Italy Grand Tour: Casa Depero in Rovereto

This article is published in issue 23 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until June 8, 2021

It was the last thing I visited before the lockdown. I was with my wife at the home of friends from Trentino. A moment of our own, among lakes, woods, walks in the center. And a detour somewhere around. So it was, now more than a year ago: a tour of the Mart, as usual and, while there was time, a trip to Casa Depero. I have always had a passion for Futurism, I have written about it in every form.

On closer inspection, as a boy, well before Boccioni or Balla, it was Depero’s first work by a futurist that I touched firsthand: the legendary Campari bottle, the only one in the world, together with that of Coca Cola, which it needs labels. You see it and you already know what it is. Pure genius.

Italy is capable of generating, in places where you least expect them, reconciliation of creative minds, small Athens of artists. So it was for Rovereto at the beginning of the century, where architects (Gino Pollini, in turn father of the pianist Maurizio), composers (Riccardo Zandonai), art critics (Carlo Belli), sculptors were born in the space of a few years. (Carlo Fait and Fausto Melotti), painters (Tullio Garbari), designers (Luciano Baldessari). Just rattling off the list makes your head spin. Many of these had attended the same art institute, the Elisabettina Royal School of Rovereto, many were related to each other, certainly all attended the house of Fortunato Depero. House that immediately wanted to bring art into everyday life, as per the futurist manifesto. In short, it was a vital hotbed, not a self-referential mausoleum.

Today it is strange to think that it is the only real house-museum of a futurist artist in Italy. What about Marinetti’s house in Rome? Entering it, for me, is always a surprise. Not only for the paintings, but for the infinite plethora of applied art objects that Depero has been able to produce over the years: drawings, collages, tapestries, posters, playbills, inlays, furniture, toys, bottles … every time a new discovery, every time an emotion. Depero was a real bridgehead between the first “Milanese” Futurism – the “heroic” one of the artists who fell in war – and the second “Roman” Futurism more compromised with the regime, a movement which he frequented and always succeeded, thanks to his innate irony to avoid the bombast. His international spirit carried him around Italy and the world. He attempted the adventure of art in New York long before postwar artists did so decades later. Depero, in words, was for a “futurist reconstruction of the universe”, in fact, with the concreteness of the provincial man, it was enough for him to deal with sets, advertising, covers for Vogue or the Vanity Fair, even waistcoats and gilets. His alignment with the regime was what it was. With almost blatant honesty he was not afraid to admit that he (in the Italian style) was a fascist because he “needed to eat”.

Away from those temperatures, today, we can return to visit his home. Also to discover the new layout. I know of an amazing model – Depero. 1929 Drama – who reconstructs, in 3D, the New York of his drawings, made with months of patient work by Gaetano Cappa. It would be nice, now that everything seems to be starting up again, to go back to Casa Depero. To start over, even for me. Finally.

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