Fortunato Depero
The multifaceted artist – painter, sculptor, set designer, illustrator, designer and costume designer – was born in Fondo in Val di Non (Tn) in 1892. He moved to Rovereto with his family, he attended the art institute of the Elisabettina Royal School, creator of many artists who were the protagonists of the Italian twentieth century.
After an unsuccessful attempt to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he worked as a decorator at the Turin International Exhibition in 1910; he went back to Rovereto and, very attracted to sculpture, he worked for a local marble worker, acquiring those skills that will be later present in his “solid” and “volumetric” painting.
In 1913 he published the book of drawings, poems and thoughts Spezzature and the following year he exhibited in Rome, where he met the futurists Balla and Marinetti. He became Balla pupil, he wrote the manifesto Ricostruzione Futurista dell’Universo with them and then pursued research aimed at clarifying the relationship between Futurism and contemporary artistic currents.
In 1915 Depero left for war, participating in the irredentist movement, but, when he fell ill, he was discharged; His ink works about war date back to this period, among these Il Mitragliere.Returned to Rome, in addition to painting, he devoted himself to the composition of “foley” songs, the seed of the “radio lyrics” of the following decade. In the meantime he met Picasso, helping him in the creation of costumes, and the poet Clavel, for whom he illustrated the book Un Istituto per Suicidi with futurist / expressionist drawings; always in collaboration with Clavel he produced the puppet theater Balli Plastici, progressive because of the actors absence and for the music, composed by Bartok and Malipiero. He started to make his futurist tapestries of colored fabrics bringing the theatrical experience into his art, defining his very personal style, recognizable by the constant presence of puppets and robots in painting too.Since 1918, he wanted the Futurist idea to reach people, he abandoned the utopia of a Futurist reconstruction – his works were relegated to museums – to devote himself to applied art, inspiring the birth of the Futurist Houses of Art; the following year he opened his own one in Rovereto, producing furniture, advertising posters and furnishing accessories.
In the 1920s he devoted himself to advertising, making posters and tapestries; participated in various exhibitions and created the first Futurist Waistcoats, which are worn by the protagonists of the movement. In 1927 he began his collaboration with the Campari firm, he had dedicated it the painting Squisito al Selz; published the monograph Depero Futurista, also known as the Libro Imbullonato. His particular point of view about advertising art will be summarized in the Manifesto dell’Arte Pubblicitaria.
In 1928 Depero moved with his wife to New York, where he opened the Depero Futurist House; in addition to exhibiting his works, he worked in advertising, for the theater, for public places and created covers for the most important magazines such as The New Yorker, Vogue and Vanity Fair.
In 1930 Depero came back to Italy, where he compared the new course of the Futurist current, Aeropainting; he was not fascinated at all because he was a pragmatic artist and stopped participating in the aerial-futurist manifestations. Even though he totally left the new current, he became a refeference figure for his original ideas. He worked intensively in the advertising field for important industrial, commercial and political clients; he rediscovered his eccentricity by making objects using Buxus, a substitute for wood, during the autarchic period of fascism, supporting the political movement for job opportunities only.
His Autobiography was published in 1940 and after that he moved to Serrada di Folgaria (Tn), suspended the experience of his Art House; in 1947 he returned to the USA, where, however, Futurism was frowned upon as being considered fascist art.
He went back to his homeland in 1949 and, despite being disappointed, continued to work, published a manifesto on Nuclear Art, decorated and furnished the council chamber of the Autonomous Province of Trento, published the Antibiennale and in 1957 began to set up the Depero Museum Gallery in Rovereto ; the gallery opened the year before his death.
Since the 1970s, Depero work was rejected because considered as pro-fascist and because of belonging to a minor current of Futurism. In the following years his art was reconsidered and re-evaluated so much so that now the Mart of Rovereto has reopened the House of Arte Futurista Depero as a museum and collected the artist archive in his own Archive of the’ 900.
We dedicated to the artist
Camera da meditazione
Fortunato Depero
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