Materia, Corpo, Spirito: una parabola internazionale

The article provides a new account of the activity of the Futurist artist Enrico Prampolini during the 1930s, a time when the artist honed his practice into a distinctive vision of art and culture. Developing a multifaceted practice, encompassing stage designing, painting, writing, Prampolini had been connected with all the major figures and movements of international avant-garde since the early 1920s. Throughout the 1930s, the artist elaborated his interest in the notion of matter and cosmos. By incorporating non-artistic materials into the picture plane, Prampolini gave shape to a distinctive cosmological worldview, imbued with spiritualistic as much as biomorphic references. His work represents a whole universe of abstract shapes rendered through actual materials, which stands among the most mature results of international modernism and would substantially impact the art of the second half of 20th century.