Italian futurist painter Gerardo Dottori painted Primavera Umbria in oil on canvas in 1923. Primavera Umbria is in the collection of the Civic Museum of Palazzo della Penna in Perugia. This painting is part of a series of Dottori’s futurist landscapes that were created mostly in Umbria.
What is Depicted in the Primavera Umbria?
The painting Primavera Umbria shows the landscape around Lake Trasimeno. Primavera Umbria was created in a manner of aeropainting, which implies a view of the landscape from a great height. The lower part of the picture is significantly more diverse in color and represents forest areas as well as fields and roofs of houses. The central part of the composition is occupied by Lake Trasimeno, whose surface reflects the clouds. The central part of the picture represents the border from which the color reduces to shades of blue towards the upper part. The distant hills of the dynamic Umbrian landscape with their round shapes and dominantly blue color provide a surrealistic impression of equalizing the transparency of the clouds and the static of the ground.
Primavera Umbria – Analysis
Gerardo Dottori was one of the most important futurist representatives of the aeropainting technique. This approach transformed traditional landscape painting by introducing a component of displaced view or bird’s eye view. Traveling by plane allowed this kind of access to the landscape. In 1929, the article Perspectives of Flight and Aeropainting was published in the Turin magazine Gazzetta del Popolo. In addition to Dottori, this article or manifesto of Aeropainting was signed by Benedetta Cappa, Fortunato Depero, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and others.
Motifs of the Umbrian landscape were the most frequent subject of Dottori’s painting. It is this painting that is an example of the successfully applied idea of the double movement implied by the aeropainting technique. The duality of a movement referred to the cancellation of the static landscape by the painter observing it from a moving plane. The painter, therefore, transforms the canvas in front of him while simultaneously changing the perspective of the landscape below him.
Related Artworks
Dottori often returned to the motif of Lake Trasimeno. He presented this lake in the painting Umbrian Lake from 1942, as well as three years later in the painting Umbria Spring.
