Mario Sironi might well be seen to exemplify everything that Nietzsche deplored in his

famous characterization of Wagner’s musical dramas: their grandiloquence, their obses-

sively repeated leitmotifs, and their use of every available means to maximize the impact

of the work on the public. But if, as Mario de Micheli noted, Sironi’s Wagnerianism is

worthy of closer critical scrutiny, it is to Walter Benjamin’s refl ections on shock and the

“destruction of experience” that one must turn to understand the working methods and

the continuing relevance of this unlikeable but arguably most important Italian artist bet-

ween the wars.1