Fortunato Depero

Depero's 1932 bottle design for Campari Soda is still in production. Fortunato Depero (30 March 1892 – 29 November 1960) was an Italian futurist painter, writer, sculptor, and graphic designer.

Early life Depero was born in Fondo or (according to other sources) in the neighboring village of Maloscoin the modern Italian region of Trentino, at that time the County of Tyrol in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. He grew up in Rovereto. Depero applied for the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. However, he was rejected. Instead, he became an apprentice marble worker.

Career

Early career While on a 1913 trip to Florence, Depero discovered a copy of Lacerba and an article by one of the founders of the futurism movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Inspired by what he saw, as well as by the death of his mother, Depero was inspired to move to Rome in 1914, where he met fellow futurist Giacomo Balla.

It was with Balla in 1915 that he wrote the manifesto Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe, which expanded upon the ideas introduced by the other futurists. In the same year, he was designing stage sets and costumes for a ballet.

In 1919, Depero founded the House of Futurist Art in Rovereto, which specialised in producing toys, tapestries and furniture in the futurist style. In 1925 he represented the futurists at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, and presented a Futurist Hall at the Monza Biennial.

1920s During the 1920s, Depero began making propaganda for the National Fascist Party. This included writing songs and painting posters.

From 1928 to 1930, Depero lived in New York City. During this era, he saw little commercial success, possibly due to the outbreak of the Great Depression. His first commercial enterprise in New York, the Futurist House, closed after two months. He experienced some success as a fashion designer, both creating costumes for stage productions and designing covers for magazines such as MovieMaker, The New Yorker and Vogue. He also dabbled in interior design during his stay, working on two restaurants which were later demolished to make way for the Rockefeller Center. He also did work for the New York Daily News and Macy's, and built a house on 23rd Street. In 1930, he returned to Italy.

1930s and 1940s Following his return to Italy, Depero continued making Futurist art. Depero is viewed as one of the principal figures of the Futurist movement during the 1930s and 1940s, alongside Balla. During this time, Depero was the founder and editor for Dinamo magazine.

Some of Depero's art created during the 1930s has been criticized as racist due to containing racial stereotypes. During the 1930s, the occupation of Italian Libya and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War provided African influence in his art.

Between 1925 and 1939, Depero created several advertisements for Campari. This included the Campari Soda bottle, created in 1932. He also created advertisements for Vroom & Dreesmann and S.Pellegrino.

In 1938, Depero worked with Bosso to create a precursor to plywood, known as Buxus. Buxus was used to create several sculptures.

Post-war period Futurism began to decline following the defeat of the Italian fascist government. Due to this, Depero began to see significantly less commercial success. The Casa d'Arte Futurista Depero, Italy's only museum dedicated to the Futurist movement, containing 3,000 objects, is now one of MART's venues. Closed for many years for extensive refurbishment, the Casa d'Arte Futurista Depero reopened in 2009. A number of important artists, thinkers, and architects worked on the Casa with Depero―especially those who were from the region―including Fausto Melotti, Gino Pollini, and Carlo Belli.

Depero's designs and artworks completed for advertising were mainly monochromatic or utilized a spot colour to emphasise text. His full-color designs followed Futurist color schemes featuring red, brown, ocher and the occasional accents of bright blue or aqua.

Between October 2014 and January 2015, the Fundación Juan March Museum in Madrid exhibited Futurist Depero (1913-1950). The exhibition of nearly 300 pieces showed "renewed vision of Italian Futurism, which has gone down in history for the radical nature of its proposals: abolishing the art of the past and glorifying dynamism, the machine, speed and war."

Writings

Selected works