Fontana was a sculptor, painter and visionary artist. He was born in Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina in 1899 to Italian parents. At the age of six he moved to Italy, where he later studied at the Brera Academy in Milan. He began his artistic career as a sculptor, initially working alongside his father, before developing his own independent practice throughout the 1930s.   In his own words, he did not want to be a painter, he did not want to be a sculptor, he wanted to be a spa

The year is 1518. It’s the peak of a blistering summer. Strasbourg, one of the largest cities of the Holy Roman Empire, is gripped by a dancing mania. Blistered feet stain the streets with blood, sweat pours down jerking bodies, cries for help fill the air, the smell of heat stifles the city. Some dance in the narrow streets, some in the public square, some at home. Strasbourg was afflicted by choreomania : people were dancing themselves to death.  One month earlier, a woman

Paris, 1832 . In the early hours of the 29th of May, a young Frenchman wrote two letters. The first, a note to his friends covered in scribbles, crossed out names of love and phrases of delirium: “ je n’ai pas le temps ” (“I don’t have the time”). The other, a paper containing fascinating mathematical discoveries that would ignite a generation of thought and, as mathematician Arthur Cayley would later put it, "marked an epoch in the progress of the theory of algebraic equatio

Today, we usually attribute misfortune and tragedy to chance or coincidence, not tending to read into such events for any underlying cause or significance, however the same cannot be said for those living in early modern Europe, who often turned to the supernatural for an explanation, which cultivated a paranoid and God-fearing society. Looking at fears surrounding the patriarchy, immorality and difference may therefore help us to understand why it was witchcraft that Europea

In the streets of liberated Paris, August 1944, a ritual unfolded with brutal efficiency. Women accused of "horizontal collaboration" were dragged into public squares, their heads shaved while crowds jeered. Photographs captured these moments not as evidence of mob justice, but as performances of national purification. France, the narrative went, was cleansing itself of a German infection that had temporarily poisoned it. Charles de Gaulle's speech at the Hôtel de Ville cryst

The year was 400BCE, Hippocrates had just established the theory of the four humours, in which the perfect balancing of the body’s four components (yellow bile, black bile, phlegm and blood) was crucial towards maintaining an individual’s health. Flash forward to the eighteenth century, and this theory remained one of the dominating beliefs in the medical community. So, when Edward Jenner created the first vaccination in 1796 to combat smallpox, he was met with opposition for

On the 31st of January 1865, the 13th Amendment to the US constitution was passed by congress, just three months before the end of the US Civil War. The amendment stated that: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”. While the amendment immediately ended the legal practice of chattel slavery, it would take alm

Image: Elizabeth Sunflower, Retro Photo Archive. The 1960s in the United States is popularly remembered as a period of intense social activism, bringing to mind huge, angry crowds in Washington DC, protesting anything from the Vietnam War to feminism.   However, on the West Coast, a lesser-known storm was brewing. Let down by the 1950s government relocation program, young Native Americans on college campuses across California began eyeing up opportunities to call out the thef

Image: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. The German Occupation of France between 1940 and 1944 is often hailed as the nation’s ‘dark years.’ Despite being a period characterised by political repression and censorship, paradoxically, French cinema did more than survive, producing many of the most well-known and accomplished films in wartime history. This cultural flourish emerged from conditions of moral compromise, which tends to raise rather uncomfortable

The Legacy of Tenochtitlan can be found in the spaces it has been preserved in, layering its existence in the architecture and landscapes of the city. Lacing memories in spaces that act as stepping stones for understanding Tenochtitlan then and Mexico City now. Spaces are a part of the historiography of the region; they shed light on both the pre-colonial Tenochtitlan and post-colonial Mexico City. Spaces in this history can be thought of as prophecies, not just for realising

Image source: Instagram/ Banksy On June 7 2020, the statue of Edward Colston, well-known Bristolian merchant and enslaver, was pulled off his plinth, rolled to the edge of Bristol docks, and pushed into the waters below by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists. TV and phone cameras relayed the moment to millions of viewers at home – few forget the image of Colston coming down. But fewer recall what happened next… Five years on, it's a fitting moment to follow Colston’s fate, an

The Roman Late Republic is a period of classical antiquity that has massively influenced modern-day academia and scholarly discourse. Whilst most people recall Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Mark Antony, Cato the Younger’s life cannot be ignored. Taking influence from his great-grandfather, Cato the Elder, he became the moral standpoint by which everyone else compared themselves.  Overview   It is 46 BC, and Caesar has just won the Battle of Thapsus, securing victory in

According to Dr Mary Dobson, the Spanish Flu was long known as the “forgotten flu.” Only recent historical research has revealed its enormous impact, killing between 50 and 100 million people. This makes it one of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history, second only to the Black Death. There is still a lot of speculation about why or how this was able to happen, what caused it to be so fatal, and why it has been “forgotten” until now.   To begin, we should examine where t

“All human beings are born free and equal,” according to Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, 77 years on from its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly, it is estimated that 50 million people globally are living in modern slavery, while global inequality has tripled since 1960.    A strong narrative for human rights emerged following the atrocities and devastation committed during the Second World War, driven by Eleanor Roosevelt. The Comm

The fight for access to land is one that has been happening in England almost as long as England has existed as a concept. While it has always been the case that large landowners controlled swathes of the country, this land was often available to access. Communal plots were common, allowing those lower down in society to graze animals or even grow crops to sell at market. Tracing the fight for access through the medieval period, then how protest became more official through t

Cabaret, urban nightlife, political propaganda, sexual liberation – these are all symbolic of Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Having been established during a period of political and economic instability after German defeat at the end of the First World War, the republic bore witness to a changing cultural landscape Berlin was at the centre point of this narrative. The city became emblematic of the cultural modernity and radical politics that came to shape the Weimar exper

The modern city of Kinshasa, now the largest in Africa and the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sits beside what is now known as Pool Malebo, the stretch of water that spans to the northern bank of the Congo River, upon which resides another great African city, Brazzaville. However, the former names of these places invite us to explore the traumatic colonial past of the former Leopoldville, located beside Stanley Pool in the Congo Free State.     The tale of L

On the evening of Wednesday 6 September 1090, five years before the First Crusade was called, the Shi’a missionary Hasan-i Sabbah slipped unnoticed into the seemingly impregnable mountain fortress of Alamut. After peacefully converting the inhabitants of the Persian stronghold, and removing its Sunni master, he began to build a movement that would become shrouded in myth. The group that would come to be known as the ‘Assassins’ would play a significant role in the politics of

In the period lasting from 1603 to 1868, Japan withheld itself from global interactions, opting instead for a Sakoku period of forced isolationism. Aside from a singular Dutch trading port on the island of Dejima, no foreign traders, missionaries or military personnel were allowed into or out of Japan. This however ended abruptly in 1853, where the modern military of the United States forced trading relations through their ‘gunboat diplomacy’ tactics. This directly led to the

The largest of the three megalithic monuments, the King’s Men stone circle, is late Neolithic, circa 2,500BCE. Image: William Raven    I had been reading the words of Edward Thomas’ ‘ In Pursuit of Spring’  and inspired by his journey, “on or with bicycle” down to the South-West from London, I, too, detoured on one of my trips down to visit my girlfriend, Lily, in Bristol. Thomas’s journey through “the Quantock Hills, to Nether Stowey, Kilve and West Bagborough” offers a “gli