Mino Delle Site, (1914-1996)

a) Sintesi di virata
inscribed 'SINTESI DI VIRATA' (lower left)
watercolour on paper laid down on black card
23.3 x 15cm (9 3/16 x 5 7/8in). sheet size; 9.1 x 9.2cm (3 9/16 x 3 5/8in). image size
Executed in 1931

b) Aeropittura
signed, inscribed and dated 'Delle Site FUTURISTA 1932 E. F. X' (lower centre left), signed and inscribed again 'Delle Site Domenico. Alunno 4o = Corpo' (lower right)
watercolour and silver pen on paper laid down on black card
24 x 17.4cm (9 7/16 x 6 7/8in). sheet size; 11.3 x 10cm (4 7/16 x 3 15/16in). image size
Executed in 1932

c) Sogno dell'aviere
signed and dated 'Delle Site 32' (lower centre), inscribed 'SOGNO DELL'AVIERE' (lower centre left)
watercolour and silver pen on paper laid down on black card
24 x 16.5cm (9 7/16 x 6 1/2in). sheet size; 9.1 x 8.2cm (3 9/16 x 3 1/4in). image size
Executed in 1932

The authenticity of these works has kindly been confirmed by the Archivio Mino Delle Site.

Provenance
The artist's studio.
Private collection, Rome (by descent from the above).

Exhibited
Rome, Galleria Bragaglia Fuori Commercio, Mino Delle Site. Maschere stati d'animo, December 1932.
Lecce, Sala del Circolo Cittadino, Mostra Personale di Pittura Futurista Mino Delle Site, February 1933.
Lecce, Museo Provinciale, Mino Delle Site, Aeropittura e oltre, dal 1930, 15 October - 3 December 1989.
Rome, Associazione Culturale Athenaeum N.A.E., Retrospettiva di Mino Delle Site, 1997.
Bari, Castello Svevo, Verso le avanguardie, gli anni del Futurismo in Puglia 1909 - 1944, 20 June - 30 August 1998 (later travelled to Taranto).
Warsaw, W?oski Instytut Kultury, Mino Delle Site, alle radici dell'Aeropittura 1931 - 1934, June - September 2001 (later travelled to Kracow).
Rome, Sala Club Freccia Alata, Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci, Mino delle Site, November 2003 February 2004.
Salerno, Pinacoteca Provinciale, Percorsi d'arte dal collezionismo dei Ruffo all'evoluzione pittorica di Mino Delle Site, March - May 2005.
Lecce, Museo Provinciale, Mino Delle Site, October - November 2006.
Rome, Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi & Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Mino Delle Site, 23 November 2006 - 14 January 2007.
Rome, Farnesina, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Mino Delle Site, Futurismo fra Arte e Tecnologia nel Centenario, 19 - 25 October 2009.
Rome, La Quadriennale, Mino Delle Site, Centenario, October 2014.

Literature
C. L. Delle Site, Mino Delle Site, Perugia, 2006 (Sintesi di virata illustrated p. 43; Sogno dell'Aviere illustrated p. 50; Aeropittura illustrated p. 54).
D. Guzzi, Mino Delle Site, Forme assolute della geometria, Rome, 2008 (Sintesi di virata & Sogno dell'Aviere illustrated p. 12).
C. L. Delle Site, Mino Delle Site, Centenario, e-book, 2014 (Sintesi di virata illustrated p. 41; Sogno dell'Aviere illustrated n. p.).

Sintesi di virata was the first work that Domenico (Mino) Delle Site showed to Enrico Prampolini in 1931 during the Omaggio Futurista ai trasvolatori exhibition at the Camerata degli artisti in Piazza di Spagna, Rome. Prampolini, who saw in it all the features of the Futuristic Aeropittura, exclaimed: 'You are one of us!' and immediately introduced him to the Futuristi Romani group founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Delle Site was only seventeen and was still attending high school, which explains his decision to remove the signature and date referring to his school class from the lower right edge of the composition.

The following year the same work was chosen as the symbol of the solo exhibition at Galleria Bragaglia Fuori Commercio in Rome, curated by Prampolini himself, who introduced the artist with these words:

'Mino Delle Site is among the youngest and most creative futurists of the Italian artistic Avant-garde. His intellectual vivacity and the anxiety of becoming a witness of our time brought him to the stream of one of the most vivid debates, and the logic he chose, in line with his personality, was that of going past the stasis of clichés, allowing himself to flow into the dynamic of the pure creativity of the anti-academy: the 'Dinamismo Plastico'. The vibrant pureness of his colours and the conceptual synthesis of his shapes vigorously convey the lyricism of his compositions. The civilization of pulsating and magnetic machines is the source of inspiration and as such one of the most important elements of the artistic personality of our 'aeropittore'. All subjects that glorify speed, whether in the sea, or in the air, find in Delle Site a devoted exponent of the simultaneous formula man + machine + atmosphere, which represents the emotive totality of forms and space. Colour is his natural means of expression and he uses it to achieve the 'Quarta Dimensione' ('The Fourth Dimension'), the exciting and vital discovery of Futurism. In speed, the metamorphosis of the shape-colour in time-space leads the artist in to a new visual world and demonstrates how science cannot be disconnected from art, because art is the poetry of knowledge and knowledge is projection into future, which means: FUTURISM' (E. Prampolini quoted in C. Delle Site (2014), Mino Delle Site [online] available at http://www.minodellesite.com [accessed in Nov. 2016]).