M1929 Telo mimetico ( Italian: ''camouflage cloth'') was a

military camouflage Military camouflage is the use of camouflage by an armed force to protect personnel and equipment from observation by enemy forces. In practice, this means applying colour and materials to military equipment of all kinds, including vehicles, ...

pattern used by the

Italian Army "The safeguard of the republic shall be the supreme law" , colors = , colors_labels = , march = ''Parata d'Eroi'' ("Heroes's parade") by Francesco Pellegrino, ''4 Maggio'' (May 4) ...

for shelter-halves (''telo tenda'') and later for uniforms for much of the 20th century. Being first issued in 1929 and only fully discontinued in the early 1990s, it has the distinction of being the first printed camouflage pattern for general issue, and the camouflage pattern in longest continuous use in the world.

History

Originally only printed on shelter halves, the pattern was not intended to be worn by soldiers though the shelter halves could be used as rain-ponchoes. From 1942, the printed fabric was also used for smocks for the Italian paratroopers. At some point before the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, the pattern was changed, possibly to accommodate printing with smaller rolls. It was scaled down and compressed slightly lengthwise, but otherwise kept the shapes and colours of the first production. The pattern varied with time, the colours becoming brighter while the print became less crisp. The pattern was continued into the 1990s, when it was replaced by a pattern based on US Woodland.

Distribution

In 1944, ''telo mimetico'' was adopted by the Germans and distributed to

Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...

units operating in Italy and

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

during the spring and summer of 1944. Most frequently published photos show members of the 1st and 12th SS Panzer Divisions wearing the Italian attire along with a mix of standard issue Waffen-SS uniforms and equipment. After the Italian surrender, stocks of the Italian pattern were captured and used on other fronts. Some of it appears to have ended up in the hands of

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

n and

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

units. It is possible that the whole production machinery was moved by the Germans to Czechoslovakia, laying the foundation for the country's post-war production.

In art

The pattern also has the honour of having been deemed a work of art in itself. In 1966, the Italian artist

Alighiero Boetti Alighiero Fabrizio Boetti known as Alighiero e Boetti (16 December 1940 – 24 February 1994) was an Italian conceptual artist, considered to be a member of the art movement Arte Povera. Background Boetti is most famous for a series of embro ...

stretched sections of the fabric on frames under the title "Mimetico" (camouflage) as part of an exhibition on the '' Arte Povera'' movement. It was a challenge to the abstract tachist tradition of painting large, flat sections of colour.

References

External links

The 1966 artwork "Mimetico"
among other of Alighiero Boetti's works, also showing the repeats of the fabric. {{Camouflage Camouflage patterns Military camouflage Military equipment introduced in the 1920s