Scuola romana or Scuola di via Cavour was a 20th-century art movement defined by a group of painters within Expressionism and active in Rome between 1928 and 1945, and with a second phase in the mid-1950s.
In November 1927, artists Antonietta Raphaël and Mario Mafai moved to No. 325 of Roman street via Cavour, in a Savoyan palace subsequently demolished in 1930 in order to allow the fascist construction of the New Empire Way (currently the via dei Fori Imperiali). The apartment's larger room was transformed into a studio.
Within a short time, this studio became a meeting point for literati such as , Giuseppe Ungaretti, , Leonardo Sinisgalli, as well as young artists Scipione, Renato Marino Mazzacurati, and Corrado Cagli.
The spontaneous confluence of artists at the via Cavour studio does not appear to have been led by true and proper programmes or manifestos, but rather by friendship, cultural syntheses and a singular pictorial cohesion. With their firm approach to European expressionism, they formally contraposed the solid and orderly painting of neoclassic character, promoted by the Return to order current in the 1920s, which was particularly strong in the Italian sensibility of post-World War I.
The first identification of this artistic group should be attributed to Roberto Longhi, who wrote: