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Back
to Futurism with
Fortunato
Depero
di
Linda Ann Lo Schiavo
An
extraordinary artist came from the place where everyone else is going —
— the future. Born in Fondo and raised in Rovereto, Fortunato Depero [30
March 1892 — 29 November 1960] was an ambitious futurist painter, writer,
sculptor, and graphic designer. Ninety years ago, in 1919, Depero founded
his "Casa d'Arte Futurista"
(House of Futurist Art) in Rovereto, the town where the young upstart
first began exhibiting his work, objects created during his apprenticeship
to a marble worker. The
27-year-old craftsman had begun to focus on producing tapestries,
furniture, and toys in the futurist style which tossed convention aside.
During 1925 he represented the futurists at the Exposition
Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International
Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts).
The
movement will celebrate its centennial this year with museum
retrospectives in its birthplace (
Italy
) and also at the Tate Modern (
London
,
England
) in conjunction with the publication of new books.
These titles include Inventing
Futurism (Princeton University Press) by Christine Poggi, which is a
scrupulous scholarly reexamination; Futurism:
An Anthology (Yale University Press) edited by Lawrence Rainey,
Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman; and Futurism
(Milan: Five Continents Editions) edited by Didier Ottinger, which has
been hailed as a landmark survey, published to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism,
that traces the movement from its Italian origins to its maturation within
an international creative forum. In 1909, the Milanese poet Marinetti
[1876 — 1944] submitted his Manifesto
to Le Figaro and this
anti-establishment essay came to be considered futurism’s opening pitch.
Having a multi-millionaire for a father perhaps greased Filippo’s wheels,
since the elder Marinetti was pals with the paper’s major shareholders.
Naturally, publications recognize good copy when they see it and
soon other tabloids were spreading the word. By 1912, Marinetti was
following up with a stream of articles. He also produced a book Zang
Tumb Tumb — —“parole in libertà” — — a queer curiosity in which typography,
verses, and written versions of sound move the narrative. Within a few
years, his bold new concepts had captured the fancy of a number of
avant-garde Italians who identified with Marinetti’s summons to “sing
to the love of danger,” along with foreign trailblazers eager to remake
an old-fashioned universe. Futurism’s
recruits began dedicating their energy to anything the academy in
Vienna
was not, which included oddities such as ungrammatical
poetry, Cubist traits on canvas with motion added, and exuberant lyrics
that praised power plants. When
some of his British disciples staged their innovative work in a former
power station near the
Thames
, an Englishwoman and suffragist Margaret Nevinson took
it upon herself to define the trend. The
futurists, Nevinson wrote, were "young men in revolt at the worship
of the past . . . determined to destroy it, and erect upon its ashes the
Temple
of the future. War seems to be the chief tenet in the
gospel of futurism: war upon the classical in art, literature and
music." Visiting
Florence
in 1913, Fortunato Depero came across the paper Lacerba
which contained one of Marinetti’s hot-wired articles. Fired up, Depero
moved to
Rome
in 1914, where the 22-year-old met Giacomo Balla [1871
— 1958], a kindred spirit. With Balla he wrote the manifesto Ricostruzione
futurista dell’universo ("Futurist Reconstruction of the
Universe," 1915), which built upon the ideas introduced by fellow
futurists. Four years later, Depero established his Casa d'Arte Futurista,
and by 1925, he was touring
Turin
with Marinetti, both extravagantly outfitted in
waistcoats embellished in the futuristic mode.
Scholar
Jonathon Keats has noted that, although Depero was not one of futurism’s
leaders, he was surely “the most persistent and longest lived, the man
whose work embodied many of the movement’s best inclinations (combining
disparate art forms) and worst prejudices (glorifying Fascism). Few people
today have heard of Depero, yet when you look at a multimedia performance
art installation in
New York
’s
Chelsea
district, glimpse a
Tokyo
skyscraper lit up with advertising, or even pick up a
bottle of Campari soda, which he designed, you’re seeing his legacy.”
According to Keats, Depero composed Fascist war songs, designed covers for
Il Duce’s publications, and produced a frightful tapestry, War =
Festival (1925): fireworks illuminating a battlefield upon which soldiers
enthusiastically slayed each other. Perhaps there were repercussions to
this because, by 1928, Depero moved to
New York
. Manhattanites
embraced his talents. Becoming more visible and raising his profile, he
created costumes for stage shows and drew magazine covers for Vanity
Fair, Movie Maker, The New Yorker, Vogue,
etc. He was also hired to do interior designs for two midtown restaurants
that were eventually razed for
Rockefeller
Center
. During his three years here in the States, he built
himself a house on West 23rd Street and was a well-paid
freelance designer for Macy’s Department Store and The New York Daily
News. Though he sailed home in 1930, he continued to travel and worked in
the
USA
again in 1947-49. Back in his native land, surrounded
by multi-talented Italians, Depero faced strong competitors.
Balla was a better painter than he, Russolo was a more original
composer, Boccioni was a superior sculptor, and Marinetti had more money
behind him. Nonetheless, Depero’s versatility and genius for publicity
was on par with Andy Warhol’s. He dabbled in a new concept called “onomalingua,”
a mechanical dialect that (he claimed) had empowered him to chat with
trains and cars. While designing scenery and costumes for Stravinsky’s
ballet, he got the idea of using wool to “paint” pictures. He mastered
the production of avant-garde clothing and cushions, invented typefaces,
and published the personal portfolio Depero
Futurista (1927), featuring the typography, graphics, and advertising
zeal he drew upon to develop projects for corporate clients. His 1932
bottle design for Campari soda is still in production. Depero preserved
much of his work and over 3,000 items are featured in the permanent
collection of the Mart, the
Museum
of
Modern
and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto.
Additionally, the Casa d'Arte
Futurista Depero
,
Italy
's only museum dedicated to the Futurist movement, is
now one of Mart's venues. Closed for many years for extensive
refurbishment, the Casa d' Arte Futurista Depero reopened during January 2009.
Some of the current exhibitions featuring the innovations of the Italian
futurists are below.
FUTURISM
& TOURISM
Visit
Depero’s "Casa d'Arte Futurista" (House of Futurist Art), which he
conceived and built in 1959, and which has reopened earlier this year:
Via Portici 38 [Rovereto,
Trento
,
Italy
]. Tour
the exhibition “Futurismo
100—Astrazioni,” an exceedingly thorough display of Futuristic
contributions to abstraction, and shown along with concurrent paintings by
Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, and many others: Museo Correr [Piazza San
Marco 52,
Venice
30124
Italy
;
T. +39 041 240 5211]. On view
from September 4th —
December
13th, 2009
.
Enjoy the British exhibit “Futurism,”
an extraordinary retrospective of Futurist sculpture and paintings on loan
from Italy, which were paired with related contemporary works (by Pablo
Picasso, Natalya Goncharova, Wyndham Lewis, Robert Delaunay, etc.) by
artists influenced by Italian Futurismo: Tate Modern [Bankside, London SE1
9TG, England; T. 020 7887 8888]. On
view from June 12th —
September
20th, 2009
.
IDEA
SETTEMBRE 2009
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