Collecting 101

Aeropittura, or ‘aerial painting’, was an Italian avant-garde art movement that captured the dynamic and multisensory experience of flight.

Spanning the 1920s to the early 1940s, it took off during the second generation of Italian Futurism, maintaining many of the sentiments of its predecessor. In an increasingly mobilised and industrialised society, Aeropittura documented the theatre of life in the skies.

Here we explore the artists who pioneered this distinctive movement, its evolution, and how it took 20th century art to new heights.

The online auction of Aeropittura: Italian Futurism in Flight is open for bids until 26 July 2022. With works by Giulio d'Anna, Sibò, and other key artists of the movement, browse the sale now.

1.

What was Aeropittura?

Aeropittura was deeply rooted in the sentiments of its parent movement, Italian Futurism (or ‘Futurismo’), with parallel emphases on speed, modern technology, dynamism and drama. Its official conception, too, marked by the 1929 manifesto, was driven by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti - the poet, editor, and art theorist who pioneered the original Futurist movement.

But what set Aeropittura apart from its predecessor was the shift in interest from ground-bound transportation to modern aircraft - a novel and exciting development at the time. According to its manifesto, Perspectives of Flight, ‘The changing perspectives of flight constitute an absolutely new reality that has nothing in common with the reality traditionally constituted by a terrestrial perspective.’ The artworks that followed harnessed ‘the immense visionary and sensory drama of flight.’

As well as its manifesto proclamations, Aeropittura was propelled by a fascination with new photographic technologies and a group of artists that sought ‘liberation from the earth’. This was captured through often abstracted images of aeroplanes and aerial landscapes.

Lot 6. Umberto di Lazzaro (1898-1968), Alta velocità. Estimate: £5,000 - £7,000

Lot 1. Roberto Marcello Baldessari (1894-1965), Aerei + paracadutisti. Estimate: £7,000 - £10,000

2. Subject Matter

As aviation was in global development throughout the 1920s to 1940s, many artists began to explore both aerial fantasies and realities. This subject also allowed artists to address topics surrounding modernity, speed, technology, roaring machinery and war, and throw these subjects under a new light.

Guglielmo Sansoni, known as Tato, was one of the leading figures of Aeropittura who explored the different ways he could depict the modernity and excitement of aviation. In his 1930 work, Flying over the Coliseum in a Spiral (Spiraling), now housed in the Guggenheim collection, the iconic Roman amphitheatre appears in the landscape beneath a soaring plane, whose spiralling path echoes the ancient building’s circular shape.

In other works in the movement, the presence of the aeroplane was implied rather than depicted. Gerardo Dottori’s vibrantly coloured paintings of the Umbrian landscape were often captured from above, but devoid of aerial machinery. This is evident in poetic works such as Paesaggio con lago (1936), an oil and sand painting that Bonhams sold for £31,250 in 2018.

Air travel offered all those lucky enough to experience it a new view of the world. Artists sought to capture these novel sensations and, in turn, became liberated from the rules of perspective. This new artistic challenge was itself a symbol of modernity; aerial visions conveyed the idea of an advanced state, bolstered by an air of myth, invincibility, uncertainty and infinite potential.

3. Media & Style

Though most renowned for its offerings in paint, Aeropittura was a multidisciplinary movement that sought expression beyond oil on canvas. Artists also extended their vibrant dynamism into set design, collage, murals, ceramics, experimental photography and dance.

Artists of the movement who went beyond the bounds of painting included Enrico Prampolini, who founded the Futurist Theatre Prampolini, taught set design at Milan's Brera Academy, and also experimented in decorative arts. Meanwhile, Filippo Masoero’s radical photographs of Italian urban landscapes capture scenes from above in a dizzying blur of movement.

Aeropittura painting also often entered the public space in the form of murals. In Benedetta Cappa’s public commission for the Palermo Post Office (1933-1934), titled Synthesis of Communications, figurative and abstracted shards of blue play within vast aerial perspectives. In her harmonious, utopian imagery Cappa depicted the potential of communication technology via air, radio, sea, land, telegraph and telephone, a distinctive approach that cemented her status as one of the forerunners of second-wave Futurism.

When it came to colour and gestural movement, there were no half measures. They were deployed liberally to embody the multisensory and vivid experience of flight. As the Aeropittura manifesto professed, ‘Every aeropainting simultaneously contains the dual movement of the plane and the hand of the painter as he moves his pencil, brush or diffuser…’

Stylistically, the movement was wide-ranging. Some artists took an approach of realism, but to many viewers, even reality at altitude was surreal and new. Others took a more abstracted approach, seeking to capture the psychophysical experience of flight – the mood of a moment solidified on canvas.

The Aeropittura group manifesto professed a ‘profound contempt for detail’ – Aeropittura artists weren’t necessarily interested in capturing what was seen through flight, but what was felt.

Lot 9. Giulio D'Anna (1908-1978), Senza titolo. Estimate: £18,000 - £22,000

Lot 4. Giulio d'Anna (1908-1978), Virata sulla Valletta-Malta. Estimate: £30,000 - £50,000

4. Recognition

Key figures of the movement included Tullio Crali, Alfredo Ambrosi, Gerardo Dottori, Tato, Enrico Prampolini, Olga Biglieri Scurto and Benedetta Cappa. These artists experienced great acclaim in Italy, with Dottori exhibiting at every Venice Biennale from 1926 – 1942. When Aeropittura first emerged in the early 20th century, it also garnered international attention beyond its native Italy, with exhibitions in Paris and Berlin.

This interest has continued into the 21st century, with dedicated exhibitions including Futurist Skies: Italian Aeropainting (Estorick Collection, 2005); Italian Futurism 1909 – 1944: Reconstructing the Universe (Guggenheim, 2014); Futurismo! Da Boccioni all'Aeropittura (Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Parma, 2009), and Futurismo y velocidad: la velocidad en la tierra y en el cielo (Museo de Arte Italiano, Lima, 2017).

5.

Collecting Aeropittura

In recent years, market interest in Aeropittura – and the Futurist movement more broadly – has taken flight and continues to exceed expectations at auction. At the Bonhams Impressionist & Modern Art sale in London in October 2020, for instance, Gerardo Dottori’s colour-drenched Aerei-Arcobaleno (1928) sold for an impressive £100,062.

In the same auction, Giulio d’Anna’s vibrant and almost playful oil painting, Stormo aereo sullo stretto, achieved £40,062 including premium. Similarly, in October 2019, Tato’s Avvitamento, depicting a Cubist-like angular sea of rooftops from above, sold for £43,812. In this fragmented, dynamic oil painting, Tato’s signature, all in capitals, almost seems as though it too is caught up in the momentum of flight.

For collectors looking to dip their toes in, drawings and watercolours from the Aeropittura movement are available at more accessible price points. For example, Tullio Crali’s Caproncino in decollo sold for £2,805 as part of our 2021 auction, Aeropittura: Italian Futurism in Flight.

Lot 12. Sibò (Pierluigi Bossi) (1907-2000), Spirale di luce sul Circeo. Estimate: £5,000 - £7,000

The online auction of Aeropittura: Italian Futurism in Flight is open for bids until 26 July 2022. With works by Giulio d'Anna, Sibò, and other key artists of the movement, browse the sale now