Casa Depero Today

[Casa Depero: "Rovereto Hall", first floor]

Founded in 1957 by Fortunato Depero, a pioneer of contemporary design, the Casa d’Arte Futurista Depero (the Depero Futurist Art House) is the only example in Italy of a Futurist museum created by a Futurist artist himself.

On 2009, the Casa Depero reopened to the public. The project for the restoration has been by Renato Rizzi, and the museographical project by Gabriella Belli.

video: the last days of the restorations (in italian)>>

The work, financed by the Rovereto Town Council and Mart, has consolidated the historic building of the Galleria Museo Fortunato Depero, which opened to the public in 1959 and laid out by Depero himself one year before his death in 1960.

It is now possible once more to admire the circa 3000 objects left by the artist to the city, and including paintings, drawings, cloth and boxwood inlays, collages, posters and playbills, furniture, toys and applied art products. These were mainly representative of Depero's later work, but the collection was subsequently extended by donations and acquisitions.

The original zones designed by Depero on the ground floor have been completely restored and preserved. On the first and second floor, where the artist did not succeed in concluding his original project, attention has been focused on the fantasy and vitality of Depero’s work, which appears here in its most genuine Futurist vocation. The large tapestries that comprise the most precious and original treasures of the whole Depero collection, are displayed in these spaces.

Other exhibition spaces on the second floor have been dedicated during 2009 to the years 1917 and 1918, a period of great creativity for the young Depero, then in touch with the international world of Diaghilev’s “Ballets Russes”, and to the years between 1928 and 1930, the so-called New York period, a fundamental step in his artistic career.

The second floor of the Casa Depero, after the opening, will be dedicated to temporary exhibitions by contemporary artists analysing the legacy of Depero.

The Whole Story

[Casa Depero in the 1990s]

The idea of the ‘House Museum’ was born in 1957, with an agreement stipulated between Fortunato Depero and the Rovereto town council. Depero pledged to bequeath his artistic production to the town, while the latter undertook to convert a house in the town centre – the former site of the municipal pawn shop – into a permanent exhibition site for the Futurist master's works. The building is located in the heart of medieval Rovereto and creates a sort of stimulating contrast: a Futurist museum located not in a modern, futuristic structure, but in the heart of the historic centre.

At the outset, the ‘Depero’, which opened its doors in 1959, was seen as a museum and permanent gallery. The artist was able to sell or exchange works from the collection. The collection of works thus underwent some changes, but the museum still remains faithful to Depero’s idea for the museum (he was responsible also for the floor mosaics, the painted panels and furniture decorating it). The first room was dedicated by the artist to “publications and press articles”, and the two neighbouring ones on the ground floor to the town of Rovereto and the “black and white sector”. This room led to the upper floors, where Depero planned to display his paintings, from the abstract to the “nuclear” period, as well as the plans for the Trento Province Council chamber, other drawings and plans regarding theatre, advertising and applied arts. From 1957 to 1959, Depero worked eagerly for his museum. The artist died in 1960, but it was only after the death of his wife in 1975 that the Rovereto town council acquired and directly administered the bequest. It undertook an inventory of the collection and took steps to safeguard and show it to best effect. In 1987, the Galleria-Museo Depero became an integral part of the Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (Mart).

On the occasion of the centenary of the great artist’s birth, in 1992, the Rovereto town council and Mart undertook some preliminary work on the building.