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Lot Essay
Trained as a painter, Fortunato Depero joined the Futurist movement in 1915, six years after Marinetti issued its first Manifesto in Paris. Depero quickly abandoned painting for photography, however, and sent his Message with Self Portraits, one of his first photographic statements, to his fellow Futurist, the painter Carlo Carrà.
Always interested in connecting images with states of mind, Depero used each of his three self portraits to express Anger, Worry and Laughter, three attitudes to be adopted when dealing with the fast pace of the modern world.
Depero's message is an exuberant illustration of Marinetti's art-life-action formula, as well as incorporating the artist's ideas about 'free words' where text becomes an object or may even emit sounds depending on the way it is written, colored or remodeled. Depero, who became a gifted typographer, energized his words with bold printing, clever placement and use of strongly contrasting black and red color washes. Despite the great popularity of photography with many of these second generation Futurists, their work is now extremely scarce and very rarely offered at auction.
Always interested in connecting images with states of mind, Depero used each of his three self portraits to express Anger, Worry and Laughter, three attitudes to be adopted when dealing with the fast pace of the modern world.
Depero's message is an exuberant illustration of Marinetti's art-life-action formula, as well as incorporating the artist's ideas about 'free words' where text becomes an object or may even emit sounds depending on the way it is written, colored or remodeled. Depero, who became a gifted typographer, energized his words with bold printing, clever placement and use of strongly contrasting black and red color washes. Despite the great popularity of photography with many of these second generation Futurists, their work is now extremely scarce and very rarely offered at auction.