TATO, (GUGLIELMO SANSONI) (1896-1974)

Lo Stormo

Lo Stormo
signed 'Tato' (lower right); signed and inscribed 'Ali fascisti sull'oceano Tato' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
46 x 66.6cm (18 1/8 x 26 1/4in).
Painted in 1931

The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by the Archivio Tato, under the guidance of Generale Salvatore Ventura.

Provenance
Private collection, Rome.

Exhibited
Rome, La Camerata degli Artisti, Prima mostra di aeropittura dei futuristi, 1 - 10 February 1931, no. 34.
Paris, Galerie de la Renaissance, Enrico Prampolini et les aeropeintres futuristes italiens, 2 - 16 March 1932, no. 112.
Rome, Palazzo Valdina, Tato Futurista. Inventore dell'aeropittura, 21 November - 6 December 2019.

Tato was born Guglielmo Sansoni in Bologna in 1896, and would go on to become one of the principal protagonists of the Italian 20th Century movement, Aeropittura.

Inspired by the revolutionary spirit of the first wave of Futurism, Tato began creating artworks in the early 1920s that depicted the new Italy. Scenes of the city at night, speeding trains and experiments in Cubist-inflected compositions populate his early work, and display the clear influence of Severini, Boccioni and the group responsible for the 1909 manifesto. The young artist in fact held a mock funeral for himself, where he mourned the 'death' of Guglielmo Sansoni, and celebrated in turn the 'birth' of Tato – a clear demonstration of the Futurist ideal of renewal and a break from the weight of Italy's cultural past.

In 1922 he met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who of course was a towering figure in the artistic movements that sprang up in the wake of Futurism, and the meeting would accelerate Tato's development of his now-celebrated form of Futurism alongside his fascination with flight. Together they published the Manifesto of Aeropainting in 1929, formalising the interest in flight that Tato, and a number of other young artists, had been exploring in the preceding years.

Tato's works define the notion, set out in this manifesto, that 'the changing perspectives of flight constitute an absolutely new reality, one that has nothing in common with the reality traditionally constituted by earthbound perspectives'. His investigation of flight led to the creation of a great number of works tackling the new view of the world from above, such as the present work, Lo Stormo of 1931. Depicting the flight of sea planes, this work is one of three pieces of the same title: a preparatory gouache, a medium-sized canvas (the present work) and a large-scale canvas. This was typical of Tato's process when he was particularly convinced of the success of a composition. Indeed, the present work was selected by the artist to be included in the first Aeropittura exhibition, where the canvas was displayed alongside works by Balla, Dottori, Fillia and Prampolini, and embodies the stylized vision of this boundary-pushing artist.