she ain’t in Tuscany – she’s in Cowra!

“You can see the hills in the background, the gumtrees and the local flora and fauna. And get this, she’s standing on a piece of barbed wire!”

The discovery caused White to ask a pertinent question. “Is this Australian art?” he pondered.

“Art by Italian prisoners of war and internees in Australia during WW2 - where does that belong in the history of Australian art?”

To watch the whole interview, click here.