Lot 29: Carlo Erba (1884-1917)

Sintesi degli elementi costruttivi
signed (lower right), inscribed Sintesi degli elementi costruttivi
pencil
36.6 x 26.8 cm. (14 3/8 x 10 1/2 in.)

Exhibited:
Rome, Calcagrafia Nazionale, Carlo Erba, 1981
Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, Carlo Erba e Milano, 1984
Milan, Galleria Il Mercante di Stampe, 80 disegni di Carlo Erba, 1986
Rome, Galleria F. Russo 2002

Literature:
Carlo Erba's experimentation with F.T.Marinetti's Futurism was short-lived. Historians now agree that the year 1912-1913 was probably the period of Erba's most active interest in the concepts and artistic creations of the movement. However, together with Leonardo Dudreville and Achille Funi, Erba was never a member of Marinetti's Futurist group and they did not participate in the controversial Esposizione d'arte libera of April-May 1911, held at the Padiglione Ricordi in Milan. Rather, together with Mario Chittone, Antonio Sant'Elia, and a few others, they signed the manifesto of the 'Nuove Tendenze', the Milanese artistic group formed in the summer of 1913. Following an official annoucement of its existence in the form of a manifesto published in Milan's Pagine d'arte on 15 March 1914, the group held its first - and only - exhibition from 20 May to 10 June. After this, the group split, mostly as a result of Sant'Elia's defection to Marinetti's group. The 'Nuove Tendenze' had announced itself as a non avant-garde association whose artistic members where inclined towards a more traditional (Lombard) manner of painting which also contained Symbolist and Secessionist elements. The principal difference with Marinetti's group lay in the Nuove Tendenze's assertive belief in the individual; each member had worked according to his and her own manner, and their was no binding ethos between each.

However, the Nuove Tendenze was certainly keen to be percieved as an extension of the offical Futurist group and the present portrait of its creator is as much a token of the personal friendship between Erba and Marinetti as a declaration of an artistic affiliation to his movement. Often bearing the title ascribed by Erba on the sheet, Sintesi degli elementi costruttivi, the portrait was identified as representing F.T. Marinetti by the artist's sister, Bianca Erba (see Carlo Erba. Una memoria nel futurismo 1884-1917, Roma: Calcografia, 1981, no.D98, p.74 and the attached note). The drawing belongs to a series of pencil portraits executed in 1913 of Erba's close entourage. Indeed, the portraits of his father Luigi, mother Giuditta and sister Bianca share with the present page an interest in the breaking down of form into shapes of light and dark. However, in these pure exercises of deconstruction of the object/subject, Erba sustains a desire to preserve the identity of the sitter-and not dissolve the individual features in an array of geometric planes of more abstract design.

In 1915, in keeping with the Futurists' support for Italy's participation in the Great War, Erba enrolled in the Lombardy Battalion of Cyclist Volunteers, together with Umberto Boccioni, Marinetti, Funi and Sant'Elia. Carlo Erba was killed in service in Ortigara, on 13 June 1917. He was 33.