GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo will exhibit two hundred artworks to illustrate how the revolution represented by Futurism has influenced the development of modern and contemporary art.

THE FUTURE OF FUTURISM, produced by GAMeC with COBE Direzionale S.p.A., focuses attention on the influence Futurism has had on the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as a foretaste of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the movement in 2009.

The exhibition is curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Maria Cristina Rodeschini Galati. It displays approximately 200 works by 120 artists that illustrate the influence exercised by Futurism (the most important avant-garde movement in Italy) on the developments of the visual arts in the twentieth century and up to the present day. The exhibition is laid out on a thematic basis to demonstrate how the various artistic languages that had their theoretical and poetical basis in the Futurist manifestos were related to the most innovative artistic explorations of the last century.

From works by the fathers of Futurism – such as Boccioni, Balla, Carrà, Russolo, Severini and Depero, figures of immense importance to the history of art for having interpreted such revolutionary concepts such as simultaneity, the aesthetic value of technological innovation, and the fascination of a still unattempted future – the exhibition moves towards artistic research for which the radical nature of Futurism opened the path: Abstractionism, Constructivism, Kinetic Art and the new avant-gardes of the 1960s and ’70s, up to the leading figures in contemporary art. The exhibition will be a show based on comparisons, analogies and differences.

The Futurist artists believed in the need for a radical redesign of the universe, a development that led them to conceive every form of creative expression in a new fashion, in particular dance, photography, cinema, theatre, furniture and living spaces. In exploring the breadth of this initiative, the exhibition The Future of Futurism will offer a vast selection of exemplary works, creating cultural relations with the worlds of show business and industry.

Taking its cue from the themes celebrated by Futurism – from speed to technology, from simultaneity to the dynamism of the metropolis, from audacity to rebellion to scandal – GAMeC is dividing its spaces into 9 sections.

A short film, edited by Carlo Durante, Massimo Galimberti and Leonardo Rigon, has been specially created for the exhibition in collaboration with RAI – Direzione Teche.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Electa, also available in English. It contains an opening essay by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and, for each of the nine sections, a conversation between two experts in different disciplines on the theme of the section in question: Cristina Rodeschini – Enrico Crispolti (Futurism revisited); Beppe Finessi – Alessandro Mendini (Metropolitan energy); Emanuela De Cecco – Gianluca Bocchi (To anarchy from tradition); Viktor Misiano – Boris Kagarlitzky (The aestheticisation of politics); Carlo Antonelli – Momus (The society of the spectacle); Teresa Macrì – Anna Camaiti Hostert (Overly human man); Antonio Somaini – Pietro Montani (Time and technology); Véronique Bouruet-Aubertot – Marc Augé (Living at speed); Alessandro Rabottini – Marco Giusti (Imagination without wires).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of multi-disciplinary parallel events, such as educational projects, guided visits for individuals (at fixed times and with reserved places), a series of conferences and meetings with artists and the authors of the catalogue essays, and the GAMeCinema programme in partnership with Lab 80 Film. Starting in autumn and based on the rediscovery of the Fondo Cinematografico Nino Zucchelli, this programme runs over four evenings at the Auditorium in Piazza della Libertà in Bergamo, and will show the documentary Jeu d’echecs avec Marcel Duchamp by Jean-Marie Drot (1964) and The Last Clean Short by Alfred Leslie (1965) as part of the exhibition itself. It will conclude in January and February with two classics that are still striking for their visionary and original conception: Blade Runner: Director’s Cut by Ridley Scott (1982) and La chinoise by Jean-Luc Godard (1967).

 

The Future of Futurism is a project in line with the cultural policy of the Associazione per la GAMeC – onlus, whose founding partners are the Comune di Bergamo and TenarisDalmine.

The Principal Sponsor of the show is Banca Aletti. Co-sponsor, SIAD, and Partner, Tecnowatt SpA.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Ministero Pubblica Istruzione and Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali and includes the participation of the Provincia di Bergamo (with special emphasis on educational activities), the Camera di Commercio di Bergamo, theFondazione ASM and the support of Credito Bergamasco.

In addition to its founding partners, the gallery’s ongoing activities rely on the funding of its supporting partners Banca Popolare di Bergamo and Bonaldi S.p.A., and on Confindustria Bergamo.

The Future of Futurism is a PolioPlus Partner with Rotary International Distretto 2040 in the fight against polio in Afghanistan.