Editing Futurism (section)

==Futurism in the 1920s and 1930s==

Many Italian Futurists supported [[Fascism]] in the hope of modernizing a country divided between the industrialising north and the rural, archaic South. Like the Fascists, the Futurists were Italian nationalists, against parliamentary democracy, radicals and admirers of violence. Marinetti founded the Futurist Political Party (''Partito Politico Futurista'') in early 1918, which was absorbed into [[Benito Mussolini]]'s ''[[Fasci di combattimento]]'' in 1919, making Marinetti one of the first members of the [[National Fascist Party]]. He opposed Fascism's later exaltation of existing institutions, calling them "reactionary", and walked out of the 1920 Fascist party congress in disgust, withdrawing from politics for three years; but he supported Italian Fascism until his death in 1944. The Futurists' association with Fascism after its triumph in 1922 brought them official acceptance in Italy and the ability to carry out important work, especially in [[architecture]]. After the [[Second World War]], many Futurists artists had difficulty in their careers because of their association with a defeated and discredited regime.

Marinetti sought to make Futurism the official state art of Fascist Italy but failed to do so.  Mussolini was personally uninterested in art and chose to give patronage to numerous styles and movements in order to keep artists loyal to the regime. Opening the exhibition of art by the [[Novecento Italiano]] group in 1923 he said, "I declare that it is far from my idea to encourage anything like a state art.  Art belongs to the domain of the individual.  The state has only one duty: not to undermine art, to provide humane conditions for artists, to encourage them from the artistic and national point of view."<ref>Quoted in Braun, Emily, ''Mario Sironi and Italian Modernism: Art and Politics under Fascism'', Cambridge University Press, 2000</ref>  Mussolini's mistress, [[Margherita Sarfatti]], who was as able a cultural entrepreneur as Marinetti, successfully promoted the rival Novecento group, and even persuaded Marinetti to sit on its board.  Although in the early years of Italian Fascism modern art was tolerated and even embraced, towards the end of the 1930s, right-wing Fascists introduced the concept of "degenerate art" from Germany to Italy and condemned Futurism.

Marinetti made numerous moves to ingratiate himself with the regime, becoming less radical and avant garde with each.  He moved from Milan to Rome to be nearer the centre of things.  He became an academician despite his condemnation of academies, married despite his condemnation of marriage, promoted religious art after the [[Lateran Treaty]] of 1929 and even reconciled himself to the Catholic Church, declaring that Jesus was a Futurist.

Although Futurism became identified with Fascism, it had leftist and anti-Fascist supporters.  They tended to oppose Marinetti's artistic and political direction of the movement, and in 1924 the socialists, communists and anarchists walked out of the Milan Futurist Congress. The anti-Fascist voices in Futurism were not completely silenced until the annexation of Ethiopia and the Italo-German Pact of Steel in 1939.<ref>Berghaus, Günther, "New Research on Futurism and its Relations with the Fascist Regime", ''Journal of Contemporary History'', 2007, Vol. 42, p.152</ref>  This association of Fascists, socialists and anarchists in the Futurist movement, which may seem odd today, can be understood in terms of the influence of [[George Sorel]], whose ideas about the regenerative effect of political violence had adherents right across the political spectrum. 

Futurism expanded to encompass many artistic domains and ultimately included painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theatre design, textiles, drama, literature, music and architecture. 

=== Aeropainting ===

Aeropainting (''aeropittura'') was a major expression of Futurism in the thirties and early forties.  The technology and excitement of flight, directly experienced by most aeropainters,<ref name=Osborn>[http://simultaneita.net/tulliocrali.html Osborn, Bob, ''Tullio Crali: the Ultimate Futurist Aeropainter'']</ref> offered aeroplanes and [[aerial landscape art|aerial landscape]] as new subject matter.  But aeropainting was varied in subject matter and treatment, including realism (especially in works of propaganda), abstraction, dynamism, quiet Umbrian landscapes,<ref>" ... dal realismo esasperato e compiatciuto (in particolare delle opere propagandistico) alle forme asatratte (come in Dottori: ''Trittico della velocità''), dal dinamismo alle quieti lontane dei paesaggi umbri di Dottori ... ." ''L'aeropittura futurista'' http://users.libero.it/macbusc/id22.htm</ref> portraits of Mussolini (e.g. Dottori's ''Portrait of il Duce''), devotional religious paintings and decorative art.   

Aeropainting was launched in a manifesto of 1929, ''Perspectives of Flight'', signed by [[Benedetta]], [[Depero]], [[Gerardo Dottori|Dottori]], [[Fillia]], Marinetti, [[Enrico Prampolini|Prampolini]], [[Somenzi]] and [[Tato]]. The artists stated that  "The changing perspectives of flight constitute an absolutely new reality that has nothing in common with the reality traditionally constituted by a terrestrial perspective" and that "Painting from this new reality requires a profound contempt for detail and a need to synthesise and transfigure everything." Crispolti identifies three main "positions" in aeropainting: "a vision of cosmic projection, at its most typical in Prampolini's 'cosmic idealism'  ... ; a 'reverie' of aerial fantasies sometimes verging on fairy-tale (for example in Dottori ...); and a kind of aeronautical documentarism that comes dizzyingly close to direct celebration of machinery (particularly in [[Tullio Crali|Crali]], but also in Tato and Ambrosi)."<ref>Crispolti, E., "Aeropainting", in Hulten, P., ''Futurism and Futurisms'', Thames and Hudson, 1986, p.413</ref>  Eventually there were over a hundred aeropainters.  The most able were Balla, Depero, Prampolini, Dottori and Crali.<ref>Tisdall, C. and Bozzola A., ''Futurism'', Thames and Hudson, 1993, p.198</ref> 

Fortunato Depero was the co-author with Balla of ''The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe'', (1915) a radical manifesto for the revolution of everyday life.  He practised painting, design, sculpture, graphic art, illustration, interior design, stage design and ceramics.<ref name=MartinS>Martin, S., ''Futurism'', Taschen, n.d.</ref>  The decorative element comes to the fore in Depero's later painting, e.g. ''Train Born from the Sun'' (1924).  He applied this approach in theatre design and commercial art - e.g. his unrealised designs for [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky's]] ''Chant du Rossignol'', (1916) his large tapestry, ''The Court of the Big Doll'' (1920) and his many posters. 

Enrico Prampolini pursued a programme of abstract and quasi-abstract painting, combined with a career in stage design.  His ''Spatial-Landscape Construction'' (1919) is quasi-abstract with large flat areas in bold colours, predominantly red, orange, blue and dark green.  His ''Simultaneous Landscape'' (1922) is totally abstract, with flat colours and no attempt to create perspective. In his ''Umbrian Landscape'' (1929), produced in the year of the Aeropainting Manifesto, Prampolini returns to figuration, representing the hills of Umbria.  But by 1931 he had adopted "cosmic idealism", a biomorphic abstractionism quite different from the works of the previous decade, for example in ''Pilot of the Infinite'' (1931) and ''Biological Apparition'' (1940).

Gerardo Dottori made a specifically Futurist contribution to landscape painting, which he frequently shows from an aerial viewpoint.  Some of his landscapes appear to be more conventional than Futurist, e.g. his ''Hillside Landscape'' (1925).  Others are dramatic and lyrical, e.g. ''The Miracle of Light'' (1931-2), which employs his characteristic high viewpoint over a schematised landscape with patches of brilliant colour and a non-naturalistic perspective reminiscent of pre-Renaissance painting; over the whole are three rainbows, in non-naturalistic colour.  More typically Futurist is his major work, the ''Velocity Triptych'' of 1925.  

Dottori was one of the principal exponents of Futurist sacred art. His painting of ''St. Francis Dying at Porziuncola'' has a strong landscape element and a mystical intent conveyed by distortion, dramatic light and colour. 

Mural painting was embraced by the Futurists in the ''Manifesto of Mural Plasticism'' at a time when the revival of fresco painting was being debated in Italy.<ref name=MartinS/>  Dottori carried out many mural commissions including the ''Altro Mondo'' in Perugia (1927-8) and the hydroport at Ostia (1928).<ref>Hulten, P., ''Futurism and Futurisms'', Thames and Hudson, 1986, p.468</ref> 

Tullio Crali, a self-taught painter, was a late adherent to Futurism, not joining until 1929.  He is noted for his realistic aeropaintings, which combine "speed, aerial mechanisation and the mechanics of aerial warfare".<ref name=Osborn/>  His earliest aeropaintings represent military planes, ''Aerial Squadron'' and ''Aerial Duel'' (both 1929), in appearance little different from works by Prampolini or other Futurist painters.  In the 1930s, his paintings became realistic, intending to communicate the experience of flight to the viewer.<ref name=Osborn/>  His best-known work, ''Nose Dive on the City'' (1939), shows an aerial dive from the pilot's point of view, the buildings below drawn in dizzying perspective.