a lecture by Francesca Pola
UMBERTO BOCCIONI – A Protagonist of Futurism and His Influence on Italian Postwar Art, a lecture by Francesca Pola
Thursday, April 7th6-8pmItalian Cultural Institute
The talk is devoted to the Italian painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (Reggio Calabria 1882 – Chievo 1916), one of the pivotal avant-garde artists of early 20th century. The year 2016 marks the first centennial of his precocious accidental death, in his early 30s: in spite of the short span of his lifetime, his creative intuitions and realizations were revolutionary in his own age, and his influence on following artists was crucial.
Boccioni was among the founders and protagonists of Futurism, the most important Italian avant-garde movement who was initiated in 1909 by a famous “manifesto” by poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Through a selection of Boccioni’s masterpieces, starting with Officine a Porta Romana from 1909-10 (a painting showing the transformation of the city of Milan into a modern metropolis), the talk outlines the interdisciplinary poetics of Futurism, and features the connections of his paintings and sculptures to music, literature, architecture of early 20th century Italy. The talk also addresses Boccioni’s crucial influence on Italian Postwar art of the 1950s and 1960s, by showing his heritage in artists such as Lucio Fontana, Agostino Bonalumi, Gianni Colombo, Mario Schifano, who were directly inspired by his work to create their own experimental paintings, sculptures and installations.
Francesca Pola (Genoa 1974) is an Italian art historian and curator, teaching at Università Cattolica (Milan and Brescia) and IES Abroad (Milan). She is currently Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Italian Studies at Northwestern University, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Department of French and Italian, where she is teaching two interdisciplinary courses about Italian culture in an international context, through visual arts, from World War II to the present. Due to her interest in ‘visual contamination’ of art with other specific creative elements, she was curator of contemporary art for the interdisciplinary “Futurfesta” event – art, music and theatre – promoted by the Amici della Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Milan, presented there on the 20th of February 2009 to commemorate the centennial publication of the first manifesto of Futurism, in the context of the “FuturisMI” project promoted by the Milan City Council. RSVP https://boccioni.eventbrite.com