The languages ​​of Futurism, the story of a revolution

ROME - The first ten years of Futurism's life were fundamental in laying the foundations for the upheaval of art and the very vision of everyday life.

But it was in the following two decades that the movement founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti found its uniqueness by distinguishing itself profoundly from the other European avant-gardes.

    The Palazzo delle Paure exhibition in Lecco moves from these assumptions, the story of the revolutionary artistic experience that had its great champions in Giacomo Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, Enrico Prampolini, Fortunato Depero.

"In recent years - recalls the curator Simona Bartolena - the leading role in the European context of this avant-garde born in Italy has also been widely recognized internationally, with important studies and major exhibitions in the main museums of the world, yet still today the knowledge that the general public has of it is not complete and thorough".

Critics' attention was focused on the early years of the movement but, Bartolena observes, ''the first period which ended, in fact, with the early death of Boccioni,

    The vitality of Futurism, is the line suggested in the exhibition itinerary, spread in Italy from north to south, "by far surpassing the boundaries in which the languages ​​of the historical, necessarily elitist avant-gardes usually move".

The artists of the movement kept their distance from the official art system, elaborating a research that would have invested all fields of creativity and dictating the new rules for painting, architecture, theatre, music, literature in dozens of programmatic manifestos. , graphics, fashion.

    ''Futurists.

An avant-garde generation'', until 18 June, develops in seven chapters, from the origins of the movement, starting from 20 February 1909 when in the French newspaper Le Figaro, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti launched his proclamation against the ''traditionalism '' to make room for the "new", for dynamism and speed.

The investigation also deals with the relationship between Futurism and the First World War, the reference to the "world's only hygiene war" from which Boccioni and Antonio Sant'Elia did not return.

A focus is dedicated to the relationship with other artistic languages, in particular with Cubism, also through Gino Severini, trait d'union between the two worlds.

Space then to the aspect, hitherto little investigated, of abstract production,

first of all Giacomo Balla, with a parenthesis dedicated to abstract artists from Como such as Manlio Rho, Mario Radice and Carla Badiali.

And again the dynamism in painting, the movement transposed onto the canvas, the dynamic sensations through the works of Luigi Russolo, Roberto Iras Baldessari, Giulio D'Anna.

The 'A Futurist universe' section, the fulcrum of the exhibition, documents the interaction with the applied arts, design, theatre, dance and music.

For advertising, Fortunato Depero's long relationship with Campari 'speaks' (his is the legendary bottle of Bitter) while for music, the Intonarumori by Luigi Russolo are exhibited.

Finally, the chapter on Aeropainting, the new point of view of the world that asserted itself with the evolution of air flight, and the "cosmic" vision,

characteristic of later research, open to spiritual and esoteric suggestions, with works by authors such as Tullio Crali, Gerardo Dottori, Giulio D'Anna, Fillìa, Thayaht, Alessandro Bruschetti.

(HANDLE).