Futurismo
20 February – 24 May 2009
Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Manifesto – published by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in Paris daily Le Figaro on 20 February 1909 – the Scuderie del Quirinale, in conjunction with the Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and with the Tate Modern in London, is planning to devote a major exhibition to Futurism to celebrate the movement’s historical and international role.
The exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale will be bringing together a remarkable number of works from the early Futurist period, weaving a path around a central core consisting of a careful and accurate reconstruction of the famous Futurist exhibition held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris in February 1912. That spectacular exhibition caused quite a stir in its day, particularly on account of the striking contrast between the works on display there and everything else going on in the art world at the time. Indeed, it was only a matter of time before the notions of ‘speed’ and ‘dynamism’ spread to other countries and other continents, helping to reformulate the vocabulary of art and pegging it to a resolutely modern vision.
The Scuderie exhibition will also be shining the spotlight on the extraordinary cultural ties and the close formal relationship between Cubism and Futurism, with a wide selection of Cubist paintings bearing witness to the complex game of similarities and differences between the two artistic movements, right up to and including their formal cross-contamination and the development of Russian Cubo-Futurism and British Vorticism.
The coordinator for the Italian exhibition is Ester Coen, while Didier Ottinger will be coordinating the exhibition in Paris (October 2008 – January 2009) and Matthew Gale will be coordinating the event in London (June – September 2009). This unprecedented example of close cooperation among cultural institutes of such immense prestige and tradition is designed to underscore the thoroughly European cultural importance of this celebration. The Scuderie del Quirinale exhibition will be opened by the President of the Republic on 20 February 2009, thus marking in appropriately grand style the anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto 100 years after its first publication.
