The relationship between Industry and Culture goes back a long way in Italy and can characterise the way we see literature, art, cinema, music and so on. In many cases, this relationship took the form of patronage, with tutelary deities behind it whose forward-thinking action is still alive today.
It is difficult to pick someone to focus on from among the many different figures who, either by nature or inspiration, committed their financial and intellectual resources and personal energy to spreading culture.
Remaining in Lombardy, one exemplary case is represented by Prospero Mosé Loria from Mantua, a businessman in the timber industry and founder of the Società Umanitaria in Milan, established with the objective of enhancing workers' skills and their financial situation through education and cooperation in the style of Mazzini.
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Some have seen industrial work as "a route to freedom" (Calvino) or as being favourable to social emancipation or the acquisition of a more mature class consciousness (Arpino, in the "Anni del giudizio", or Pratolini, in "Bruno Santini. A novel"). Some have grasped its twofold souls (Ermanno Rea, with "La dismissione", 2002). Others, such as Goffredo Parise, with a clever move in "The Boss" (1964), have described the industrial world from a psychological and metaphysical standpoint, reinventing the genre beyond all neorealist clichés.
However, there are also writers, including some very recent ones, who could suggest a revival of industrial literature – Sebastiano Nata, Carmine Abate, Raffaele Nigro, Erri De Luca, Goffredo Buccini, Laura Pariani, Silvia Avallone, Massimiliano Santarossa, Andrea Valente, and also Alberto Prunetti, "Amianto" (Agenzia X), author of a terrible "working history" that fits into the ideal groove carved out by Bianciardi-Cassola's "Minatori della Maremma"; Angelo Ferracuti, with "Costo della vita" (Einaudi); Francesco Targhetta, who in his recent novel in verse "Perciò veniamo bene nelle fotografie" (isbn) looked back to "The Girl Carla" by Elio Pagliarani (but also had Bernari's "Tre operai" in mind) and has gone on to be a finalist in the Premio Campiello and the Premio Bergamo with his very recent "Le vite potenziali" (Mondadori 2007).
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Industry operates on an uncertain market today, but the industrial awareness of art and literature, fostered by scholars who as ever have the virtuous relationship between art and forward-thinking business at heart, has never been lost, but continues to explore forms of communication that paint a picture of a technological research that places Italy among the best in the world in various production sectors. There is naturally still much to be done, especially today, but Italians and their Design are second to none.

What are industry's responsibilities in terms of artistic production during the global era? Infinite and varied, because everything depends on the context, place, relationship and objective. Art without industry, which has supported innovation and creativity over the years, devalues the role of the artist as a social agent for relations between different worlds and ways of expressing creativity. When industry promotes art, ideas and experimentation with new styles, without necessarily advertising its product, it is legitimate to put forward the idea of a project of shared beauty: an unwritten pact of social aesthetics between the artist and industry, tracking down a beautiful and perhaps useful need to transform daily life and reality through multiple aesthetic solutions. In the early twentieth century, European art was overwhelmed by the powerful shock of new industrial system based on models of collective living, when art and life exchange visual codes and grammars, as demonstrated by Marcel Duchamp's ready mades and by his followers of yesterday and today.
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New ideas without backing from daring and visionary entrepreneurs of creativity do not take shape and no investment is made in new images. The Russian Constructivists, working on the Communist front, were convinced of the need to merge art and utilitarian tensions, sealing an underlying relationship of exchange between art and industry. Andy Warhol made his debut as a graphic designer in the mid-1950s, when he produced ads for Miller. In the post-war period, when Europe was overcome by the euphoria of rebuilding its industrial and cultural fabric, it promoted free enterprise and art became a product of consumer society, rooted within our industrial system. During those years, Italy established an industrial manufacturing system of small, medium-sized and large enterprises, with manufacturing districts dotted from north to south.
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When industry supports the figurative arts or environmental interventions within important landscapes, it produces beauty. This is the case of Niki De Saint Phalle, commissioned by Marella Agnelli to create the Giardino dei Tarocchi in Garavicchio, in Maremma, which also features a kinetic sculpture by Jean Tinguely. And we should not forget Arnaldo Pomodoro, an internationally renowned sculptor who created the Carapace, a piece of architectural sculpture named after its shape that recalls a tortoise — symbol of longevity and stability, as well as the union between heaven and earth — for Marcello Lunelli, deputy chairman of the Cantine Ferrari, and his family, and designed for the Tenuta Castelbuono, which makes Montefalco Sagrantino wine, in the heart of Umbria, a place where beauty is inscribed within the landscape and local culture. […] In business culture, creativity is the most solid industry of the new, of a potential beauty that should be saved from the risks posed by the standardisation of the global era.