Arnaldo dell'Ira

Dell'Ira was born in Livorno, in a family of liberal traditions that had long been committed to the politics of the young Italian unified State: his maternal grandfather – whose surname he adopted during his professional activity – had participated in the expedition of the Thousand in Sicily together with Giuseppe Garibaldi and his father, convinced interventionist in World War I, in that of Fiume (today Rijeka in Croatia) with Gabriele D'Annunzio.

In the early 1920s, he strengthened relations of friendship and working with Giovanni Michelucci and the young architects who compose the Tuscan Group, later winner of the competition for the new railway station of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

In 1930 he moved, therefore, to the capital, and worked in the important studio of Angiolo Mazzoni, engineer of futurist formation and official of the dicastery of communications, author of numerous postal buildings and railway stations, now of traditional forms, now more markedly modern.

The result of the competition, which rewarded the project of the Tuscan Group, however, created a rift with Angiolo Mazzoni, and in 1933 Dell'Ira entered the studio of Marcello Piacentini, the most influential Italian architect in this time.

This began a period of intense professional activity, which saw him engaged in many construction sites of the capital (the Church of Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re, the administration building (Rettorato) of the Sapienza University, the Palace of Corporations), and his many drawings and projects well reflect this productive and creative moment.

Like others dating back to the late 1930s and early '40s, these drawings have in fact a different character, the same one that can be found in contemporary letters of correspondence: the palette of colors goes out, the views are magnified in utopian visions, military buildings are prevailing (barracks, customs, monuments to the fallen united by the title "Guard at the Borders").