Ferrara e il Futurismo 1911-1942. Riflessioni sulla declinazione di un’avanguardia.

The dissertation is concerned primarily with the impact of futurist art and its theories in Ferrara in the years between 1911 and 1942. At present no study has provided a full analysis of the influence of the avant-garde on the Ferrarese art scene in the context of Italian early XX century art, due to the overshadowing interest of the critics devoted to Gaetano Previati, Giovanni Boldini, Aroldo Bonzagni, Achille Funi and the birth of ‘pittura metafisica’. The research, which does not consider the more famous futurists who either worked in Milan or in Rome, illuminates six aspects in the reception of the futurist movement among local artists. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the city’s cultural and socio-critical establishment dominated by a reactionary upper middle class, who clung to its intellectual positions by presiding over the local social and cultural institutions, among which the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti “Benvenuto Tisi” and the newborn collections of contemporary art. Chapter 3 analyzes the nature of the critical debate conducted by the literary and art Ferrarese reviews, either in favour or against the innovative artistic discourse proposed by the futurists, before and after the soirée held at Teatro Bonacossi in March 1911. Chapter 4 brings to light the young political and intellectual milieu that culminated with the foundation of the Ferrarese Futurist Fascio and the Ferrarese Futurist Group by such personalities as Italo Balbo, Olao Gaggioli, Attilio Crepas e Alfredo Pitteri. Next, chapter 5 focuses on the connections linking Ferrarese futurist artists to other fundamental active centres and exponents of the avant-garde in Bologna, Romagna,Veneto and Rome through the exhibition policy supported by the local authorities throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. Finally, the last chapter provides a raisonné catalogue of the works produced by Oreste Marchesi, Remo Fabbri, Annibale Zucchini, Giorgio Gandini, Antenore Magri, Mimì Quilici Buzzacchi, Mario Pozzati, Gaetano Sgarbi, Italo Cinti, Tato, Corrado Forlin, Giovanni Korompay and Magda Falchetto, within three decades spanning from 1913 to 1942, when World War II brought the futurist output in Ferrara to an abrupt halt.