Aeropittura was a major expression of the second generation of Italian Futurism

Futurism

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...

, from 1929 through the early 1940s. The technology and excitement of flight, directly experienced by most aeropainters, offered aeroplanes and aerial landscape

Aerial landscape art

Aerial landscape art includes paintings and other visual arts which depict or evoke the appearance of a landscape from a perspective above it—usually from a considerable distance—as it might be viewed from an aircraft or spacecraft. Sometimes the art is based not on direct observation but on aerial...

 as new subject matter.

Aeropainting was surprisingly varied in subject matter and treatment, including realism (especially in works of propaganda), abstraction, dynamism, quiet Umbrian landscapes, portraits of Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

 (e.g., Dottori's Portrait of il Duce), devotional religious paintings, and decorative art.

Origins

Aeropainting was launched in a manifesto of 1929, Perspectives of Flight, signed by Benedetta Cappa, Fortunato Depero

Fortunato Depero

Fortunato Depero was an Italian futurist painter, writer, sculptor and graphic designer.Although born in Fondo/Malosco , Depero grew up in Rovereto and it was here he first began exhibiting his works, while serving as an apprentice to a marble worker...

, Gerardo Dottori

Gerardo Dottori

Gerardo Dottori was an Italian Futurist painter. He signed the Futurist Manifesto of Aeropainting in 1929...

, Fillìa

Fillìa

Fillìa was the name adopted by Luigi Colombo, an Italian artist associated with the second generation of Futurism.-Biography:Fillìa was born in Revello, Piedmont....

, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...

, Enrico Prampolini

Enrico Prampolini

Enrico Prampolini was an Italian Futurist painter, sculptor and scenographer. He assisted in the design of the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution and was active in Aeropainting....

, Mino Somenzi and Guglielmo Sansoni (Tato). The artists stated that "The changing perspectives of flight constitute an absolutely new reality that has nothing in common with the reality traditionally constituted by a terrestrial perspective" and that "Painting from this new reality requires a profound contempt for detail and a need to synthesise and transfigure everything." Crispolti identifies three main "positions" in aeropainting: "a vision of cosmic projection, at its most typical in Prampolini's 'cosmic idealism' ... ; a 'reverie' of aerial fantasies sometimes verging on fairy-tale (for example in Dottori ...); and a kind of aeronautical documentarism that comes dizzyingly close to direct celebration of machinery (particularly in Tullio Crali

Tullio Crali

Tullio Crali was an Italian artist associated with Futurism. A self-taught painter, he was a late adherent to the movement, not joining until 1929...

, but also in Tato and Ambrosi)."

Artists

Eventually there were over a hundred aeropainters. The most able were Balla, Depero, Prampolini, Dottori and Crali.
Fortunato Depero

Fortunato Depero

Fortunato Depero was an Italian futurist painter, writer, sculptor and graphic designer.Although born in Fondo/Malosco , Depero grew up in Rovereto and it was here he first began exhibiting his works, while serving as an apprentice to a marble worker...

 was the co-author with Balla of The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe, (1915) a radical manifesto for the revolution of everyday life. He practised painting, design, sculpture, graphic art, illustration, interior design, stage design and ceramics. The decorative element comes to the fore in Depero's later painting, e.g. Train Born from the Sun (1924). He applied this approach in theatre design and commercial art - e.g. his unrealised designs for Stravinsky's

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

 Chant du Rossignol, (1916) his large tapestry, The Court of the Big Doll (1920) and his many posters.

Enrico Prampolini

Enrico Prampolini

Enrico Prampolini was an Italian Futurist painter, sculptor and scenographer. He assisted in the design of the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution and was active in Aeropainting....

 pursued a programme of abstract and quasi-abstract painting, combined with a career in stage design. His Spatial-Landscape Construction (1919) is quasi-abstract with large flat areas in bold colours, predominantly red, orange, blue and dark green. His Simultaneous Landscape (1922) is totally abstract, with flat colours and no attempt to create perspective. In his Umbrian Landscape (1929), produced in the year of the Aeropainting Manifesto, Prampolini returns to figuration, representing the hills of Umbria. But by 1931 he had adopted "cosmic idealism", a biomorphic abstractionism quite different from the works of the previous decade, for example in Pilot of the Infinite (1931) and Biological Apparition (1940).

Gerardo Dottori

Gerardo Dottori

Gerardo Dottori was an Italian Futurist painter. He signed the Futurist Manifesto of Aeropainting in 1929...

 made a specifically Futurist contribution to landscape painting, which he frequently shows from an aerial viewpoint. Some of his landscapes appear to be more conventional than Futurist, e.g. his Hillside Landscape (1925). Others are dramatic and lyrical, e.g. The Miracle of Light (1931-2), which employs his characteristic high viewpoint over a schematised landscape with patches of brilliant colour and a non-naturalistic perspective reminiscent of pre-Renaissance painting; over the whole are three rainbows, in non-naturalistic colour. More typically Futurist is his major work, the Velocity Triptych of 1925.

Dottori was one of the principal exponents of Futurist sacred art. His painting of St. Francis Dying at Porziuncola has a strong landscape element and a mystical intent conveyed by distortion, dramatic light and colour.

Mural painting was embraced by the Futurists in the Manifesto of Mural Plasticism at a time when the revival of fresco painting was being debated in Italy. Dottori carried out many mural commissions including the Altro Mondo in Perugia (1927-8) and the hydroport at Ostia (1928).

Tullio Crali

Tullio Crali

Tullio Crali was an Italian artist associated with Futurism. A self-taught painter, he was a late adherent to the movement, not joining until 1929...

, a self-taught painter, was a late adherent to Futurism, not joining until 1929. He is noted for his realistic aeropaintings, which combine "speed, aerial mechanisation and the mechanics of aerial warfare". His earliest aeropaintings represent military planes, Aerial Squadron and Aerial Duel (both 1929), in appearance little different from works by Prampolini or other Futurist painters. In the 1930s, his paintings became realistic, intending to communicate the experience of flight to the viewer. His best-known work, Nose Dive on the City (1939), shows an aerial dive from the pilot's point of view, the buildings below drawn in dizzying perspective. Crali continued to produce aero-themed paintings into the 1980s.

List of artists

• Fedele Azari
• Giacomo Balla
  Giacomo Balla
  Giacomo Balla was an Italian painter.-Biography:Born in Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy, the son of an industrial chemist, as a child Giacomo Balla studied music....
  
  
• Uberto Bonetti
• Benedetta Cappa
• Giuseppe Caselli
• Nino Costa
• Tullio Crali
  Tullio Crali
  Tullio Crali was an Italian artist associated with Futurism. A self-taught painter, he was a late adherent to the movement, not joining until 1929...
  
  
• Giulio D'Anna
• Fortunato Depero
  Fortunato Depero
  Fortunato Depero was an Italian futurist painter, writer, sculptor and graphic designer.Although born in Fondo/Malosco , Depero grew up in Rovereto and it was here he first began exhibiting his works, while serving as an apprentice to a marble worker...
  
  
• Gerardo Dottori
  Gerardo Dottori
  Gerardo Dottori was an Italian Futurist painter. He signed the Futurist Manifesto of Aeropainting in 1929...
  
  
• Leandra Angelucci Cominazzini
• Fillìa
  Fillìa
  Fillìa was the name adopted by Luigi Colombo, an Italian artist associated with the second generation of Futurism.-Biography:Fillìa was born in Revello, Piedmont....
  
  
• Sante Monachesi
  Sante Monachesi
  Sante Monachesi , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana and founder in 1932 of the Movimento Futurista nelle Marche .-Life and career:...
  
  
• Pippo Oriani
• Osvaldo Peruzzi
• Ugo Pozzo
• Enrico Prampolini
  Enrico Prampolini
  Enrico Prampolini was an Italian Futurist painter, sculptor and scenographer. He assisted in the design of the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution and was active in Aeropainting....
  
  
• Aldo Righetti
• Mino Rosso
• Mino Somenzi
• Tato