Three exhibitions on Depero were inaugurated in Trentino within a month

1

“Omaggio a Depero dalla sua valle” (Tribute to Depero from his valley)
curated by Marcello Nebl & Maurizio Scudiero
at Palazzo Assessorile di Cles, Val di Non
from September 25th, 2021 to February 13th, 2022
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 – 12.00 / 14.30 – 18.00Closed on Mondays except November 1st; extraordinary closures 25^th of December 2021 and 1st January 2022

INFO:
mail: cultura@comune.cles.tn.it
tel.  : 0463 662091

This is a vast anthology that covers the entire life and art of Depero in a path that winds along the three floors of the Renaissance Palazzo Assessorile in the center of the Val di Non.On display are paintings, tapestries, collages, drawings, posters and many original documents.

Loans from institutions and individuals, not to forget the significant contribution of works from Campari.

“The exhibition tells the artist’s bond with the Val di Non through two different levels that run parallel. The richest section of the exhibition, in which documentary sources dialogue with sketches, collages, drawings and tapestries, it is related to the twenties with a bursting one advertising activity: poster studies for Campari, Cicli Legnano, Strega, Cioccolato Fago, the covers of the Illustrated Magazine of the People of Italy from 1925 to 1928 and the famous Futurist Depero 1913-1927, better known as the Bolted Book, designed to celebrate fifteen years of activity artistic in Futurism, with an original binding created by his friend and editor Fedele Azari.

In the Thirties there is what Maurizio Scudiero calls the ‘return to concreteness’: New York, with its skyscrapers and busy streets, but also with its poorly concealed poverty, showed a different face than the modernity that the Italian futurists had always imagined. . Returning to Rovereto, Depero finds contact with the reality of his origins, with the values ​​of the land and of the family: he returns to painting, gradually changing the themes and passing from the lights of the metropolis to the mountain villages, from underground tramways to stories of peasant life. The latest advertising graphics are combined with large alpine-themed oils on canvas, such as Animals from the courtyard of 1936 and Elasticity of cats of 1939.The exhibition ends with Depero’s last manner, from the postwar period to his death in 1960; a path crossed by difficulties and bitterness, as in the second unfortunate American adventure, and compensated by a desire for redemption, with the efforts to create his own museum and with the latest graphic and pictorial masterpieces that testify the resistant expressive force of an artist who has constantly intended to bring art into everyday life, influencing the painting, design and graphics of our time”.

(from Vittorio Sgarbi’s comment in the Rovereto exhibitions catalogues).

2

“Depero e la sua Casa d’arte da Rovereto a New York” (Depero and his art house from Rovereto to New York)
curated by Maurizio Scudiero
at Museo Depero, Via dei Portici 38, Rovereto
from October 21th,  2021 to March 27th, 2022
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, from 10am to 6pm. Closed on MondaysTickets: Full € 7, reduced € 4 / information on costs, methods of access eonline ticket office: www.mart.trento.it

“Maurizio Scudiero’s exhibition presents a group of works from important public and private collections, conceived in the decade 1920-1930, one of the most creative periods of the artist’s career, when he founded the Casa d’Arte Futurista in Rovereto (1919) and Depero’s Futurist House in New York (1928).Within these innovative artistic workshops, the creation of the so-called tapestries (actually inlays of colored fabrics) plays a central role, but advertising signs, furniture and furnishings are also produced to realize the futurist dream of ‘bringing art into life’ (…)
The advertising activity matured in the years between 1924 and 1928, when Depero worked for many Italian companies and in particular began a long collaboration with Campari. During this partnership, the artist also measured himself with product design, designing the famous truncated cone bottle.In September 1928, Depero left for New York with the aim of opening a branch of his Futurist Art House. Here he creates settings for restaurants, sets for the Roxy Theater, advertising and illustrations for important magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Sparks, The New Yorker.In his eyes, the Big Apple appears as an immense, bright and glowing advertising billboard.In addition to the numerous examples of applied art, the exhibition features some important paintings made in the 1920s, when Depero embraced the new theories of futurist mechanical art “.

(from the preface by Vittorio Sgarbi in the exhibition catalog).

3

“Depero New Depero”
curated by Nicoletta Boschiero
at MART, Corso Bettini, Rovereto
from October 21th,  2021 to February 13th, 2022

“Depero New Depero collects about 500 pieces including works, drawings, furniture, objects, reconstructions, posters, photographs, books, magazines, comics, videos and films. It is an opportunity to retrace the career of the artist from Rovereto who starts from Futurism and reaches the most contemporary expressions through exemplary stages.
In the Eighties, for example, Enzo Cogno reconstructs parts of the artist’s missing works: the scenography of Le Chant du Rossignol and the puppets of the Plastic Ballets, respectively from 1916 and 1918 (…)
In the field of design, the Memphis Group – a collective founded in 1981 by Ettore Sottsass – designs geometric and colorful works that are inspired by the futurist vision, Art Deco and kitsch of the fifties, overturning the creative limitations imposed by industry (…)
Theater, digital design, video converge in the work Explosions by an artist that Luciano Emmer, director and screenwriter, created in 2008 after seeing Depero’s works in the halls and archives of the Mart, letting himself be involved in the playful vitality of puppets and marionettes that become the protagonists of his film (…)
Depero’s New York experience, a fundamental stage of his journey, has been and continues to be at the center of studies, research and artistic reworkings: in 2015 Nello Correale shoots Depero, Rovereto, New York and other stories, while today the Barlumen Institute , starting a collaboration with the Mart, produces New York lived film or Autofilm, which through some salient stages- the ship trip, customs, the 1929 crisis, the party at the Fifth Avenue hotel – reconstructs Depero’s life in New York (…)

“(from the preface by Vittorio Sgarbi in the exhibition catalog).