[5] The term "return to order" to describe this renewed interest in tradition is said to derive from Le rappel a l'ordre, a book of essays by the poet and artist Jean Cocteau published in 1926.
The magazine theorised the retrieval of national and Italic values, as promoted by the cultural policies of fascism, but also looking at wider horizons within Europe and using a vivid artistic dialectics with a return to a classic figurative source.
Alberto Savinio,[6] in the 1st issue of Valori plastici on 15 November 1918, announced a programme of total individualistic, anti-futurist and anti-Bolshevik restoration.
In his first article of April–May 1919, entitled Anadioménon, Savinio expounds the intellective and enigmatically atemporal intuition which animates the world of this new "metaphysical classicism".
[7] Ardengo Soffici's book Primi principi di una estetica futurista (Italian: First principles of a futurist aesthetic) was serialized in the November-December 1919 issue of the magazine before its publication by the publishing house Vallecchi in 1920.