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from left to right: Divine Wind aka Kamikaze (1980) - Man and the Cosmos (1933) - Aerial Drama (1957)

From about 1934 a significant change was to come over Crali’s aeropaintings brought about by his personal love of flying. Nearly all Futurist aeropainters experienced the thrill of flight and the completely new perspectives it offered (the exception being Leandra Angelucci-Cominazzini who never flew in an aeroplane). Crali, however, went one step further. Having learnt to fly, and revelling in its exhilarating experience, he soon became a stunt pilot and, later, spent time with the famous "Cavallino" fighter pilots at Gorizia. His active participation and extremely individual, thrilling experiences of flying had a stunning effect on his aeropaintings that were now empowered by an intrinsic familiarity with extreme aerial acrobatics. The pilot’s unique yet ever-changing view from the cockpit, the swirling, whirling rolls and dives, the sensation of spinning through the air, were all incorporated in his aeropaintings such as Dogfight (1936-8). While retaining earlier elements, such as the cloud formations merging into, and becoming, a coastal landscape far below, his paintings took on a keen-eyed, pin-sharp realism that shared the experience with the viewer. Consequently, his powerful paintings of the 1930's and 1940's became the supreme interpretation of aeropainting.

Crali exhibited at the 20th (1936) Venice Biennale and was selected, with fellow Futurists Enrico Prampolini, Gerardo Dottori, Ivanhoe Gambini and Ernesto Thayaht, to exhibit at the International Exhibition of Olympic Games Sport Art in Berlin. In the meantime, called up for army service, he attended the School for Artillery Officers at Moncalieri. In 1937 war memorials were built to Crali's designs in Gorizia and Italy's East African colonies. The Gorizia memorial was later destroyed during the Second World War. The following year, having exhibited aeropaintings at the 21st Venice Biennale, he moved to Rome where he was to meet and befriend fellow Futurists, Ruggero Vasari and Corrado Govoni. Because of the importance of his aeropaintings he was granted "free flight for art reasons" by the Italian Airlines and consequently recorded his impressions of flight in the skies over Tunisia, Libya, Dalmatia and the Aegean Sea. 1939 was the period Crali spent time with the "Cavallino" fighter pilots at Gorizia and this, together with personal acrobatic flying experiences at Merna, contributed greatly to his aeropainting works. He exhibited at the Rome Quadriennale and organised a Futurist evening in Gorizia with Marinetti and, later, another at Trieste where he talked on aeropainting. Marinetti said of him "the conscience and seriousness of Crali's work is one rare virtue in the painters of today". The aeropainting Nose Dive on the City of this year is, perhaps, one of Crali's best-known works today. In 1940 Crali exhibited aeropaintings at the 22nd Venice Biennale. In the early 1940's he published two Futurist manifestos co-written with FT Marinetti - Plastic Illusionism of War and Protecting the Earth and the Manifesto of Musical Words - Alphabet in Freedom. Both were indicative of his style and personal beliefs.

Moving to Paris in the early 1950's, he was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne on the life of Marinetti. In 1959 Tullio Crali published his Futurist manifesto Sassintesi (Stone Syntheses). This, the first Futurist manifesto of the post-Futurism era, was to be a new form of artistic expression using natural materials - pebbles, stones and rocks formed of various minerals. The inherent qualities of colour, form, translucence, texture, etc. were to suggest, develop and determine the idea of the artist, while their appearance and positioning produced a harmonious composition that relied much on the stones' natural symbiosis with the cosmos. He moved to Milan in 1958 where he remained (apart from a five-year period teaching at the Italian Academy of Fine Arts, Cairo) for the rest of his life. He continued to paint, sculpt, teach and lecture throughout the ‘sixties, ‘seventies and into the ‘eighties. After the death of Marinetti and the fall of Italy, both in 1944, Futurism ceased to be an entity although in 1950 Marinetti's widow, the artist Benedetta, suggested the re-launching of Futurism at a reunion in Milan. The meeting was well attended by some famous names of Futurism ­ Paolo Buzzi, Pino Masnata, Bruno Munari, Giovanni Acquaviva, Cesare Andreoni, Armando Mazza, Ignazio Scurto and, of course, Tullio Crali. Although the post-war rebirth of Futurism came to nothing, Crali was in favour of the idea and personally strove to revive aeropainting - to the extent of issuing a manifesto Orbital Art, in 1969, calling for new works on a cosmic scale. Some 25 years after the end of Futurism, this was probably the final Futurist manifesto.

To Crali the lessons and ideals of Futurism were all-important even though the movement itself no longer existed. For example Frecce Tricolori (1966) is one of the few truly Futurist paintings that depicts modern jet fighters! The subject aeroplanes, seen against a cloud-studded blue sky, are viewed as though from a sister plane flying in close formation and the resulting picture ­ as we have all seen from photographs of such occasions ­ would therefore normally appear quite static. In order to invoke a feeling of dynamic movement on the canvas, unlike the swirling aeropaintings for which he is famed, Crali now revisited earlier tenets of Futurism. The painting is full of Futurist lines of force reminiscent of Giacomo Balla’s series of experiments in capturing speed on canvas from 1913-14. These are combined with fractured picture elements that reach back to analytical cubism in which three-dimensional subjects were fragmented and redefined from several different points of view simultaneously. The result is a thoroughly modern painting iterating styles of over fifty years earlier. Even in 1985 he was still a leading exponent of aeropittura (more than forty years after the official demise of Futurism) as witnessed by aeropaintings such as Supersonic ­ still as fresh and exhilarating as his works of the 1930’s and 40’s.

The ultimate Futurist aeropainter for some sixty years, Crali believed in the machine in all its manifestations but held the aeroplane supreme as "the machine that realised the myth of Icarus, the ever-present dream of man". A Futurist to the end, Tullio Crali died on 5th August 2000. In 2001, forty five of his paintings were acquired by the Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto and his aeropaintings still regularly draw crowds in Futurism exhibitions across the globe.

The Tullio Crali website is housed at www.futurism.org.uk/crali/

Bibliography:

Crali Aeropittorefuturista by M Calvesi, Vanni Scheiwiller, Milan. 1988.

Tullio Crali Futurista by C Rebeschini, Edizioni Electa. 1994.

Crali Futurista by C Rebeschini, Galleria Rettori , Trieste. 1998

Crali Aeropittore Futurista by C Rebeschini, Palazzo Farnese, Ortona. 2001

Bob Osborn is the website manager for a local gov't authority. The Futursist website <www.futurism.org.uk> began as an example of a framed website for his students of web design but combining his tudies on Futurism

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