The exhibition “Marinetti chez Marinetti”, curated by Maurizio Calvesi with a catalogue essay by Beatrice Buscaroli, presents to the public for the first time more than forty works from the private collection of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
Among the artists on display are Luigi Russolo, Tullio Crali, Fortunato Depero, Ardengo Soffici, Rougena Zátková, Antonio Marasco, Gino Galli, Renato Di Bosso, and Mino delle Site, to name just a few. Together, they offer a broad and distinguished overview of twentieth-century Italian art. A particular highlight is the celebrated painting The Marinetti Family by Gerardo Dottori, a leading figure of Aeropainting, regarded as one of the most significant works of Futurism.
Other works on display that once belonged to the founder of the Futurist movement and are of great historical and artistic importance include Portrait of Benedetta by Giacomo Balla; Sun Marinetti, Rougena Zátková’s celebrated portrait of Marinetti; Benedetta’s two works Irony and Lights + Noises of a Night Train; The Wounded Marinetti by brothers Francesco and Pasqualino Cangiullo; as well as several famous examples of parole in libertà (“words-in-freedom”) created by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti himself.
As Beatrice Buscaroli writes:
“From the instantaneousness of a lightning-fast gesture, from a thought captured at the very moment it springs forth and becomes movement and reality (the parole in libertà), to the solemnity of a canvas destined to endure through time—as indeed it has—the figure of Marinetti emerges. Even through an imperfect perfection or an unfinished composition: this handful of papers alone would suffice to tell the story of the man who transformed Italy, who shaped and unmade it, brutalized it, infected it with his ideas, and enlisted it.”
The exhibition also features works from other important collections, including Portrait of Mrs. Cragnolini Fanna by Umberto Boccioni, from the collection of Margherita Sarfatti; two important paintings by Giacomo Balla, Balfiore and Roses and Petunias, both from the artist’s own home; and two significant drawings by Carlo Erba, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother Judith and Portrait of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
