Ponti

Mantua – Dynamic, multifaceted, brilliant, Fortunato Depero was one of the protagonists of the Futurist movement, building, during his long artistic experience, a total art form that ranged from painting to theater, from scenography to applied arts, from publishing to advertising, obeying one goal: to dispense wonder.
From the September 7 to February 26 Palace of the Reasonin Mantua, will host an exhibition that will be above all a journey through these multiple creative spheres, articulated in the three geographical stages of the artistic career of the great master.

Palazzo della Ragione, Mantua

The exhibition entitled Depero automatic acrobatic will bring for the first time to Mantua about eighty significant works created between 1917 and 1938. Conceived by Electa in collaboration with the Mart, Museum of modern and contemporary art of Trento and Rovereto, the itinerary, curated by Nicoletta Boschiero, responsible for the Depero Futurist Art House, it will be created exclusively for the spaces of Palazzo della Ragione. The exhibition dedicated to the intelligent creator of futurist aesthetics theorized in Futurist reconstruction of the Universesigned with Giacomo Balla in 1915, and which will take place in conjunction with the Festivaletteratura, will lead us to Capri, the cradle of one of the most creative seasons that will reach its peak between 1916 and 1918. This period linked to the theatrical adventure lived with the Swiss Gilbert Clavel, a friend of the artist, it will be retraced through some drawings that belonged to Clavel himself.
Ballerina mechanicsfrom 1917, will be accompanied by some beautiful inks dedicated to the Gothic novel Suicide Instituteprelude to the birth of the automaton with the theatrical performance Plastic dances.

View of Casa Depero, Rovereto © Mart, Photographic Archive and Media Library

In 1919, after the war, in Rovereto Depero will realize his great dream: to open an art house specializing in the field of advertising graphics, furniture and applied arts and, in particular, in that of cloth inlays which was a great success they will have in Paris, at the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, “open to all industrialists whose products are artistic in character and clearly display a modern trend”.
The exhibition itinerary, whose catalog will be published by Electa, will accompany the guests of Palazzo della Ragione overseas, specifically in New York. Here, after the successes achieved in the main national and international exhibitions, Depero and his wife Rosetta moved in 1928, opening Depero’s Futurist House, an American branch of the Rovereto art house. It is the era of the artist’s advertising commitment that explodes in collaborations with prominent brands, while numerous cover projects for Vogue, American Printer, Vanity Fair are in the pipeline, as well as theatrical sets for New Babel.
Finally, a last section of the exhibition will be dedicated to the multi-year collaboration with the Campari brand.