The Italian Cultural Institute in Abu Dhabi inaugurated the exhibition “Depero’s Graphics. Between Italy and New York”, in the presence of the Italian Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Lorenzo Fanara, The exhibition is dedicated to Fortunato Depero, an avant-garde Futurist artist who redefined the boundaries of visual expression.
Curated by Maurizio Scudiero, a scholar and expert of the Futurist artist and Director of the Depero National Archives, and created in collaboration with StArt by Davide Sandrini, the exhibition will be open at the Institute until 30 July. Depero was not only a painter, but also a visionary of graphics and design, determined to bring art out of museums and into everyday life. As early as the 1920s, he stated that “the street will be our gallery” and predicted that “the art of the future will be powerfully advertising art”.
The curator has chosen to exhibit copies of 27 of his most significant graphic works created between 1920 and 1930, between Italy and New York, including bold advertising posters for the Campari brand and extraordinary magazine covers created during his stay in the United States.
As an advertising graphic designer, Depero is an innovator of the technique that turns art from an elitist activity with decorative and aesthetic intentions into something more dynamic and connected to everyone’s daily life. Curator Maurizio Scudiero explained: “The exhibition has a structure that we could define as didactic, i.e. focused on the series of recurring style traits of Depero’s practice in advertising. For example, lettering, e.g. the characters of captions or texts, is not the typical one used at the time next to pictures, but becomes an integral part of its design, studied from time to time in relation to the picture or figure used”.
After being on display in the Italian Cultural Institute in Abu Dhabi, the exhibition will become a travelling one as it will be hosted in some of the main colleges and universities in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
