Speed & spirituality

The first half of the twentieth century saw a remarkable flowering of Catholic culture in Europe. In the visual arts, France, through Maurice Denis, Albert Gleizes, Georges Rouault and others, saw significant revival. In Germany, the artistic school founded at the Beuron monastery had a great influence on ecclesiastical art and gained admirers among the European avant-garde. Even Britain felt its effect through the work of Eric Gill and David Jones.

Italy, however, was one place where this effect would not have been anticipated dominated, as it was, by the anti-clerical art of the Futurists. Yet, as the current exhibition at the Estorick Collection of modern italian art shows, Futurism inspired a flowering of religious painting that constitutes one of the most unexpected episodes in the history of that movement.

Futurism eulogised the beauty of speed and the energies and machines that produced it. Futurists saw themselves as “immersed in the chaos of an old, crumbling era” but “partaking of the vibrations of a new epoch in the process of formation.” They embraced continual progress and viewed Catholic priests as fatally associated with old order hating “the fleeting, the momentary, speed, energy and passion.” Not fertile ground for a flowering of religious art, one would have thought.

Yet Marinetti, the great theorist of Futurism, maintained a significant distinction between Christ and the Catholic Church that led to the explosion of Futurist religious art which appeared in the 1930s. The “precious essence of Christ’s morals,” he argued, “accorded every right, every pardon and every sympathy to the impassioned fervour, to the fickle flame of the heart.”

Marinetti’s ‘Manifesto of Futurist Sacred Art’ appeared in 1931 and further exacerbated the movement’s conflict with the Catholic Church by stating that “only Futurist artists … are able to express clearly … the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith, such as the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Conception and Christ’s Calvary.” Pope Pius XI responded in a speech of 1932 by saying that ”Our hope, Our ardent wish, Our will can only be … that such art will never be admitted into our churches …” From such strange beginnings comes the collection of religious paintings currently on show at the Estorick Collection and a strange body of work they prove to be.

Marinetti had argued that only Futurists could express the simultaneous dogmas of the Catholic faith because only they had “addressed the complex matter of simultaneity” in their art. Accordingly, a key feature of these works is the bringing together within the same picture frame of key events from the life of Christ. The convoluted titles of many of these works, such as Fillia’s Madonna and Child / Nativity / Nativity-Death-Eternity, indicate clearly the telescoping of events that can be found in these works. This work sets an semi-abstract/cubist Madonna and Child in front of a sky-filled cross in front of a mountain in front of a rock in front of a globe ringed by the outlines of churches as seen through the ages. Marinetti described this work as “an impressive amalgamation of the concrete and the abstract; a synthesis of the long development of Catholicism through the centuries.”

It is, when set alongside other works by Fillia in this exhibition, an example of a set of identikit symbols – saint, cross, globe, mountain, churches – that several Futurists juggle in works that sit uncomfortably between the later cubism of Gleizes and the surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico. Not all Futurist sacred art is, thankfully, of the poster book style and imagery of Fillia however. Giuseppe Preziosi, for example, also used simultaneity in his Annunciation-Nativity-Death but here the subtler harmonies of his colours combine with the interpenetrating planes of his subjects to integrate Christ’s birth and death within the work.

Gerardo Dottori, known as the ‘mystic’ Futurist, made use of similar techniques to create in his Crucifixion of 1928 one of the genuine masterpieces of Futurist sacred art. His crucified Christ is picked out in a heavenly spotlight which also surrounds the two Mary’s grieving at his feet. Light also emanates from the upper half of Christ’s body and outstretched arms illuminating the darkened sky that has thrown the landscape of Calvary into turmoil. Dottori’s stylistic use of light symbolises both Christ’s obedience to God’s will and the light of salvation that his death brings into a world darkened by sin.

Dottori also makes use of a second key theme in Futurist sacred art; that of flight as a symbol of transcendence. His Annunciation in an Aerial Temple sees Mary literally caught up in her spirit by the news that Gabriel brings (an anticipation of her own Assumption, perhaps) and gives us an angelic perspective on the event. Aeropainting was a major strand of Futurist art and this interest in flight became a symbol firstly of physical liberation from the earth and then of spiritual ascent. The Trinity, the Madonna, as well as the expected Angels, all appear winged and in flight within the works collected here.

The most striking of all the flight images collected here is undoubtedly Nino Vatali’s Ascension where Christ ascends on the cross in stop-frame images that build a Jacob’s ladder ascending to the heavens. Whether the imagery of the cross as a ladder from earth to heaven was consciously in Vitali’s mind as he painted or whether he was simply transposing a Futurist technique with a sacred theme, the image and imagery remain powerful.

Only Futurist aeropainters, Marinetti argued, “are able to express in plastic terms the abyssal charm and heavenly transparencies of infinity.” Again, his rhetoric tends to exceed the resulting works but, for all that, this art and this exhibition form a fascinating subject that extend our understanding of the influence of sacred themes and imagery in early twentieth century European art even where artists and the Church were conflicted.

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