Migrazioni e memoria pubblica in Trentino: il Monumento al minatore di Stefano Zuech a Brez (1927-1932)

Starting in the XIXth century, Trentino experienced massive migratory flows toward the Americas. The Monumento al minatore in Brez, by sculptor Stefano Zuech, created during the final phase of the «Age of Mass Migration», is one of the earliest artistic examples of memorial art in Europe addressing this period. Situated in a peripheral valley (the Val di Non), the monument proudly and ideologically reinterpreted the iconography associated with migrants and the difficult working conditions they faced in U.S. and Mexican mines. A native of Brez who received an art education in Vienna, Zuech conceived his statue through a complex strategy of identity rhetoric and suppression during the establishment of fascist totalitarianism and the Italianization of Trentino.