Futurism & l’Europa. The aesthetics of a new world shows how the futurists entered the European scene more than a hundred years ago and interacted with other avant-garde artists and movements such as De Stijl and Bauhaus. The futuristic ideal is the combination of art and life. The exhibition features paintings and sculptures, mobili, tappeti, ceramiche, interior and scenography design, clothing, books and graphic works, as well as all kinds of utensils such as the famous bottle of Campari soda.
The futuristic “reconstruction of the universe”
In 1915 the futurist aesthetic ideals are announced by Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero in the manifesto Futurist reconstruction of the universe. According to this manifesto, the innovations developed in the traditional arts – painting and sculpture – are to be used for the transformation of everyday life into a futuristic universe: ‘a total work of art’, in which modern man will live.
A first acquaintance
In 1912 Europe became acquainted with the work of the Futurists through a traveling exhibition of paintings by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini, that, after the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris, he also visited London, Brussels, Berlin, The Hague and Amsterdam. The sample, but above all the radicalism of futurism aroused divergent reactions to say the least and sparked lively and sometimes heated debates between admirers and critics. What is certain, however, is that the futuristic ideal of the fusion of art and life opened up a whole new path for the European avant-garde, perhaps the most fruitful of the twentieth century. For the futurists, entering the international avant-garde scene meant broadening their horizons and refining their ideas.
International loans
Many loans from all over Europe and the rest of the world will arrive in Otterlo for the exhibition 'Futurism & The Europa. And they will be added to the many works in the permanent collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum. In addition to Italian futurists such as Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Fortunate Depero, Antonio Sant'Elia, Benedetta Cappa and Enrico Prampolini, many other avant-garde artists such as Theo van Doesburg will also be present in the exhibition, Gerrit Rietveld, Georges Vantongerloo, Sonia Delaunay, Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso, Olga Rozanova, Natalia Goncharova, El-Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Walter Gropius, Oskar Schlemmer and Alma Siedhoff-Busscher.
Information for the public: www.krollermuller.nl
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