Costantino Nivola: artista di fama mondiale, esiliato con la moglie ebrea prima in Francia e poi negli USA per sfuggire alle Leggi razziali

Abstract

The article focusses upon a little known aspect in the life of Costantino Nivola, a worldwide famous Sardinian sculptor. In August of 1938 he got married to Ruth Guggenheim, a Jewish woman of German nationality, then he settled in Paris. He eventually moved to the United States and never returned to Italy, so as to avoid the application of the Racial Laws against his young bride; Nivola himself would have been arrested, since he had declared himself anti-fascist, attended groups of refugees hostile to Mussolini’s regime and, above all, collaborated with the anti-fascist magazine «Giustizia e Libertà» («Justice and Freedom»). These aspects of Nivola’s biography are examined th rough two sets of ad nomen documents preserved in the State Central Archive in Rome and in the State Archive in Nuoro.