Catalogo di mostra
Depero. Cavalcata Fantastica
Autore: testi critici di Lucia Mannini, Marco Fagioli, Stefania Francioli, Federico Zanoner, Valentina Zucchi; testi introduttivi di Sergio Risaliti e Vittorio Sgarbi
Editore: Officina Libraria
Lingue di traduzione: Italiano - inglese
Traduttori: Elisabeth Burke, Jeremy Carden, Karen Tomatis
Abbiamo realizzato la traduzione italiano-inglese del catalogo della mostra “Depero. Cavalcata Fantastica”, a Firenze, inauguratasi il 28 settembre 2023 e in corso fino al 28 gennaio 2024 nella prestigiosa sede del Palazzo Medici Riccardi.
L’esposizione, organizzata da MUS.E e curata da Sergio Risaliti ed Eva Francioli, rende omaggio all’artista futurista Fortunato Depero, con particolare attenzione alle sue opere per il teatro.
The reasons for a show
Sergio Risaliti
Depero. Cavalcata fantastica at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi is a new exhibition project that, for the first time, brings the work of one of the undisputed masters of the twentieth century to a museum in the city.
A versatile artist, Fortunato Depero (Fondo, 1892 – Rovereto, 1960) successfully combined elements from popular culture with a lively figurative imagination, comic strip graphics with those of animated cartoons, contemporary themes such as mechanical movement and the speed of cars and motorcycles with traditional motifs (the horse, masks, play) that have run through art history since ancient times.
Identifying some of the characteristic subjects and techniques of his output and offering a careful selection of his works, the show highlights the subtle links between Depero, his work and the Florence area, where he lived for a period when he was a young man.
The project is part of the programme of Florence Art Week 2023, a prestigious event offering an occasion for a careful and new study of leading exponents of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, with an eye on the complex relationship that has always bound Florence with figurative and other arts. The Museo Novecento, which has conceived the show, is one of the protagonists of the Art Week, which features a packed programme of events across the city, revealing a refreshing and previously unseen spirit of collaboration in parochial Florence.
As on other occasions, this project stems from the presence of one or more works by a given artist in the collections of the Musei Civici Fiorentini. Previous exhibitions, for example, have focused on Emilio Vedova, Giorgio Morandi, Gino Severini, Mario Mafai, Arturo Martini, Mirko Basaldella, Corrado Cagli and, more recently, Lucio Fontana. Now it is the turn of Fortunato Depero. The Museo Novecento is home to one of the artist’s masterpieces, Nitrito in velocità(Neighing at Speed) (c.1932), donated to the city of Florence by the naval engineer Alberto Della Ragione following the terrible flood of 1966. Thanks to the generous donation of no fewer than 241 works from his famous collection, it was possible, several decades later, in 2014, to finally establish a museum of modern and contemporary art in the city that was the cradle of the Renaissance.
