in detail
The exhibition proposes, for the first time all together in Emilia Romagna, masterpieces by Boccioni, Balla, Severini, Sironi, Soffici, Russolo, Depero, Prampolini, sculptures, pottery, futurist books (the bolted book by Depero, the can book by D’Albisola), fashion-plates of futurist clothes, as far as aeropainting work by Dottori, Crali, Fillia, Tato.
The exhibition in enriched by a section dedicated to futurist advertising art, showing an extraordinary creativity, even in this creative sphere, with a strong communicative impact, now as in the distant past.
Apart from the presence of a very important futurist work of art, Danseuse articulée (1915) by Severini, in the permanent collection of the Magnani Rocca Foundation, there is another reason why we have decided to organise this exhibition: the performance given by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti at the Regio Theatre in Parma in December 1906 with the public reading of “Ode à l’automobile” (in French). The Ode by Marinetti, coping with the theme of the deification of the mechanical means and of the deep thrill given by speed, can be reasonably considered on of the first signs of the futurist movement yet to come, because it highlights the spirit and the analogies then organically come together into the Futurism Manifesto, dating back February 1909 (which was first published in Emilia, on the Emilia Gazette, then in Paris on Le Figaro), exactly one century ago.
The art exhibition “FUTURISM!” gathers more than a hundred absolutely innovative and surprising work of art which, starting from the prior events of Divisionism, offer a whole vision on the first and the second Futurism, a vision which perfectly follows the creative sequence of the movement Manifestos, from the theorisation of the aesthetic value of the dynamism and of the simultaneity of the first period, to the representation of the playful mechanization of human body and its contest of the Twenties, up to the aeropainting of the Thirties, based on the emotional vision of the landscape from a flying plane.
Linked to the aeropainting theme, the exhibition wants to celebrate another centenary: a hundred years ago, in fact, the first plane flights took place in Italy.
Futurism stands on the wave of the technological revolution of the beginning of 20th century (the Belle époque), wanting to exalt its no limits trust in the progress and establishing the end of the old ideologies in a violent way (the traditionalism). Marinetti brings into art dynamism, speed, factory, even war referred as the “world hygiene”, identifying with the Parsifal from Wagner the artistic symbol of the decay and despising the attention on the refined bourgeoisie to focus on the industrial revolution and on factories. In terms of style, Futurism (especially the one by Boccioni) is based on the concepts of Divisionism, represented in the art exhibition by the masterpiece “the novel of a sewing machine” by Boccioni, adapted to better express the basic concepts of speed and simultaneity. In fact, the movement involves the object and the space where it moves; the multicoloured and polyphonic dynamism of trains, of cars, of dancing and of daily actions is underlined in the exhibition thanks to work of art by Balla, Severini and Russolo, from their colours and brush-strokes which highlight the propulsive pushes of the shapes. Boccioni’s death in 1916 and the contemporary passage which brought Carrà and Severini to solutions closer to Cubism cause the winding up of the original group linked to Milan (the dynamic city par excellence) and the transfer to Rome of the gravitational centre of the movement. As a consequence, this leads to the birth of the Second Futurism, which will develop the theorized need of a total design and of a more practical interaction with reality. After the beginning of the second futurism, bound to the culture of post cubism and constructivism, we have a new phase (1918-28) that takes part in the developments of surrealism, with further spatialist connotations and related to the use of different materials, with a lot of suggestions for the art to come in the following decades.
The aeropainting belongs to the second futurism, even though it starts to become important in the years following the first world war and finds a sure forerunner in D’Annunzio as a hero – aviator and in his sublimation of the flight. Advanced expression of the machine myth and of modernity as it was in Marinetti’s movement, the aeropainting shows enthusiasm for flight and for plane speed, with the image scanning obtained by different colour grounds, underlining the mechanical and dynamic of aviation. Aeropainting features and its leading themes define themselves during the Twenties and they find a final codification in Aeropainting Manifesto, dating back to 1931 and well documented in our exhibition by Dottori, Crali, Tato, as far as focusing on themes like fancy lyricism and cosmic idealism with Prampolini, Oriani and Fillia.
