Fascist Propaganda in Poster Art: NY Exhibit Explores Mussolini's Messaging to the Masses

The posters, loaned by a Bologna-based collection, had been designed to glorify the dictator's exploits.

Bold and stark, this poster’s stylistic rendering of a Blackshirt is part of Mussolini-era propaganda. This is a detail of a poster on display in a New York exhibition.

Throughout his fascist dictatorship, Benito Mussolini made masterful use of words, gestures, art and architecture to portray himself as the man Italy needed to achieve power and glory, like that once boasted by the ancient Roman empire.

Propaganda posters in particular used images, both bold and subliminal, to win the hearts of the masses as Mussolini brutally consolidated his control of the nation and expanded his reach into Africa in his quest to make Italy a heavyweight among colonial powers.

Poster House, a museum in Manhattan dedicated to illustrating the role of posters in mass communication and persuasion, explores how the Mussolini regime used the medium to further its aims.

Fascism’s messages were entwined with Futurism, a 20th-century Italian artistic movement whose works energetically celebrated modern inventions, including automobiles and airplanes, as intrinsic to progress.

This poster on display in the Poster House exhibition aimed to convey the propaganda message that Mussolini-era rule in African nations is associated with prosperity for Italians.

Entitled “The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy,” the exhibition features 75 pieces, most of them posters on loan from the Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli, an Italian cultural institution in Bologna.

The exhibition runs through Feb. 22, 2026, in Manhattan.

Written description accompanying the posters lays out the steps Mussolini climbed in his power grab, including his Blackshirt followers’ march on Rome in 1922 and his cruel methods in discouraging dissent, among them the forced administration of castor oil down the throats of opponents.

On the bitterly cold afternoon when I viewed the exhibition, just after New Year’s, comments could occasionally be heard among the somber visitors about eerie parallels between those times in Europe about a century ago and current events on that continent and beyond, including far-right political parties gaining traction, and, in some places, political power.

Italy’s current leader, Premier Giorgia Meloni, co-founded the far-right Brothers of Italy party.

The party, which is now Italy’s largest in terms of vote-getting and consistently leading in opinion polls, has roots in a neo-fascist political movement created on the ashes of World War II, which saw Mussolini drag his country into a disastrous alliance with Hitler’s Germany.

As she ascended to power, Meloni denounced the Mussolini regime’s anti-Jewish laws and its suppression of democracy. But critics contend that she hasn’t sufficiently distanced herself from Brothers of Italy’s roots.

The posters on display offer sober insights into how Mussolini’s regime sought to project an impression of toughness, aggression and power while seeking to sweep the public into an enthusiastic embrace of its drive to conquer.

This detail is from a 1936 poster promoting an Italian shoe business. Many posters of that era sought to mask the exploitation of those who lived in African colonies under the rule of Mussolini’s fascist regime.

Among the examples is a poster celebrating the Blackshirts, as the paramilitary wing of Mussolini’s fascist party was unofficially known.

On the poster, commissioned by the Fascist Party, a faceless Blackshirt member is depicted with an outline of Italy over the heart and a pointed blade, like a dagger.

Not all the exhibition’s objects are posters. There are two pages from a 1936 children’s book, which tells the story of Mussolini’s life as if it were a fairytale, starting from his birth.

On display in the Poster House exhibit were these two pages from a 1936 children’s fairy-tale style book that celebrated Mussolini’s life. The map showing the Mediterranean Sea and Africa leaves most of the area blank, delineating only Italy, and Libya and Ethiopia in the Italian fascist -era empire.

Several posters riff off the fascist regime’s conquests and occupations in northern Africa and in the Horn of Africa. One features a smiling man in goggles piloting a bright red car to advertise the Tripoli Lottery, with a shower of money suggesting prosperity. Two minarets figure in the background.

Posters promoting products of major Italian companies also reflected Futurist style.

Among the prominent Italian businesses featured on posters using Futurist style in the fascist era was automobile manufacturer Fiat. The monument-like structure embodies the massive, minimalist style favored by Mussolini’s regime. This 1927 poster is part of the Poster House exhibition.

Among them is one showing a fleet of cars speeding out of a towering structure whose columns each are shaped like a letter: F, I, A and T. The imposing, massive construction in the 1927 poster is reminiscent of the style, combining classical and modern forms, favored by the Mussolini regime in architecture.

Notable examples of this architecture in Rome is the so-called Square Colosseum, which, a decade ago, became the headquarters of fashion house Fendi, in the EUR neighborhood, a district constructed by the dictator. Another example is a sprawling sports complex near the Tiber River.

Unlike Germany, coming to grips after World War II with its Nazi past, Italy has never completely reckoned with its fascist period of history.

On the route to my gym and pool, the tram and bus pass by a Trastevere art film venue and by one of Rome’s major post offices at the edges of the Testaccio neighborhood. I seldom reflect while passing by them that both buildings are part of the city’s fascist-era architectural legacy.

So much of Mussolini-era construction remains woven into everyday life in the Italian capital.