MAON, Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art in Rende (CS)
October 25, 2014, 6:00 PM
Inauguration of the Exhibition
FROM THE SECOND FUTURISM TO CONCRETE ART AND SURROUNDINGS
Marasco, Benedetto, Rotella and abstract research
1920 - 1970
curated by Tonino Sicoli, Bruno Corà, Massimo Di Stefano, Leonardo Passarelli
The line of abstract research in twentieth-century painting certainly develops from the decompositional geometry of the Cubo-Futurist poetics of the beginning of the century to subsequently orient itself towards an ever greater delineation of a pure, rationalist and concretist abstraction.
Thus in Italy the Second Futurism, progressively detaching itself from the plastic dynamism of Boccioni, has taken an abstract direction, with elementary forms and two-dimensional colors. Non-figurative painting has represented a trend that has strongly influenced the poetics of the Second Twentieth Century and this exhibition aims to capture its genesis and early stages, starting from those artists who took their first steps in the Futurist context and then arrived at a radically abstract research. The exhibition therefore documents the developments of the so-called Aeropittura towards Abstractionism.
Futurism had proposed an altered vision of reality, represented in a dynamic way and broken down into geometric shapes, with vectors in all directions, with curves and spirals, which allowed glimpses of objects, people, environments. Speed was the key to reading everything, in an accelerated and multiple vision. Aeropittura, which characterizes the Futurism of the Thirties, unlike that of the Tens and Twenties, tries its hand at the dynamic representation of space, or in the sense of the vertical dimension, upwards. The aeropainters replace the movement on the plane, that is, of everything that moves on the ground (man, animals, cars, trains), with aerial flight, with consequent perspectives from above, with ascending rhythms.
We start from the most clearly futurist paintings such as those of Giacomo Balla, Enrico, Prampolini, Nicolaj Diulgheroff, Ivo Pannaggi, Gerardo Dottori, Tullio Crali, Fortunato Depero, Pino Curtoni, Giulio D'Anna, Tato, Osvaldo Peruzzi, all works from the 1920s and 1930s. Arriving in the 1950s, the need to simplify forms more and more, reducing them to regular polygons, pure geometries, elementary drawings, makes its way among artists, especially those of futurist training. The research of the artists of this period is variously articulated and gives life to different groups and experiences, which find in the MAC (Movimento di Arte Concreta) a point of reference and synthesis. The concept of concrete art stands for detachment from all realism but also from lyrical abstraction and irrational informality.
Instead, it supports the rationality and autonomy of forms that do not represent any objective reality but have their own concreteness in themselves, meaning nothing other than their material and perceptive existence. Not all the artists who embrace this idea adhere to the MAC, founded in 1948 by Gillo Dorfles, Attanasio Soldati, Bruno Munari with the adhesions of, among others, Enrico Bordoni, Ferdinando Chevrier, Mario Nigro, Gianni Bertini, There are many who maintain a position of contiguity and meeting points. This cultural climate influences and directs other artists: from Gualtiero Nativi to Filippo Scroppo, from Albino Galvano to Arturo Carmassi, from Piero Ruggeri to Giulio Turcato. And also Dorazio, Crippa, Burri, Barisani, Carrino..... Of particular importance for the MAON, which aims to document Calabrian artists, will be the presence in the exhibition of works by Antonio Marasco, with Marinetti since the 1910s/20s and with interesting developments towards Aeropittura, first, and concrete art, later; and by the painter from Reggio Enzo Benedetto, a futurist since the 1920s and prosecutioauthor of that movement, albeit in a more abstract key, with the proclamation of Futurism Today.
Also on display are abstract works by the early Mimmo Rotella and Francesco Guerrieri, founder of the Sperimentale P. group.
Among the contextual events, to better document the historical period of the exhibition, the following will also be organized:
- Video review curated by Rosanna Rago
- Musical concert curated by the “S. Giacomantonio” of Cosenza
- Conference on the relationship between literature and visual arts.
- Recital-performance of Lindo Nudo by the Teatro Rossosimona
- Food and wine evening.
