Depero Futurista

Depero is an Italian Futurist artist and designer who collaborated with Azari to create a monograph of his work which is also known as ‘The Bolted Book’. This work is an example of a book-as-an-object as it experiments with a huge range of design and media, layouts and typographic experimentation. This work is like a portfolio of his work which includes textile and architecture designs, advertising work, wordplays, reviews and manifestos.

This book explores the outlook that Depero had towards Futurism until 1927. It featured two aluminium bolts within its construction which was the first time such experimentation had taken place. Influenced by the machines that characterised Futurism, this book is considered a manifesto for the Machine Age.

This book was printed in an edition of one thousand copies. There were at least three to four different front page designs with different colour prints and there were also four or five copies which were bound with metal bindings.

Depero Futurista 1913-27 is considered to be one of the first ‘modern books’ (Voon 2016:[sp]). The use of the metal bolts as a binding method was appropriated from Industrialisation and gave the book its second alias (The Bolted Book) (Investigart 2014:[sp]). The bolts could be unscrewed allowing for the pages to be displayed individually and exhibited on a wall (Voon 2016:[sp]).

The book portrays the revolutionary visions of Fortunato Depero (Voon 2016:[sp]). With regard to the interior presentation, the texts are printed on papers of varying colour, grammage and texture (Investigart 2014:[sp]). The design and arrangement of the typography used to accompany the images were considered eccentric and “stood out” to that which was normative at the time (Voon 2016:[sp]). The typography forms dynamic visuals that appear to move and jump around the printed page (Voon 2016:[sp]).

Investigart. 2014. Depero, an Exemplary Futurist. [O]. Available:https://investigart.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/depero-un-futurista-ejemplar/

Scudiero, M. [sa]. The Italian Futurist Book. [O]. Available: http://www.colophon.com/gallery/futurism/1.html

Voon, C. 2016. Reprinting 'Depero Futurista,' the First Modern Artist's Book. [O]. Available: http://hyperallergic.com/326843/reprinting-depero-futurista-first-modern-artists-book/

The below images are from: http://www.boltedbook.com

© Center for Italian Modern Art and Designers & Books. 2018. All rights reserved