Enrico Prampolini (20 April 1894, Modena – 17 June 1956, Rome) was an ItalianFuturist painter, sculptor andscenographer. He assisted in the design of theExhibition of the Fascist Revolution[1] and was (likeGerardo Dottori) active inAeropainting.
He pursued a programme of abstract and quasi-abstract painting, combined with a career in stage design. HisSpatial-Landscape Construction (1919) is quasi-abstract with large flat areas in bold colours, predominantly red, orange, blue and dark green. HisSimultaneous Landscape (1922) is totally abstract, with flat colours and no attempt to create perspective. In hisUmbrian Landscape (1929), produced in the year of the Aeropainting Manifesto, Prampolini returns to figuration, representing the hills of Umbria. But by 1931 he had adopted "cosmic idealism", a biomorphic abstractionism quite different from the works of the previous decade, for example inPilot of the Infinite (1931) andBiological Apparition (1940).
Prampolini was an influence onTullio Crali.
After studying with Dullio Cambellotti at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he became a leading member of theFuturist Movement as a painter, scenographer and architect. He had close contacts with the representatives of the European avant-garde art, with theSection d'Or,Dadaism, theBauhaus,De Stijl, theAbstraction-Création group, withPablo Picasso,Piet Mondrian,Wassily Kandinsky andJean Cocteau.
From 1913 for a period collaborates with the monthly magazineVarietas inMilan.[2]
In 1917, with Bino Sanminiatelli he founded the magazineNoi. The same year, he realised the sets for the futurist filmThaïs, directed byAnton Giulio Bragaglia. He created the interior of a dream and suffocating villa, whose walls are decorated with spirals, lozenges, chessboards and symbolic figures. This film had a significant influence on the anti-naturalistic scenes ofGerman Expressionism.[3]
Prampolini's work occupies a place of its own in the European abstract art, characterized by its deep concern for the dynamism andOrganicism, which manifests itself in the cosmic visions and dreams of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1927 he founded the "Futurist Theatre Prampolini". In 1928 he conceived the Futurist Pavilion at the "Esposizione del Valentino" inTurin, which was realised byFillìa and Pino Curtone.[4]
Together with Fillia, he realized in 1933 a large mosaicLe comunicazioni for the tower of thePalazzo delle Poste inLa Spezia. After the futurist experience, he produced different materials and works, sometimes influenced by the visions of the microcosm. He declared that his aim to express the extreme latitudes of the introspective world. His work was also part of thepainting event in theart competition at the1936 Summer Olympics.[5]
In 1944 he taught theatre and set design at theBrera Academy in Milan.
