06
Fortunato Depero
Studio di insegna pubblicitaria Depero Futurist Art
1929
Inchiostro di china su carta
Cm 31,5 x 39, 5
Rovereto, Mart
17
Fortunato Depero
Bozzetto per manifesto pubblicitario Uomo-matita
1926-1929
Collage
cm 40 x 62
Rovereto, Mart
45
Fortunato Depero
Copertina di “Vanity Fair”
1930
Stampa tipografica
Cm 33 x 25
Rovereto, Mart
Deperopubblicitario. From the Auto-réclame to Advertising Architecture
October 13, 2007- February 24, 2008
The “Deperopubblicitario. From the
auto-réclame to advertising architecture” project bears witness to the
richness of the museum’s holdings: posters, bills, drawings, collages,
presented in the exhibition with a wholly new level of completeness. In
particular, the exhibition highlights the rich collection of works –
part of the original Depero bequest of the 1960s – that Mart has since
1990 held on long-term loan from the Roverto Town Council.
Fortunato
Depero dedicated himself to the world of advertising with an
extraordinary vitality, driven by his Futurist faith. This was a sector
that at the start of the century had already taken its first steps,
exploring a new frontier in artistic creativity and which soon made use
of many talents to serve it.
His interest in the applied arts
already became clear in the pronouncements made in the “Ricostruzione
futurista dell’universo” (“Futurist reconstruction of the universe”),
signed together with Giacomo Balla nel 1915. This text includes the
first mention of his interest in advertising, evident in a passage
dedicated to “réclame fono-moto-plastica” (“phono-motor-plastic
advertising”).
AUTO-RÉCLAME
“Self-advertising
is not a vain, useless and exaggerated expression of megalomania, but
an indispensable NEED to enable the public to learn of one’s ideas and
creations rapidly”.Fortunato Depero advertised Fortunato Depero as
his first product, and it is to this important aspect of his work that
the first section of the exhibition is dedicated. These are the
“auto-réclame”: writing cards, publications and curious panels to hand
at the entrance to the rooms in which exhibitions were held, such as
those produced for the “Casa d’Arte Futurista Fortunato Depero”
(“Fortunato Depero Futurist Art House”), the workshop for the
production of tapestries and toys, founded in Rovereto in 1919. “The
artist”, wrote Depero, “needs recognition, and to be esteemed and
glorified in life, and so has the right to use all the most effective
and undreamed-of means to advertise his genius and works”.
THE ART OF THE CARTELLO AND LEADING BRANDS
In
Depero’s first posters (which he dubbed “cartelli”), one finds that
Futurist mechanical universe elaborated in 1918 for I Balli Plastici, a
puppet show planned with the Swiss writer, Gilbert Clavel. An example
is the “Manifesto pubblicitario Mandorlato Vido” of 1924. In later
years, the “droll mechanical puppets” gradually vanished, giving way to
increasingly refined stylistic work. Depero’s commitment to advertising
materialised further thanks to long-term collaborations with leading
companies, such as the Verzocchi brickworks, Magnesia and Acqua San
Pellegrino, the Strega liqueur works, the Schering pharmaceutical
company, the Unica pastry firm and, above all, the famous Davide
Campari company.
The collaboration between Campari and Depero began
in 1925-26 and constitutes a veritable “case history” in Italian
advertising, as well as confirming a relationship of project affinity
that Depero would meet in no other clients in the advertising sector. The
Numero Unico Futurista Campari, realised in 1931 with poet Giovanni
Gerbino, is the arrival point of all Depero’s graphic work, and
anticipated what would in future be a close collaboration between the
illustrator and the copy writer. In the Numero Unico appear not only
advertising images but above all the Manifesto dell’Arte pubblicitaria
(“The Manifesto of Advertising Art”) representing the theoretical and
critical manifesto of “producing advertising”.
The exhibition also
presents the many drafts proposed – sadly without success – from the
1920s onwards by Depero to many companies. Assisted by Fedele Azari,
Fortunato Depero operated as a true agent for his own work.
FROM ADVERTISING ARCHITECTURE TO PUBLISHING
One
of the most original forms of advertising invented by Depero is that of
the Padiglioni tipografici (“Typographical pavilions”). Depero was not
an architect but in 1927 he designed and built a structure in cement in
which the spaces formed words. In the same year, the Davide Campari
company contributed towards the realisation of the bolted book, the
Futurist book designed with Fedele Azari and hailed by Alfredo
Degasperi, editor of “Voce trentina”, as “the book that becomes all
books”.
Designed as a joint promotion for the Dinamo Azari
publishing house and for Depero’s activities, the volume comprised 234
pages with a punched cover and a clasp made using aluminium bolts.
Fedele
Azari was enthusiastic with the solutions adopted by Depero in the
construction of the single pages: a brilliant typographical play which
takes Marinetti’s theories in his 1913 manifesto to their logical
conclusion: “Imagination without strings and words in freedom”. “The
book must be the Futurist impression of our Futurist thinking”. The
bolted book anticipated Marinetti’s own Parole in libertà futuriste,
olfattive, tattili, termiche (“Words in Futurist, olfactory, tactile,
thermal freedom”), his libro-litolatta, printed on metal sheets, by
five years. But the bolted book reveals how the Rovereto-born artist
was aligned with the most advanced research in modern typography, from
Moholy-Nagy to Van Doesbourg, El Lissitzky to Kurt Schwitters.
For more information please visit: Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto
-Joanne Molina
Seed Newsvine
