Carlo Carrà (; February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the
Futurist
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...
movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number of books concerning art. He taught for many years in the city of
Milan
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
.
Biography
Carrà was born in
Quargnento, a
comune
A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...
just northwest of
Alessandria, Italy (
Piedmont
Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the northwest Italy, Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the ...
). At the age of 12 he left home in order to work as a
mural
A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.
Word mural in art
The word ''mural'' ...
decorator.
In 1899–1900, Carrà was in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
decorating pavilions at the
Exposition Universelle, where he became acquainted with contemporary French art. He then spent a few months in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
in contact with exiled Italian
anarchists
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy, primarily targeting the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state w ...
, and returned to Milan in 1901. In 1906, he enrolled at
Brera Academy
The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan, Italy. It shares its history, and its main building, with the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan's main public mu ...
(''Accademia di Brera'') in the city, and studied under
Cesare Tallone. In 1910 he signed, along with
Umberto Boccioni
Umberto Boccioni (; ; 19 October 1882 – 17 August 1916) was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach ...
,
Luigi Russolo
Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo (30 April 1885 – 4 February 1947) was an Italian Futurist painter, composer, builder of experimental musical instruments, and the author of the manifesto '' The Art of Noises'' (1913). Russolo completed his second ...
, and
Giacomo Balla the ''Manifesto of Futurist Painters'', and began a phase of painting that became his most popular and influential.
Carrà's Futurist phase ended around the time
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
began. His work, while still using some Futurist concepts, began to deal more clearly with form and stillness, rather than motion and feeling. In his 1913 manifesto, "The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells," Carrà discussed his interest in
synaesthesia, describing it as "being a perceptual phenomenon that relates to the idea that exposure to one external stimulus (say, sound or smell), induces a parallel visualization (say, color)."
Inspired by
Trecento
The Trecento (, also , ; short for , "1300") refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history. The Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Italian Renaissance or at least the Proto-Renaissance in art history. The Trecento was als ...
painting, children's art, and the work of
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau (; 21 May 1844 – 2 September 1910)
at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Gug ...
, Carrà soon began creating
still life
A still life (: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, human-m ...
s in a simplified style that emphasized the reality of ordinary objects. In 1917 he met
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( ; ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His ...
in Ferrara, and worked with him there for several weeks. Influenced by de Chirico, Carrà began including
mannequin
A mannequin (sometimes spelled as manikin and also called a dummy, lay figure, or dress form) is a doll, often articulated, used by artists, tailors, dressmakers, window dressers and others, especially to display or fit clothing and show off dif ...
imagery in his paintings. The two artists were the innovators of a style they called "
metaphysical painting". By 1919, Carrà's metaphysical phase was giving way to an archaicism inspired by the works of
Giotto
Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto, was an List of Italian painters, Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the International Gothic, Gothic and Italian Ren ...
, whom he admired as "the artist whose forms are closest to our manner of conceiving the construction of bodies in space". Carrà's painting ''The Daughters of Lot'' (1919) exemplifies the new direction of his work. He was among the contributors of the Rome-based literary magazine ''
La Ronda'' between 1919 and 1922. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, he concentrated mainly on landscape painting and developed a more atmospheric style. An example from this period is his 1928 ''Morning by the Sea''.
Carrà is best known for his 1911 Futurist work, ''
The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli''. He was indeed an anarchist as a young man but, along with many other Futurists, later held more
reactionary
In politics, a reactionary is a person who favors a return to a previous state of society which they believe possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary.''The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought'' Third Edition, (1999) p. 729. ...
political views, becoming
ultranationalist
Ultranationalism, or extreme nationalism, is an extremist form of nationalism in which a country asserts or maintains hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations (usually through violent coercion) to pursue its specific ...
and
irredentist
Irredentism () is one state's desire to annex the territory of another state. This desire can be motivated by ethnic reasons because the population of the territory is ethnically similar to or the same as the population of the parent state. Hist ...
before and during the war. He supported
fascism
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...
after 1918. In the 1930s, Carrà signed a manifesto in which called for support of the state ideology through art. The ''Strapaese'' group he joined, founded by
Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker widely known for his subtly muted still-life paintings of ceramic vessels, flowers, and landscapes—their quiet, meditative quality reflecting the artist's ...
, was strongly influenced by fascism and responded to the
Neo-classical guidelines which had been set by the regime after 1937, but was opposed to the ideological drive towards strong
centralism.
Carrà died in
Milan, Italy
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
on April 13, 1966 at age 85.
Selected works
*''
The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli'' (1911)
*''
The Enchanted Chamber'' (1917)
*''
The Metaphysical Muse'' (1917)
*''
The Daughter of the West'' (1919)
*''
The Engineer's Lover'' (1921)
*''
Canale a Venezia'' (1926)
File:Funeraloftheanarchistgalli.jpg, 1911, '' The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli'', oil on canvas, 198.7 x 259.1 cm, Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
, New York
File:Carlo Carrà, 1911, Rhythms of Objects (Ritmi d'oggetti), oil on canvas, 53 x 67 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera.jpg, 1911, ''Rhythms of Objects'' (''Ritmi d'oggetti''), oil on canvas, 53 x 67 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera
The Pinacoteca di Brera ("Brera Art Gallery") is the main public gallery for paintings in Milan, Italy. It contains one of the foremost collections of Italian paintings from the 13th to the 20th century, an outgrowth of the cultural program of ...
File:Carlo Carrà, Il cavaliere dello spirito occidentale (1917).jpg, 1917, ''Il cavaliere dello spirito occidentale (Western Horseman)'', 52 x 67 cm, private collection
File:Carlo Carrà, 1918, L'Ovale delle Apparizioni (The Oval of Apparition), oil on canvas, 92 x 60 cm.jpg, 1918, ''L'Ovale delle Apparizioni'' (''The Oval of Apparition''), oil on canvas, 92 x 60 cm, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, or Collezioni R. Jucker, Milan
File:Carlo Carrà, 1919, Le figlie di Loth, oil on canvas, 111 x 80 cm, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto.jpg, 1919, ''Le figlie di Loth'', oil on canvas, 111 x 80 cm, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART) (''Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto'', in Italian) is a museum centre in the Italian province of Trento. The main site is in Rovereto, and contains ...
References
Sources
Carrà at the Peggy Guggenheim CollectionCarrà at the Mart, Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e RoveretoMark Antliff, "Fascism, Modernism, and Modernity", in ''The Art Bulletin'', March 2002*Elizabeth Cowling and Jennifer Mundy, ''On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930'', London:, Tate Gallery, 1990
*Karen Pinkus, ''Bodily Regimes: Advertising under Italian Fascism'',
Minneapolis
Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...
-
Saint Paul
Paul, also named Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle ( AD) who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century world. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally ...
,
University of Minnesota Press
The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018.
Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its book ...
, 1995
*Stanislao G. Pugliese, ''Italian Fascism and Anti-Fascism: A Critical Anthology'',
Manchester
Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...
,
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press is the university press of the University of Manchester, England, and a publisher of academic books and journals. Manchester University Press has developed into an international publisher. It maintains its links with t ...
, 2001
External links
Ten Dreams Galleries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carra, Carlo
Italian Futurist painters
Italian fascists
Italian muralists
1881 births
1966 deaths
Art writers
Italian male painters
Brera Academy alumni
Academic staff of Brera Academy
People from Quargnento
20th-century Italian painters