From Bologna to the World: The International Futurism of Athos Casarini

Athos Casarini (1883 – 1917) played an important rôle in the cultural life of his day, yet has been all but forgotten as a consequence of his untimely death during the First World War. Born in Bologna, he grew up in a cultural and artistic environment that, while fiercely proud of its own traditions, also offered encoun- ters with novel ideas from beyond the city walls. F.T. Marinetti’s founding manifesto of Futurism was originally published in the local Gazzetta dell’Emilia on 5 February 1909, and many texts by the movement’s key protagonists circulated in the city well before the Futurists made their first official visit to the Emilian capital in 1914 on the occasion of a performance of Marinetti’s Elettricità at the Teatro del Corso. Nevertheless, Casarini’s initial encounter with the men who would later become protagonists of the Futurist movement did not occur in Bologna, but in Milan, between 1908 and 1909, through the painter Ugo Valeri. Moreover, his adherence to the movement took place on the other side of the Atlantic. Frustrated by the local culture he considered too provincial and traditionalist, and eager to engage with a more ‘advanced’ and modern society, Casarini moved to New York in the spring of 1909 and it was in the great American metropolis that he became not only the first Bolognese artist to convert to Futurism, but also the first Futurist to live and work in the USA.