Alberto Savinio

The whole of the modern myth still in process of formation is founded on two bodies of work - Alberto Savinio's and his brother Giorgio de Chirico's - that are almost indistinguishable in spirit and that reached their zenith on the eve of the war of 1914. (André Breton, Anthology of Black Humour, 1937)

Alberto Savinio, Self Portrait in the Form of an Owl, c. 1930

Andrea Alberto de Chirico (1891-1952) - who in 1914 adopted the pseudonym Alberto Savinio - was born in Athens to an Italian-speaking family from Dalmatia. He was the younger brother of Giorgio de Chirico. Andrea was homeschooled by his mother, while living in Greece. At a young age he became enthralled by ancient Greek culture, which was conducive to creativity and fantasy during his childhood. As a result, Andrea would later often credit Greece for his love of critical thinking and irony. When he was just 12 years old he earned his diploma in piano at the Athens conservatory. Following his father's death in 1906, he moved to Munich with his mother and brother. There he studied with the renowned composer Max Reger and wrote an opera entitled Carmela.

Alberto Savinio, Objets dans la forêt, 1928

In 1907, the Savinio family moved to Milan. Together the brothers studied ancient languages, literature, music and philosophy, and practised painting and drawing. In 1910, they moved to Florence. Alberto would remain there for one year, working with his brother and helping him lay the foundations of the new Metaphysical art. The first public performance of Savinio's music, which he presented in Munich in 1911, was a failure and he moved to Paris, where he was joined by his mother and brother. He now separated his activity from his brother's - Savinio writing music and De Chirico painting. In 1914, he met Guillaume Apollinaire. The two became friends and collaborators, and Savinio participated briefly in the activities of the avant-garde artistic circles that gravitated around the poet.

Alberto Savinio, Attente d'Egée, 1930

Savinio's first literary production developed in this milieu. He collaborated with Les Soirées de Paris, the journal directed by Apollinaire, and in May 1914 he held a concert at its headquarters, presenting Les Chants de la mi-mort, a mixed work of  dramatic scenes, in which music, literature, theatre and set design blended together, taking up the aspiration of Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art. Les Chants de la mi-mort dealt largely with the concept of sleep (referred to as "Half Death") and was filled with odd, mechanical toy-like characters. This poem is considered one of the most important of the 1910's surrealist movement.

Alberto Savinio, Le Depart de la Colombe, 1930

When Italy entered the First World War in May 1915, the brothers returned to Florence, as they were enlisted with the city military district, and then were sent to Ferrara as part of the infantry reserves. Here they met Filippo de Pisis and Carlo Carrà, forming a short-lived alliance, the Metaphysical School. In Ferrara Savinio abandoned music and devoted himself to literature, although he never stopped drawing.

Alberto Savinio, La cité des promesses, 1928

In 1918, Savinio was sent to the Macedonian front as an interpreter and wrote a series of stories and lyrical prose; these works were released in instalments in La Voce and later published as a book entitled Hermaphrodito. From 1919 to 1923, Savinio, his brother and Carrà, living now in Rome, were part of the driving force behind the literary and artistic group surrounding the magazine Valori Plastici.

Alberto Savinio, Fighting Angels, 1930

In the early 1920s Savinio collaborated with all of the leading literary reviews in Italy. He wrote Tragedia del l’infanzia (Tragedy of Childhood), an autobiographical collection of episodes in which the world of adults and artistic creativity is contrasted with the world of childhood imaginations. In 1924, the Metropolitan Opera of New York performed his ballet Perseus. 1925 saw the publication of his second novel, La Casa Ispirata (The Haunted House). During this period he also collaborated with Luigi Pirandello's Teatro d'Arte, which in 1925 staged the ballet La morte di Niobe in Rome, with music and lyrics by Savinio, and set design and costumes by De Chirico.

Alberto Savinio, Niobe, n.d.

In 1926, Savinio moved to Paris, and began to paint seriously, gaining both critical and public acclaim. His first solo show, held at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1927, was presented by Jean Cocteau. Savinio continued to cultivate the contacts he had made in 1920 with André Breton and the Surrealists. In 1933, Savinio returned to Rome. Starting in the mid-1930s and throughout the 1940s, he devoted his time exclusively to literary activities and journalism. During this period Savinio virtually abandoned painting, practising it only occasionally, and devoted his time to graphics, often illustrating his own publications and those of other authors.

Alberto Savinio, Souvenir d'un monde disparu, 1928

Following World War II Savinio took up music again, composing the ballet Vita dell'uomo. At the same time, he also directed plays and designed sets, collaborating with the Scala in Milan. Savinio died in Florence in1952.

Fortunato Depero

 Fortunato Depero, Riso cinico, 1915

Fortunato Depero (1892-1960) was born in Fondo in Trentino when this northeast corner of Italy belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was never one of Futurism's leading members, but he was the most persistent, the man whose work embodied many of the movement's best inclinations (combining disparate art forms) and worst prejudices (glorifying Fascism). Following a traditional craftsman's training, Depero was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, ending up back in Fondo as a marble cutter's apprentice. And it's there that he might have settled, carving mausoleums for Austrians, had he not heard the distant call to "sing to the love of danger" (as the founding Futurist manifesto proclaimed) and create a genuinely new, militantly Italian culture.

Fortunato Depero, Il ciclista attraversa la città, 1945

After his mother's death in 1914, Depero moved to Rome, where he sought out one of Futurism's leading talents, Giacomo Balla, who immediately saw Depero's potential. It was with Balla in 1915 that he wrote the manifesto Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo (Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe). In 1919, Depero founded the Casa d'Arte Futurista (House of Futurist Art) in Rovereto, which specialised in producing toys, tapestries and furniture in the futurist style. In 1925, he represented the Italian futurists at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. The freedom with which he moved between media over the course of his five-decade career made him Futurism's common denominator. One of his masterpieces wouldn't be in painting but in architecture, specifically the pavilion for the 1927 Monza Biennale Internazionale delle Arti Decorative that had an immaculate white facade and larger-than-life block letters for walls:

Fortunato Depero, Pavilion for the Monza Biennale Internazionale delle Arti Decorative, 1927

As his pavilion proved, the erstwhile marble cutter had the brute ingenuity that Futurism prized as its most potent weapon against "passéist" complacency. Marinetti had recognized that from the day they met in 1915, inside Depero's studio on Rome's Via Cola di Rienzo. Depero showed Marinetti stacks of paintings, as well as machines built of cardboard. There were also his "abstract" poems written in colored inks on large polychrome sheets dangling from the ceiling. Marinetti read some of these aloud, recognizing his own influence: For several years, he'd been leading a revolt against adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions, promoting what he called "words-in-freedom", a typographic onslaught to directly transcribe modern-world experience. For instance, he set the sounds of battle in verse with declamations such as zang-tooooomb-toomb-toomb and pacpacpicpampampac. By 1916, Depero had taken the concept to a new extreme with "onomalingua," a mechanical dialect (vroiii sioiii oiii) in which he claimed to converse directly with automobiles and trains.

Fortunato Depero, Grattacieli a tunnel, 1930

However, it was Depero's assemblages in cardboard - with geometric flowers stiff and artificial, such as might bloom in a robotic garden - that changed the course of his career. When he saw them, Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the Ballets Russes, declared Depero "the new Rousseau". Diaghilev commissioned him to create Futurist scenery and costumes for Stravinsky's ballet, Song of the Nightingale.  Decades ahead of their time, Depero's experiments in mechanized movement were never to reach the stage. Stravinsky's ballet was delayed and reworked and ultimately staged years later with a set by Henri Matisse.

Fortunato Depero, The Chair's Party (tapestry), 1927

In 1925, Depero produced a gruesome tapestry, War=Festival showing soldiers slaughtering one another against a backdrop resembling a jubilant pyrotechnic display. Though morally appalling, it was a magnificent example of artistic propaganda - visually alluring enough to win a gold medal at that year's Paris International Exhibition of Decorative Arts. His Fascist political allegiance was duly forgiven by his countrymen following his vague post-war acknowledgment of "those human and justifiable mistakes committed in good faith."

Fortunato Depero, Martinetti, Patriotic Storm, 1924

Depero's compositional spareness led the way to the bold ads, posters and bottle designs he produced over the following decades for companies like Campari and San Pellegrino. In 1927, Depero published a personal portfolio, titled Depero Futurista (shown below). Bound with two large industrial bolts, the book included some of the potent graphics he had designed for Campari, interspersed with anarchic flights of typography that were essentially advertisements for himself.

Fortunato Depero, Campari Soda Bottle Design, 1932

In 1928, Depero moved to New York, where he produced costumes for stage productions and designed covers for magazines including Movie Maker, The New Yorker and Vogue. He also was active in interior working on two restaurants (which were later demolished to make way for the Rockefeller Center), did work for the New York Daily News and Macy's, and built a house on West 23rd Street. In 1930, Depero returned to Italy.

Fortunato Depero, Depero Futurista, 1927

 In the 1930s and 40, due to futurism being linked with fascism, the movement started to wane. One of the projects Depero was involved in during this time was Dinamo magazine, which he founded and directed. After the end of the Second World War, Depero moved again to New York. One of his achievements on his second stay in the United States was the publication of So I Think, So I Paint, a translation of his autobiography initially released in 1940. Between 1947 and 1949 Depero lived in a cottage in New Milford, Connecticut, working on his long-standing plans to open a museum. His host was William Hillman, an associate of then President Harry S. Truman.

Fortunato Depero, Table and Chair, 1962

In 1949, Depero returned to Rovereto, where he died in 1960. In 1959, Galleria Museo Depero opened, fulfilling one of his long-term ambitions. It is a division of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy's only museum dedicated to the Futurist movement, containing more than 3.000 objects.

La Bella Italiana

Pietro Annigoni, La Bella Italiana, 1951

 Umberto Boccioni, Idolo Moderno, 1906

 Camillo Innocenti, Dopo il Bagno, 1909

 Aroldo Bonzagni,  Mondanità, 1910

 Felice Casorati, Girl on a red carpet, 1912

 Felice Casorati, Dreaming of Pomegranates, 1913

 

Gino Parin, Armonia in bianco e rosso, 1915

 Mario Cavaglieri (1887-1969), Venus, n.d.

 Ubaldo Oppi, La giovane sposa, 1922

 Mario Tozzi, La toeletta del mattino, 1922

 

 Felice Casorati, Meriggio, 1923

 

 Marcello Dudovich, Ritratto di signora, n.d. 

 Nella Marchesini, Study of a girl (self portrait), 1925

Alberto Martini, Ritratto di Wally Toscanini, 1925

 Antonio Donghi, Signorina, 1927

Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Primo denaro (Money first), 1928

 Cagnaccio di San Pietro, After the Orgy, 1928

 Gregorio Sciltian, Music Lesson, c. 1930

 Amedeo Bocchi, Bianca, 1932

 Alberto Savinio, Arianna, 1939

 Achille Funi, Untitled, 1940

Luciano Ricchetti, Donne che prendono il sole sulla riva del Po, 1941

 Guido Cadorin, Nudo allo specchio, 1943

Against Mussolini

Officially founded in March 1919, Fascism's programme initially attracted few supporters with its bewildering blend of right-wing nationalism and social reforms. Mussolini played on fears of an imminent Bolshevik revolution, presenting Fascism as the sole defender of law and order. With support for the movement increasing, the Liberal Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti invited Mussolini to form an anti-Socialist alliance in 1921 which led to the election of thirty-five Fascist Deputies. However, Mussolini was not satisfied to play a supporting role. The failure to suppress the Fascist "March on Rome" of 28 October 1922 revealed a fatal lack of political will to resist the rise of Mussolini’s movement, culminating in his appointment as Prime Minister at the end of the month.

Giacomo Balla, March on Rome, 1932

Mussolini was the first political leader to harness the techniques of theatre, the visual arts and the mass media to a personalised system of rule. On the one hand, Mussolini acknowledged the privileged position of creative autonomy and the artist's role in shaping a Fascist Italy (see my article Italian Modernism). But another key feature of the Fascist regime was an orchestrated personality cult. Busts and portraits of the Duce were situated in public buildings and private homes, while a number of larger monuments depicted him on horseback or helmeted in warrior mode. The cult was a product of the Duce's megalomania but it was also a peculiarly modern phenomenon. It was the result of a complex synergy of Italian nationalism, mass politics, visual culture, popular religion, celebrity and consumerism.

Duilio Cambellotti, La conquista della terra, 1934

Following the landing of Allied troops in Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was overthrown at a meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism and imprisoned on the orders of his former colleagues, who signed an armistice on 8 September. However, having been rescued by German commandos, Mussolini was installed as the puppet leader of a new Fascist regime in the north of the country, now occupied by Nazi forces - known as "The Republic of Salò" after the town on the shores of Lake Garda that served as its administrative centre. As the Allies advanced north through an Italy divided in two by a bitter civil war, Mussolini attempted to escape to Switzerland but was captured by partisans and executed on 28 April 1945.

Franco Garelli, Shooting, c. 1944

The exhibition Against Mussolini: Art and the Fall of a Dictator (shown at the Estorick Collection in London through December, 2010) relates to the decline of the cult. It brings together some of the diverse paintings and drawings produced in Italy and abroad throughout the Fascist era, but focuses particularly on the years immediately following Mussolini’s initial fall from power in 1943 and the period of civil war and resistance. This period witnessed the destruction of many Fascist symbols and images of Mussolini. Portraits in homes and local Fascist organisations were thrown out while larger works were attacked and defaced. Popular anger reflected the detachment from the cult that the hardships and setbacks of the war brought. Artists shared these feelings and in several cases anticipated them.

Tono Zancanaro, Gibbo is Pitied by Youth, 1944

The Estorick exhibition features a selection of satirical drawings by the Paduan artist Tono Zancanaro (1906-1985) depicting the grotesque figure of "Gibbo" (above) and his entourage - a thinly veiled caricature of Mussolini. (The name "Gibbo" was taken partly from the character of Gibbon in John Ford's film The Informer and partly from the animal). Similar in tone is the work of Mino Maccari (1898-1989), who is represented by images from his Dux series, which presents the dictator as a lascivious buffoon:

 Mino Maccari, Dux series - Mussolini, 1943

One of the most renowned exponents of post-war realist aesthetics was Renato Guttuso (1912-1987), who had also fought in the Resistance during 1944. His key works include the Picasso-inspired Massacre (below) and a study for his famous work Flight from Etna (1940). Considered by Guttoso to be his first politically-charged image in its symbolic depiction of peasants fleeing in terror from an encroaching wave of lava, the finished work was, ironically, the star of the state-sponsored Bergamo Prize of that year.

 Renato Guttuso, The Massacre, 1943

A section of the Estorick exhibition is dedicated to the equestrian statue of Mussolini that was inaugurated in the Littoriale stadium in Bologna in 1929. A large-scale work by Giuseppe Graziosi fused from Austrian cannons captured during the First World War, it remained mounted on a pedestal until the human figure was pulled down by an angry crowd in July 1943. The head was seized by loyal Fascists who conserve it to this day. The remainder of the statue was taken down after the war and was turned into two figures of a male and a female partisan which now stand at one of the city's gates. Mario Sironi painted the statue in 1935:

Mario Sironi, Cavallo e Cavaliere, 1935

I have previously written about Max Beckmann's vision of Mussolini's death. The British painter Merlyn Evans (1910-1973) was serving in Italy in April 1945 and actually witnessed the public exhibition of the corpses of Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci and other members of the Fascist hierarchy in Milan's Piazzale Loreto. His painting The Execution (below) was made from his memory of this macabre spectacle, the jostling, jagged, abstract forms intending to represent the rage of the crowd:

Merlyn Evans, The Execution, 1945

Works from two painting cycles by Mario Mafai (1902-1965) entitled Demolitions and Fantasia (below) are also shown. The first chronicles Mussolini's destruction of large areas of ancient Rome to make way for Fascism's public works programmes and new districts such as the zona augustea. Although not explicitly political, these works have been seen in retrospect as covert denunciations of Mussolini’s megalomania. The Fantasia cycle is, by contrast, openly condemnatory of the violence and savage brutality of Fascism.

Mario Mafai, Fantasia no. 7 – Interrogation – Via Tasso, 1940-43

These art works works stand as testimony to a tragic phase in Italian history that preceded the rebirth of democracy. They also offer something more: a stark condemnation of the vanities of dictatorship and of the violence that is an intrinsic part of Fascism.

Tullio Crali - Free Flights for Art Reasons

 Tullio Crali, Architecture, 1939

Tullio Crali (1910-2000) was born in the Bay of Kotor on the coast of Montenegro. His family lived in Zadar until 1922, when they returned to Italy, living at Gorizia. Aeroplanes fascinated Crali at an early age. He completed technical school training as an architect, and was a self-taught painter. Crali was initially influenced by works of Enrico Prampolini that he saw in a journal. He avidly read articles by Marinetti and made his first contacts with the Trieste Futurists in 1925, joining them in 1929. 

Tullio Crali, Acrobazie in cielo, 1930 

With works such as Acrobazie in cielo (above), Crali began working in the form of aeropainting. In 1930 Crali exhibited his first Futurist paintings in Gorizia. In 1931 he met Marinetti for the first time and a life-long friendship began. He exhibited in major Italian cities and explored new forms of avant-garde theatre and film-set design. Crali also worked in the architectural planning of air terminals and fashion design. In order to earn a living, he began working in graphic design and advertising. In 1932, Crali exhibited in aeropainting exhibitions in Paris and Brussels.

 Tullio Crali, Bombardamento urbano, 1935

In 1933, Crali spoke on "Man and the Machine"  at the Second Futurist Conference in Milan, and began to compose parolibera or "freeword" poetry. From about 1934 a significant change was to come over Crali’s aeropaintings. Nearly all Futurist aeropainters experienced the thrill of flight and the completely new perspectives it offered. Crali, however, went one step further and learnt to fly. He soon became a stunt pilot and joined the famous "Cavallino" fighter pilots at Gorizia:

Francesco Baracca was Italy’s top fighter ace scoring 34 kills. In recognition of his former cavalry regiment, Baracca adopted the embem of a prancing stallion - the Cavallino Rampante. Baracca’s mother, the Countess Paolina, later suggested to Enzo Ferrari to use the stallion as an emblem for his newly founded car company.

The pilot’s unique yet ever-changing view from the cockpit, the swirling, whirling rolls and dives, the sensation of spinning through the air, were all incorporated in his aeropaintings such as Incuneandosi nell'abitato (Wedged into Town), one of Crali's best-known works today:

 Tullio Crali, Incuneandosi nell'abitato, 1936

Crali's paintings took on a pin-sharp realism and became the supreme interpretation of aeropainting. He exhibited at the 1936 Venice Biennale and was selected, with fellow Futurists Enrico Prampolini, Gerardo Dottori and Ernesto Thayaht, to exhibit at the Berlin Olympics. By that time, Crali had become one of the leading figures of Italian Modernism and its association with Fascism. 

 Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini steering airplane, 1935 (LIFE Magazin)

In 1937, Crali moved to Rome. Because of the importance of his aeropaintings he was granted "free flight for art reasons" by the Italian Airlines and recorded his flight impressions over Tunisia, Libya, Dalmatia and the Aegean Sea. 

 Tullio Crali, La Tour Eiffel, 1980

Moving to Paris in the early 1950's, Crali was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne on the life of Marinetti. He moved to Milan in 1958 where he remained (apart from a five-year period teaching at the Italian Academy of Fine Arts, Cairo) for the rest of his life. After the death of Marinetti and the liberation of Italy, both in 1944, Futurism ceased to be an entity. Although post-war Futurism came to nothing, Crali was in favour of the idea and personally strove to revive aeropainting - to the extent of issuing the manifesto Orbital Art (1969) calling for new works on a cosmic scale. Some 25 years after the end of Futurism, this was probably the final Futurist manifesto. 

 Tullio Crali, Monoplano Jonathan, 1988

To Crali the lessons and ideals of Futurism were all-important even though the movement itself no longer existed. For example, Monoplano Jonathan (above) is one of the few truly Futurist paintings that depicts modern jet fighters. The ultimate Futurist aeropainter for some sixty years, Crali believed in the machine in all its manifestations but held the aeroplane supreme as "the machine that realised the myth of Icarus, the ever-present dream of man". 

American aviator, writer and artist Steve Poleskie with Tullio Crali (right), at the time the last living Futurist artist, at the opening of Poleskie's exhibition in Milan (1983). 

A Futurist to the end, Tullio Crali died on 5th August 2000. In 2001, forty five of his paintings were acquired by the Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto. You can see more of his work in my Flickr set.