La Futurista: Benedetta Cappa Marinetti by Lisa Panzera

(From the catalog) Benedetta Cappa Marinetti played a central role in the Italian futurist movement. Although virtually unknown today, her work, from the early twenties on, contributed significantly to futurism. This, her first solo exhibition, is intended to stimulate a discussion of this work as well as of the relationship between futurism and women. The Italian futurists were active from 1909 through 1944, although American scholars have tended to end futurism as a viable art movement around 1916, effectively dismissing such later members of the group as Benedetta Cappa Marinetti. American criticism, generally, also undervalued futurism, considering it secondary to, or an offshoot of, cubism, and, until recent years, ignored futurism after the First World War, mainly because of its association with Fascism. Traditionally, the movement has been divided by art historians into the “heroic” years—1909 through 1916—and the secondo futurismo—that is, the second wave, or generation, of futurism—from 1917 on. Benedetta Cappa Marinetti was a major proponent of this so-called second wave. An artist and an experimental writer, she appropriated futurist rhetoric and imagery to forge a unique voice for herself, despite the difficulties inherent in doing so in a male-dominated movement. Established in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti with the publication of the founding manifesto, Italian futurism was born of specifically Italian concerns. Italy was economically underdeveloped and only recently unified, its cultural scene staid, especially in comparison to the avant-garde practices then current in Paris, Futurism aimed at rejuvenating the country’s cultural scene and shaking up the Italian bourgeoisie. Paradoxically, however, and to call attention to itself, Italian futurism was brought to life in Paris—then the seat of radical art practices—on the front page of the prominent French newspaper Le Figaro. The . futurists outlined the movement in an extensive series of manifestos, transforming even the manifesto itself into an art form. Collectively, they provide a history of the development of futurist art and theory. Italian futurism embraced the speed, force, and power of all aspects of modern technology. Driven by their desire to move beyond the passe culture of the nineteenth century, the futurists championed innovation and scientific discovery, extolling the beauty of the automobile, the railroad, and the airplane. Conceived initially as a literary movement and cultural rebellion, futurism eventually encompassed the total culture, from poetry and painting to cooking and politics, so much so that the group actively campaigned for Italy’s intervention in the First World War. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a recognized poet and writer, quickly attracted a number of visual artists to the movement, including Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, and Gino Severini. The “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting,” in 1910, laid the foundation for an aesthetic that was still in its nascent stage. Influenced especially by the works of the Italian divisionists and the philosopher Henri Bergson, futurist painters attempted to represent a world constantly in flux. Inter-penetrating planes and force-lines (repeated lines emanating from an object—not unlike those used in contemporary comics to indicate motion) depicted what the futurists saw as an object’s interior force, and expressed the notions of simultaneity and dynamism. Favorite futurist subjects included technological developments of the early twentieth century, such as speeding trains and automobiles. The cubist vocabulary of splintered and intersecting forms provided an important formal influence, which the futurists adapted to express the constant interaction of objects and environment. The result was an active expression of the world in endless motion, different from the cubists’ static, formal studies, which aimed at a breakdown of traditional pictorial object and background relations. Futurist paintings were designed to create a sense of dynamic fusion of object and environment, of spectator and work, as the futurists made clear in the catalog statement for their 1912 exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, in Paris: We have declared in our manifesto that what must be rendered is the dynamic sensation, that is to say, the particular rhythm of each object, its inclination, its movement, or, more exactly, its interior force. . . . These force-lines must encircle and involve the spectator so that he will in a manner be forced to struggle himself with the persons in the picture. Futurism was interdisciplinary in nature, and futurist painters often ventured into other kinds of production. Balla designed futurist clothing and furniture, Boccioni created mixed-media sculpture, and all of the artists participated in futurist serate, or evenings—an early form of performance art. Many of the women affiliated with the group, including Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, similarly created works in a variety of media. Yet, women occupied an I ambivalent, shifting position within the futurist movement. From the first, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in the founding manifesto, professed contempt for women as well as the desire to destroy moralism and feminism in all its forms. Incongruously, it has been suggested that he was able to secure the publication of his manifesto on the front page of , Le Figaro (thus ensuring its visibility, if not its success) partly through the assistance of Rose Fatine, his fiancée at the time, whose wealthy father, Mohammed El Rachi Pasha, was a major stockholder in the newspaper. Such anecdotes indicate the ways in which futurism’s avowed contempt for woman was clearly contradicted by the male futurists’ personal lives. Marinetti himself married Benedetta Cappa, just four years after writing his 1919 manifesto “Against Marriage.” Futurism railed against romanticism, moralism, sentimentalism, and woman. In “Contro l’amore e il parlamentarismo!” (Against love and parliamentarianism!), Marinetti expressed his aversion: “We scorn woman conceived as the sole ideal, the divine reservoir of Amore, the woman-poison, woman the tragic trinket, the fragile woman, obsessing and fatal.” This misogynist tone, in addition to futurism’s nationalist, proto-Fascist tendencies, has encouraged oversimplified characterizations of the movement by apologists and detractors alike. But, as the scholar Cinzia Blum has aptly noted, futurism is rife with paradox and must be considered in all of its contradictions. The origin of these contradictions can be traced to futurism’s (and modernism’s) inception at the beginning of this century—a time marked by traumatic change: great historical shifts in economics and politics, a breakdown of common ideologies and belief structures, and the erosion of traditional gender divisions. Marinetti’s attitude toward women has been discussed by numerous scholars, particularly with regard to his novel Mafarka ii futurista (Mafarka the futurist), first published in French, and, later, in Italian. This is the story of an Arabian king who, unaided by a woman, gives birth to a mechanical son. Futurist scholar Barbara Spackman writes, “In Mafarka, woman is to be eliminated not only as matrice, mater, empty receptacle but also as ‘vulva,’ as object of sexual desire.” Despite Marinetti’s evident desire to eradicate women in his writing, many actively participated in the movement. In his wife, moreover, he came to embrace the very thing he actively repudiated: woman as both sexual partner and artist. Several women attempted to carve out a space for the female futurist early in the century, before Benedetta Cappa Marinetti joined the movement. Interestingly, none of these early figures was Italian. These women, moreover, tended to assume the attitudes of the male futurists. The French writer and dancer Valentine de Saint-Point was the first to respond explicitly to Marinetti’s declared scorn for women, in her “Manifesto of the Futurist Woman” in 1912. In both that and her 1913 “Futurist Manifesto of Lust,” Saint-Point (who also studied painting) adopted the strident tone and militant posture of the futurists: “Women are Furies, Amazons, Semiramises, Joan of Arcs, Giovanna Hachettes, Judiths and Charlotte Cordays, Cleopatras and Messalinas; warriors who fight more ferociously than men; lovers who incite; destroyers who, breaking the weak, contribute to natural selection.” Although her manifestos clearly rebut Marinetti’s portrayal of women, they do not do so acrimoniously; the two, in fact, had a long-standing friendship. Marinetti was a friend and collaborator, publishing Saint-Point’s work in his magazine Poesia, as early as 1906, and collaborating on dance-poetry performances in 1909.8 She created many theatrical and dance events, including La Metachorie (Metadance) —a combination of very geometric, almost mechanical, dance movements that she performed while a narrator recited her poems. La Metachorie—first presented in Paris in 1913, and, later, in New York, in 1917—included the recitation of her poem La Guerre (War) and further illustrates her adoption of the futurist fascination with militancy, war, and mechanized movement. Frances Simpson Stevens, the only American woman affiliated with the futurists, also adopted futurism’s militant rhetoric, quoting extensively from the futurist manifesto, in her exhibition catalog, on the occasion of her show at the Braun Gallery, in New York, in 1916. ’Two years earlier, Stevens exhibited eight works at the “Esposizione Libera Futurista Internazionale,” in Rome. Dynamic Velocity of Interborough Rapid Transit Station, purchased by the American collector Walter Arensberg, is the only known painting in existence by Stevens. The work, in charcoal and oil, portrays a giant power station dominated by a whirling turbine. The circular motion of the wheel plays against the diagonal supports of the structure, depicting the dynamic energy of a machine in motion. Both the subject and its treatment are in keeping with the tenets of futurist painting as laid out in the “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting.” Unlike both Saint-Point and Stevens, who assumed futurism’s fascination with war and machinery, Benedetta Cappa Marinetti employed a very different approach in her work when she became active in the movement in the early twenties. She embraced, instead, a philosophy that positioned woman as the embodiment of “mother”—that is, creator, in the fullest sense of the word. Benedetta—as she would sign her works, or Beny, as she was known to those close to her—was born in 1897, in Rome, to a very conservative and religious family from Italy’s Piedmont region. Despite her parents’ reserve, Benedetta’s family knew the notorious poet and writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti early in his futurist career. In 1911, her cousin, the lawyer Innocenzo Cappa, defended Marinetti against charges of pornography for his novel Mafarka; and her brother Arturo lived with the painter Rougena Zatkova. Zatkova studied art in Prague and, after moving to Italy, became involved in the movement in 1914, around the same time as Frances Stevens. It was probably through her brother and Zatkova that Benedetta began to frequent futurist circles. In 1917, Benedetta began studying with the futurist painter Giacomo Balla, at whose studio she was to meet Marinetti, twenty-one years her senior. From about 1919, the two lived together (rather surprisingly, given Benedetta’s strict Roman Catholic upbringing) in Marinetti’s home in Milan; they married, finally, in 1923. Benedetta participated in the first Futurist Congress, in 1924, and the next year, the couple, apparently at Benedetta’s urging, returned to Rome. Benedetta began exhibiting her artwork regularly. She participated in the Venice Biennale .shows of 1926, 1930, 1932, 1934, and 1936; in 1930, she was the first woman to have a painting reproduced in a Biennale catalog. Her work also appeared in the Rome Quadriennale exhibitions of 1931, 1935, and 1939!3 Benedetta accompanied Marinetti to Brazil and Argentina in 1926 and to Egypt in 1930. Marinetti traveled constantly, but Benedetta generally remained in Rome, particularly after the birth of their three daughters—Vittoria (in 1927), Ala (in 1928), and Luce (in 1932). In the years between 1919 and 1944, she produced two distinct but related futurist bodies of work: one literary and one pictorial. In 1924, Benedetta published the experimental novel Le forze umane. Romanzo astratto con sintesi grafiche (Human forces: Abstract novel with graphic syntheses). This was followed by Viaggio di Gararà. Romanzo cosmico per teatro (Gararà’s journey: Cosmic novel for the theater) in 1931 and Astra e il sotto marino. Vita trasognata (Astra and the submarine: Daydreaming life) in 1935. As early as 1919, she was writing futurist poetry. Spicologia di 1 uomo (Spychology of 1 man), published in the journal Dinamo in 1919, was based on the parole in libertà (words in freedom) poems invented by Marinetti. The parole in libertà. employed unusual word placement, typographic experimentation, and visual and auditory correspondences intended to create strong visual relationships between the meaning of the text and its arrangement on the page. Benedetta similarly employed playful word placement and punning in Spicologia. “Benedetta,“ in Italian, translates as “blessed.” In signing herself “Benedetta fra le donne” (Blessed among women), the author unexpectedly plays on the line from the prayer Ave Maria (Hail Mary): “Tu sei la benedetta fra le donne” (“Blessed art thou among women”). While the signature-statement, “Benedetta among women,” can be seen as a declaration of feminist solidarity, the reference to Mary, the quintessential mother, points to Benedetta’s association between creation (of poetry and art) and motherhood (creation of life) —a concept that she would make explicit in her later work. Benedetta’s first novel included graphic syntheses, a series of ink drawings that accompanied the text. Not intended as illustrations, they functioned instead as a “definition of an ideographic message, a shorthand of concepts that corrects the word’s inability to fully and openly communicate.” Of particular interest, the caption under each notation becomes the title of the next chapter; thus (in an inversion of illustrated texts), it is the image that is presented first and the text that follows, as if the purpose of text is to explicate the image. While many of these syntheses employ futurist devices, they are highly original images. Ironia (Irony), for example, a 1924 graphic synthesis in gouache, is a strange! mysterious work. The form resembles a bent figure, one arm raised, scattering inverted V marks across the upper left of the page. The “head,” a blue ovoid shape, resembles a brain, perhaps symbolizing intellect. The V marks resemble a series of brush strokes spouting from the arm of the figure. With the title Ironia, Benedetta establishes a dichotomy, suggesting an incompatibility between the intellect and creativity. As the creator of the work, she implies, ironically, that, contrary to prevailing notions, she, a woman, possesses both. Triangular V shapes also predominate in Afiinità di forze (Affinity of forces), a graphic synthesis from Le forze umane. In Afiinità di forze, however, these inverted Vs are stacked in a manner reminiscent of a child’s drawing of a Christmas tree. While these marks form the entire composition of Afiinità, in Ironia they constitute only a small section of the work—yet, they are the most active component in the image. In Totale Raggiunto (Achieved totality), another gouache, similar in style and from the same period, this shape is again central. Here, though, it has become a solid triangular mass, made up of shifting patches of color, closely related in tone, that create a sense of rugged terrain—a kind of craggy, rock-faced cliff. Lo spirito e l’arte (Spirit and art), a later work from the early thirties, executed in red gouache, also relates to these images, and employs this activated V shape. The animated quality is created through the spiraling nautilus form, the series of staccato Vs that move upward from the tail of the form, the bright red color, and the radiating force-lines. Benedetta uses these devices to impart a sense of dynamic motion; at the same time, she combines them in unique ways to create her own brand of futurist imagery. In addition to her graphic syntheses—all executed in ink or gouache on paper—Benedetta worked in a variety of media, including oil painting, ceramics, and collage. Combining her interests in both the literary and visual arts, she also created a number of stage designs, between 1926 and 1931, for three plays written by Marinetti: I priggionieri e l’amore (Prisoners and love; premiering in 1926, in Milan); L’oceano del cuore (Ocean of the heart; 1927, Milan); Simultanina (Simultaneous One; 1930, Padua). The two artists, in fact, collaborated directly on a number of projects. After the First World War, Benedetta worked with Marinetti to develop Tattilismo (tactilism). Marinetti first conceived of it during the war; the idea came from the experience of being in the dark trenches at night, unable to see with anything but his fingertips. The idea, however, was not elaborated upon and written into a manifesto until 1921, several years into his relationship with Benedetta. The concept, simply put, was to create a series of works meant to be felt not seen, The intention was for the fingers of the “viewer” to run down the front of a tavola tattile {tactile table or board), thereby developing senses other than sight and sound by experiencing the sensation of different textures, When Marinetti published the manifesto, he presented himself as the sole author; however, evidence indicates that Benedetta was a full collaborator on the manifesto, as well as the tavola tat tile entitled Sudan-Parigi (Sudan-Paris), also attributed solely to Marinetti, The manifesto points to an awareness of experimental learning devices—particularly those conceived by Maria Montessori for her school for young children, founded in Rome in 1907, Marinetti had no opportunity to learn her educational theories, but Benedetta—who studied pedagogy and taught in a children’s after-school program in Rome during the First World War—certainly would have. Although Marinetti attributed both the collage and the manifesto to himself, in an unpublished essay he describes Benedetta’s contribution, noting that it was Benedetta who formed Sudan-Parigi from flattened cardboard, onto which she attached pieces of cork, wood, and metal. This remarkable collage, moreover, was clearly created by an artist paying careful attention not only to surface texture but also to color and composition, These tactile boards were designed theoretically to function on a purely sensory, textural level, yet Sudan-Parigi is a visually compelling work as well, The use of primary colors dispersed across the board—the red towel in the upper third, the blue material covering the lower third, and the patch of yellow fabric in the lower left—serves to carry the eye down through the composition, bumping across objects along the way, in a visual counterpoint to the sensation of dragging one’s fingertips down the board, Marinetti described how the upper section of the tavola, made of rough, coarse textures—such as a bristle brush and cheese grater—represents Sudan; the lower section, made up of soft, delicate, and sensual textures—including silk, velvet, and feathers—represents Paris; and the sea that separates them is depicted by shiny, reflective silver paper. The intention is different, yet, in many respects, this striking work anticipates American abstraction of the late fifties and sixties, not only in its use of fields of color interrupted by everyday found objects but in its very visible, rugged construction. Benedetta created her earliest-known futurist oil paintings around 1924, among them Luce + rumori di treno notturno (Light + sounds of a nocturnal train), which incorporates elements of collage into an abstract image dominated by repeated, semicircular paint strokes. In her loose handling of paint and parallel abstract gestures moving diagonally across the canvas, Benedetta vividly conveys the sense of a speeding, blurred object as it rushes by, barely discernible in dim light. Triangular elements appear again, here made of copper pieces formed into a series of six pyramids, which are affixed to the canvas; they recall not only geometric metal components of a train but also buildings and houses rushing by in the night. One can see a resemblance, particularly in the houselike forms that dissolve into the background, to Umberto Boccioni’s earlier States of Mind: Those That Go (1911) —although Benedetta’s is a far less literal interpretation of that phenomenon. Luce + rumori di treno notturno is closer to the work of her teacher Balla, who created abstractions depicting the dynamism of automobiles, using repeated semicircular imagery to convey the sense of motion. We see Balla’s influence again in Velocità di motoscafo (Speed of a motorboat), from 1924 (in the Galleria Cornmunale d’Arte Modema e Contemporanea in Rome), another of Benedetta’s early paintings. This image of a highly simplified motorboat racing through the water is abstract in nature. She wrote, “My art, although it starts from reality, is never verist and gets far from it in an effort of synthesis, abstraction, fantasy.” Here, the water, sliced through by the boat, is highly stylized and made up of repeated bands, occasionally broken into triangular or diamond-shaped forms. Balla’s series of Compenetrazione iridescente (Iridescent interpenetration), an incredible sequence of color studies (executed from 1912 to 1914) that employs repeated triangular motifs, had a deep effect on this and other work of Benedetta’s, including some of the graphic syntheses. But Benedetta adapts Balla’s gesture and his color studies, and combines them to create lyrical, resonant works that are unique within futurism. Velocita dl motoscafo also connects strongly to Benedetta’s 1934 work Sintesi delle comunicazioni marittime (Synthesis of sea communications), one of the five mural panels created for the post office in Palermo, Sicily. In this, the hull of a large ship cuts through the water, creating repeated striations or bands that are periodically broken into triangular motifs, presumably caused by resonating sound waves. The narrative content, however, is much stronger and more didactic in this work, no doubt because of its function as a large-scale public mural. Benedetta was a major proponent of futurist aeropittura (airpainting or airplane painting). The manifesto is dated 1931, although the futurist fascination with flight existed much earlier. Benedetta, a signatory of the manifesto of aeropittura, flew in an airplane several times and was clearly captivated. Aeropittura’s tenets, as laid out in the manifesto, call for incorporating the sensations of flying, such as shifting perspectives and flattened, momentary views of the landscape from above. In the gouache study Incontro su1l’isola (Meeting on the island); done in preparation for the larger painting of 1935–36 of the same title (in the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Modema), Benedetta developed her own interpretation of aeropittura. The island Elba, represented as a geologic formation, as though the viewer were floating far above the scene, is depicted against a broad expanse of ocean that curves across the page in imitation of the earth. It is as if the island had been placed atop a globe, above which we are hovering. This sense of seeing the earth from space is made even more apparent in Monte Tabor (Mount Tabor; 1939). The rounded forms in this oil painting are repeated in a series of concentric circles expanding outward into a cream-colored atmosphere. In both these works, the color is harmonious and lyrical, and truly imparts the sense of floating above the earth. Benedetta’s softened palette and organic forms in her aeropittura works are quite different in nature from such earlier ones as Luce + rumori di treno notturno. Mechanistic visions of the world, frequently found in futurist art, are rare in Benedetta’s art and practically nonexistent in this later work. The frenetic, charged compositions are replaced by contemplative, sensitive, almost mystical creations. In fact, it was in 1932, about the time Benedetta began developing her airpainting style, that Marinetti and the artist Fillia wrote the “Manifesto dell’arte sacra futurista” (Manifesto of sacred futurist art), with which Benedetta certainly would have been familiar. In expressing a female voice in the futurist movement, many women found it difficult not to become implicated in aspects of the very discourse they were working against. For instance, as a “mere reversal” of futurist attitudes toward women, Saint-Point’s conception of women futurists—as “virile” women, such as Joan of Arc—remains governed by the oppositions it attempts to overturn. Thus, Saint-Point both refutes and participates in futurist strategies at the same time. Benedetta, particularly by the thirties, adopted an overtly Fascist rhetoric in addition to futurist influences. In “Spiritualità della donna italiana” (Spirituality of the Italian woman), she wrote that the Italian woman would never be the equal (concorrente) of man because she is too much and too essentially “mother,” an idea that is explicitly Fascist. Barbara Spackman has observed that women often were extreme supporters of the Fascist regime—paradoxically, since Fascism was highly restrictive for women, discouraging them from work, excluding them entirely from many types of jobs, and advocating for them the role of mothers. It must be emphasized, however, that, for Benedetta, “mother” also meant creator: creator of man, of emotions, of passions, and of ideas. The writer Maria Goretti, in a 1941 essay, creates a sharp division between the philosophies of Saint-Point and Benedetta, portraying the former artist as sensual and the latter as spiritual. To depict Benedetta as a spiritual artist, completely defined by the concept of mother, is misleading. In the punning reference to herself as “Benedetta fra le donne” she refers, ironically, to motherhood, displaying her ambivalence about being defined biologically; and, in such works as Ironia, she challenges the notion that intellect and creation are opposing forces. Benedetta’s theoretical framework closely related woman’s ability to create art to her biological capacity to create children, yet it was a philosophy she adapted to suit her own position—just as she drew upon, and customized, futurist pictorial influences to forge a voice that was uniquely her own. When Filippo Tommaso Marinetti died, in 1944 (after returning from voluntary military service on the Russian front), the futurist movement ended, and Benedetta ceased all her artistic activities. Eventually, she left Rome and retired to Venice, where, in 1977, she died. This last incongruity underscores the difficulty of Benedetta’s position. As a writer and artist, she developed an innovative creative voice that is only now being rediscovered. Her role as mother and wife remained essential to her identity, making it impossible for her to produce any work outside the confines of her relationship with Marinetti—thus, outside of futurism. 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