I wanted to see this exhibition since it opened, but I couldn’t come around to it: I wanted to go with a friend, and our schedules never matched (also because the house-museum is closed two days during the week). I got a chance to see it recently, hoping we’ll have time and it’d be good enough to see twice, and I’m happy to report that it is.
What is it I’m rambling about, you ask? A temporary exhibition called Space to Space, with paintings by the futurist Italian painter Fortunato Depero, within the halls of the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, one of the most beautiful and beloved establishments of its kind here in Milan.
On Bagatti Valsecchi
The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum is a historic Neo‑Renaissance palazzo in central Milan, now a house-museum, created in the late 19th century when the brothers Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi transformed their family residence into a reconstructed Lombard Renaissance noble home to display their collection of 15th–16th century art and furnishings. The house currently preserves original rooms, period furnishings, paintings, tapestries, arms, ceramics, metalwork and decorative objects arranged to recreate a mid‑16th century domestic interior, and it opened to the public on a regular basis quite recently.
On Fortunato Depero
Fortunato Depero, on the other hand, was an Italian Futurist artist with an eclectic knack for painting, who also worked as a sculptor, graphic and product designer, illustrator, writer and stage designer. He was born in Fondo, near Trento, in 1892 and died in Rovereto aged 68. He’s one of the major figures of Italian Futurism, co-author of the Futurist manifesto Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo in 1915, and especially known for bringing Futurist energy into advertising, books, posters, and object design.
Depero in Bagatti Valsecchi
Though the museum has done temporary exhibitions in the past, I feel this initiative is one of a kind, at least if memory serves. All the other shows, in fact, had to do with the reinterpretation of the past, of the historic collection hosted in the house. I’m thinking Fabrizio Cotognini‘s Transitum, for instance, and I’m not counting photography installations such as the one on Jacques Henri Lartigue a while ago.
If it’s not the first time we have contemporary paintings in these halls, it’s the first time in a while. And it works. By God, it works.
1. The Vestibule
The exhibition begins as any visit to the house would have: you’re greeted by a butler. Only this time, it’s not a flesh and blood butler but Depero’s one: a small portrait painted in 1947 upon the artist’s return to New York (where he had been during the Great Depression of the late 20s).
Having been tied to the fascist regime, Depero was departing his home country to reach more forgiving shores, and yet he found none: in New York too, Futurism was considered the regime’s art, and Depero didn’t reap the success he hoped. That’s what you get.
In the entrance hall, a sound installation by Gaetano Cappa reads words from one of Depero’s books, So I Think – So I paint, in Massimiliano Speziani’s voice. It’s a good way to guide you through the merging of Futurism and heritage: Depero’s interest for Gothic sensibilities reeks through this small portrait, with its attention to the background decoration and to the butler’s livery.
2. The Fresco’s Room
The first room after the vestibule is known for its Latin inscription AMICIS PATEO AETERNUMQUE PATEBO (I’ll always be open for friends), which reflects the B&V brothers’ approach to hosting in the house. As we know, it was typical and expected from upper/middle-class in Milan to have an open house and be involved in cultural endeavours, a tradition we sadly have lost.
The Fresco in question is next to it, a 1495 work by one Antonio Boselli, who painted the Mother of Mercy.
For the temporary exhibition, the usual installation of objects is replaced by two decorative studies by Depero, next to two XVII Century majolica bowls.
The rest of the room, however, is dedicated to Depero’s love for the circus, a Futurist love connected with the chance to depict daring movements, balancing acts and gymnastic tricks. Cavalli sulla Corda from 1948 appears between two XV Century panels.
3. Bevilacqua Room
Depero was well-connected with several art collectors here in Milan and, among them, we find Davide Campari. Back in 1932, he would ask Depero to design what’s possibly his most famous and most enduring work: the first one-portion bottle of history. Yeah, I’m talking about the Campari bottle, shaped like a reverse-glass.
The room hosts one of the last works Depero will ever do for Campari: an advertisement sculpture Cordial Campari, back in 1939.
Since the theme of the room is Depero’s connection with art collectors, other works are O la Borsa o la Vita (1944), the scene of a violent robbery depicted with highly futuristic energy and collected by Gianni Mattioli.
“It represents a groctesque, dramatic — a caricatural murderous gesture. A surge of blood — a violent knife thrust — five large drops of scarlet blood, a scream. The victim is suspended over an abyss, the marks of the purse and the watch impressed upon his belly. Green light of a lamp — red light of a crime. Barred prison windows.”
— F. Depero, Notebook Esercizi di lingua francese (1946)
Other works in the room include a Juggler from 1952, and a 1946 work titled Simultaneità Metropolitana.
4. The library
Orson Welles’ recording from The War of the Worlds will welcome you into this room, if you’re sharp enough to recognise them, as it’s a room all centred around Depero’s experience in the United States. The playful work on the grand table, however, isn’t a work by Depero: it’s a homage by Gaetano Cappa, with mixed materials representing New York City and a looming airship Hindenburg.
Depero’s own work is on the other side: a complex painting with a layered title that talks about a thirst-quenching spring, with two horses at the water trough. It’s an oil on canvas from 1953, well after Depero tried the United States for the second time and then came back to retreat deep into his Alps.
5-6. The Valtellinese Bedroom and Passage to the Salle de Bains
The room is one of the most impressive in the house, with its dark red four-poster bed. Here, the curator decided to use the marble fireplace as a display, and it hosts one of Depero’s phantasies around flowers.
“Flowers have been painted in every possible way and in every era. Famous painters and artists of all nations have loved, favoured, and specialised in floral painting. Yet, I have still to meet one who has approached the flower artistically through its structure, through a freely invented plastic and rhythmic construction. I have built flowers, both small and large, inventing petals and corollas, adding to nature’s richness and variety, other floral riches and varieties. When Diaghilev visited my studio in Rome in 1917, struck by a cluster of flowers I had made in cardboard, he said: ‘You are a new Rousseau’. Henry Rousseau, the great self-taught French painter, depicted flowers, hunts and fantasies of magical and ingenuous imagery; from his paintings emanates his primitive dream. My constructions, on the other hand, differ and are inspired by a more modern, crystalline, and almost metallic character, pushed toward the most transcendent surrealist possibilities.”
The man in question is, of course, Sergej Pavlovič Djagilev and I don’t think he was wrong (nor ungenerous) to compare Depero’s work to Henry Rousseau. And yet of course, true to his Futurist conceit, Depero thinks he’s the first one to do anything even a child learns how to do: inventing flowers.
Other flowers are placed in the corridor connecting the bedroom to the salle de bains.
7. The Salle de Bains
The room is walled by dark wood cabinets, which in turn give prominence to the central piece: a beautiful fountain in white marble, with playful lizards and a frog populating its rim.
Here, the show hosts some of Depero’s studies for chessboards, works he sought to bring with him to the United States when he was trying to promote the Buxus as a material. As such, the contrast is stark and clever: on one side, you have the beautiful natural wood; through the temperas on cardboard, you have the presentation of the synthetic, autarchic material invented by Valentino Bosso in his paper factory of Mathi Canavese, Turin. Bosso sought to create a kind of plywood, made of sawdust and cardboard. Basically, he invented what IKEA calls wood.
Depero was working with Bosso back in 1938, before the war broke out, and sought to use his material for works that would push forward the revival of Middle-Ages and tradition, as fascist propaganda. That’s why the design carries colonialist themes.
8. Passage of the Labirynth
Using the chessboards as a connection, the next rooms present some of Depero’s official work for the Fascist regime and, in particular, his “ethnographic” work for ENIT (the newly-born National Agency for the Industry of Tourism). The Agency was created by Francesco Saverio Nitti, a guy who wasn’t aligned with the fascist agenda to say the least and who’ll soon be forced in exhile, but Depero started working with ENIT during the 30s, while the regime was full-on. His works are panels on Buxus, and the first two works displayed centered on the Agency itself and on the work Depero will do on regional costumes.
9. The Dome Gallery
One of the most impressive spaces in the house, it’s named after the domed ceiling. Here the exhibition continues with sketches of Italian costumes: Lazio, Sardinia and Piedimont. The largest work was destined to be displayed in the ENIT’s foreign headquarters in Berlin, but it was never displayed due to the war being war.
10. Room of the Valtellinese Stove
With a temperature to match, these super-hot June, the space was the living room of the house and hosts some beautiful pieces in conversation with the portraits from the permanent collection: The Smoker andthe Flower, also known as Man with the Pipe (1946), stands in the fireplace like the flowers in the other Valtellinese room; on the side, the smaller Heads and Pipes (Simultaneous Figures) from 1945 is an interesting experiment of fusion between the human figure and mechanical elements, just like the Juggler we saw in the first room.
The central pieces, however, are the two sculptures on the table, two orientalists pieces from the 30s made of polished wooden blocks. Behind them, the grand composition Dance of the Wind (1952) with two couples in black and blue, dancing and morphing beneath a representation of a city, with a horse on top of everything. If there’s a work that embodies Depero’s take on Futurism, I think it’s this one. Truly amazing.
11. The Red Room
Another impressive bedroom, and not the last, hosos a wardrobe commissioned by Carolina Borromeo and designed by the B&V brothers. As such, Depero’s works have to do with manly fashion: the model of a cupboard, in polished light wood, is placed on the credenza, and two oroginal small chairs are paired with model chairs.
The only painting, Man Clothes, is from 1945 and echoes what Giacomo Balla was saying of a man’s dress in his 1914 dedicated Manifesto: clothes are a way to be reborn in one’s own body. Depero’s take, however, is more melancholic.
12. Green Room
The last, stunning bedroom is clad in green, though time turned it a pale shade on the greyish side and this increments the mournful atmosphere it evokes. That’s possibly why the room hosts another painting depicting an act of violence, this time depicting a suicide and a witness to their desperate act, screaming from a window. The work is titled The Scream and it’s central in an anectode told in the exhibition’s guide.
“The Hon. Alcide De Gasperi, honouring my Rovereto exhibitition with a visit in 1951, stood before this painting and asked me: ‘How should a person of a certain intellectual stature and artistic culture look at this painting, and what should they think?’
“I replied: ‘First of all, they should remain silent, that is, reflect, before expressing any judgment. Art is a language, like that of science, medicine, chemistry, or languages themselves. If one knows it, one reads it with immediate understanding. So it is with art: keep in step with the modern language, question the artist, follow him through his expressions and manifestations. Here I depict “L’urlo”, the drammatic voice of the suicide and of the person who, from a window, witnessed his mad act. Within the space, the plastic resonance of the mortal cry and of fear predominates’.”
— Antibiennale, Rovereto, 1955
On the side, unmentioned by the guide and out of context, there’s a final, small painting depicting a man from Harlem.
13. The Exhibition Room of Pier Fauso Bagatti Valsecchi
The room was once a wardrobe and, for the occasion, it was completely remade to host a sound installation by Gaetano Cappa and a tavern atmosphere, fitting the works here displayed. All around, in cloth maquetry, you find works conceived as felt inlays the the wooden panelling of the ViBi Bar in Bolzano, opened by Servillo Cavazzani in 1937. Depero here works around the themes of wine and beer, creating graphic compositions that longly served as the Cavazzani’s logo in their cellars. Allegories of Wine and Beer, Grapewine, and then Palm with Fishes echoeing wine in the scriptures, a woman carrying water, and themes typical of French wine bars, such as the rooster and playing cards.
The turquoise panelling and the modern stools in white wood, on which the visitor can rest while looking at the artworks, complete the atmosphere.
14. The Gallery of Arms
Doubling back and going towards the exit, there’s one final piece and one final sound installation awaiting for you: if you hear a cat meowing, you’re not losing your marbles.
The final piece is called Cat Elasticity, from 1946, and is pired with arms and armours through what Balla and Depero wrote in their Manifesto: “We Futurists shall build millions of metallic animals, for the greatest of wars.” It’s a nice sentiment that they were thinking of metallic cats and dogs, though they were not.
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