Depero: Futurista
Fortunato DeperoRedefining the spiritual and
material world fell to visionaries,
“men of talent and memorable
fools,” who led the shock troops
of modernism. Inspired to action,
the Italian Fortunato Depero
( 1892 – 1960 ) cosigned the “Futurist
Reconstruction of the Universe,”
a manifesto aimed at world
renewal by “cheering it up”
through the overhaul of everyday
objects—interior decoration,
clothing, publicity, mass
communications, postal art. Depero was a significant part of the late first
and second stages of Italian futurism, an early and exceedingly influential
European avant-garde movement that altered the process of artistic
production and the role of the artist in society. Futurism’s founder, poet
F. T. Marinetti, proclaimed in the 1909 Futurist Manifesto(published in the
Parisian newspaper,Le Figaro): “United, we must attack! We must create
with absolute faith in the imperishable richness of the earth! There can be
no nostalgia! No pessimism! There’s no turning back! Boldly, let us
advance! Forward! Faster! Farther! Higher! Let us lyrically renew our joy in
being alive!”
Marinetti espoused a permanent artistic and political revolution.
He rejected traditionalism in favor of “the new religion of speed,”
mythologizing the machine—the automobile and later the airplane—as a
totem of the modern spirit. Technology, though somewhat primitive in Italy,
was the savior of mankind, and futurism was the avant-garde of the masses.
At age twenty-four, Fortunato (meaning good luck) Depero was
already artistically formed, with a distinct stylistic personality. While he
shared Marinetti’s belief in “art action,” Depero was engaged in
considerably more playful pursuits. And, although he followed the
movement’s political dictates, his personal politics were based on
aesthetics. “In Depero one rediscovers applied art, the happening, kinetic
art, dadaist provocation, abstract painting: to sum up, a heritage of so
many new directions of art,” wrote Italian art historian Giorgio Ruggeri.198