Master Art

‘An offshoot, or rather a metamorphosis, of Futurism, Aeropainting was the artistic reflection of the passion for flying which swept Italy in the 1930s, during the years of the great feats achieved by [Francesco] De Pinedo, [Italo] Balbo, [Arturo] Ferrarin, [Umberto] Maddalena and many other pilots, dizzingly celebrated in these swirling, booming canvases…Despite various premonitory hints in the form of isolated pictorial allusions, it was not until the end of the 1920s that the idea of Aeropainting moved in from the periphery to become the true heart, engine and, not long afterwards, also the new face of Futurism, almost twenty years after the publication of its founding manifesto.’ As the artist Gerardo Dottori noted, in the catalogue of an early exhibition of Futurist aeropainting held in Milan in 1931, ‘Aeropainting doesn’t so much mean inserting new figurative elements in painting – propellers, airplanes, atmosphere and so on – as giving painters new, broad-ranging possibilities of inspiration.’

A slightly larger watercolour variant of this composition, horizontal in format and dated 1932, is in the Archivio Mino Delle Site in Rome. The present sheet is also closely related in composition to a large painting on panel by Delle Site, entitled Il pilota aliluce, which is dated 1932.

240 x 166 mm. (9 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.) [backing sheet]