Histories of Visual Education: The Reception of Marie Neurath’s Books in the Italian Postwar Milieu

This chapter offers a historiographic and critical analysis of the reception and transformation of Marie Neurath’s visual educational books in postwar Italy, focusing on the adaptations published by Fratelli Fabbri Editori. Building on the legacy of Otto Neurath’s Isotype method, Marie Neurath developed a pedagogical approach grounded in visual clarity and narrative sequencing, which resonated with the educational reforms and democratizing impulses of 1950s and 1960s Italy. Through close examination of editorial strategies, translation choices, and graphic redesigns in the Italian editions, the chapter traces how Neurath’s original visual language was hybridized with local publishing conventions and aesthetic sensibilities. This process is contextualized within the rise of encyclopedic formats for children, the expansion of mass education, and Italy’s shifting notions of scientific authority and childhood learning. Yet beneath this surface of adaptation lies a more complex story—one shaped by unspoken editorial decisions, silences in the archival record, and unresolved questions about the relationship between visual form and pedagogical intent. The Italian versions reveal subtle but consequential shifts that raise broader questions about how educational ideals are translated—or transformed—across cultural and institutional boundaries. In reassessing the Italian reception of Neurath’s work, the chapter contributes to a transnational historiography of visual education, inviting renewed attention to the fragile, often invisible forces that shape the circulation of knowledge through design and publishing.