FUTURIST AEROPAINTING. The Italian Avant-garde between the Biennali and the Quadriennali

Galleria Bottegantica, Milan

After major monographic exhibitions dedicated to specific Futurist artists, including Giacomo Balla. Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (2018) and The Young Boccioni (2021), Bottegantica returns to investigate Italian Futurism, particularly Aeropainting, that peculiar avant-garde that developed in Italy between the two world wars, from the 1920s to the early 1940s.

Curated by Fabio Benzi, among the foremost experts on Futurism, the exhibition focuses on the Futurists' participation in the official exhibitions of the period: the International Art Biennali of the City of Venice (1926-1942) and the National Art Quadriennali of Rome (1931-1943). These were two major events in the national exhibition scene. Through these exhibits, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, at the head of the movement, sought to secure official recognition for Italian Futurism and its definitive consecration. Through a careful selection of around 30 pictorial and sculptural works - almost all of which were exhibited in the Venetian and Roman shows - the exhibition aims to restore the historicity of the Futurist phenomenon and the rich variety and originality of the artistic research within it.

In 1926, Marinetti succeeded in gaining the Futurists' entry to that year's Venice Biennale. Predominant in that edition was Futurist mechanical art, which was inspired by the aesthetic of mechanics to create a type of art based on the constructive solidity of volumes and lines. This trend is well represented in the exhibition by the bas-relief Still Life. Plastic Derivation from Bottles, Glass, Environment (1925) by Ivo Pannaggi, who signed with Enrico Prampolini and Vinicio Paladini L'arte meccanica. A Futurist Manifesto (1922). From the subsequent Biennali, however, we can grasp the gradual emergence of a line of research around Aeropainting, the principles of which were expressed in the first draft of the Manifesto dell'Aeropittura Futurista, published in 1929. Already at the 1926 Biennale some works anticipated the growing interest in flight, including the painting Perspectives in Flight by Fedele Azari, a painter and aviator, of whom Fortunato Depero made an iconic portrait in 1922, which is on display in the exhibition.

The succession of Futurist participations in the Biennali and Quadrenniali allows us to follow the evolution of aeropictorial research. Around the key figure of Enrico Prampolini, a more lyrical pictorial current developed, creating original cosmic projections in search of a "new extra-terrestrial spirituality," represented in the exhibition by a few works by Prampolini himself, Fillia, Benedetta and Augusto Favalli with Passage over the base (1935). Alongside the "cosmic" trend, there is the other declination of aeropainting, more attentive to the verisimilitude of reality and the celebration of technical achievements in the aviation field. An example of this is Thayaht's sculpture, Architectural S.55 (1935-1936), which celebrates the precise geometric forms of the seaplane on which Italo Balbo made his Atlantic flight between December 1930 and January 1931. In a similar vein, Alfredo Gauro Ambrosi's dynamic views from above, such as Turning over the Verona Arena (1932), Tato's Aerial Landscape (1932), or even Tullio Crali's aerial acrobatics in Aerocaccia I (Hunting Duel) (1936) allow us to appreciate unprecedented perspectives based on the artists' own pioneering experience of flight.

Chronologically closing the itinerary are some paintings with war subjects related to the colonial conquests in Africa, by Cesare Andreoni and Renato di Bosso, exhibited at the so-called "War Biennals" (1940-1942) during the years in which the increasingly close ties with the Fascist Regime produced works of a more propagandistic nature and warlike exaltation. Finally, political reasons and necessities also play an important role in the participation, in the last editions of the Quadriennali of those years, of some abstract artists from the Lombard area as "Futurist Abstractionists," among whom Mario Radice stands out. 

To seal the meticulous research work a catalog, published by Bottegantica and Grafiche Antiga Edizioni, accompanies the exhibit, edited by Fabio Benzi with scientific contributions by the curator, Alberto Cibin, Mariateresa Chirico, and Gianluca Poldi.

FUTURIST AEROPAINTING – curated by Fabio Benzi

Milan, Galleria Bottegantica
Via Manzoni 45
OCTOBER 13 – DECEMBER 2, 2023

Hours: from Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10-13; 15-19
Free entrance

Info:
(+39) 02 62695489 – (+39) 02 35953308
milano@bottegantica.com ; info@bottegantica.com
www.bottegantica.com

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