IVa. The Adventure of a Feather, a Glass Ball, and a Seahorse: Methodological Reflections on the Material History of Futurist Artworks.

It is June 1958. Alessandro Prampolini, better known as the art critic and writer Vittorio Orazi, enters the room of his brother Enrico, who died two years earlier. The space is small. On the floor lies a carpet and some furniture designed by Enrico. On one side, a large glass partition separates the artist’s bedroom from his studio. On the wall, only three artworks are hanging: Automatismo Polimaterico A (Polymaterial Automatism A), Automatismo Polimaterico C (Polymaterial Automatism C), and Automatismo Polimaterico F (Polymaterial Automatism F) (Figs. 1,2,3).¹

Alessandro approaches the wall and removes the three works. He observes them for the last time, before setting them aside. They will leave for the United States on June 26, 1958, aboard a Cunard ocean liner. They have been purchased by a couple from Detroit, Harry Winston and Lydia Kahn Winston (later Malbin), for their already considerable collection of modern art. The story of these three polymaterial works, and of several other Futurist artworks acquired by the Winstons, provides an opportunity to reflect on the material history of twentieth-century art—an issue still little considered in relation to the artistic production of this time.

What are we truly looking at when we look at a work of modern art? Can we confidently say that the details of color, the color balance, the shimmering of a sequin, the choice of that very object pasted in a collage, and of the very spot in which it was glued, are actually choices made by the artist? Unlike our perception of ancient art, for which later manipulations now linger as an inalienable shadow cast by the work’s originality, modern and contemporary art is still perceived as a grouping of works that have retained their primal identity. For medieval and Renaissance works, we almost expect to find the traces that time has left: far more than a patina, an entire set of clues suggesting the concerns and cares, the interpretations and corrections, the passion and dereliction of generations and generations of nameless people who transmitted them down to us, from hand to hand, through the centuries. Even if the traces are not always evident, we take for granted that an artwork might have been cut, corrected, cleaned up, bleached,² revarnished, blackened, punctured and patched, repainted, signed and resigned. The sediment of manipulations participates in what Alois Riegl defined as the intrinsic value related to the age of the work itself.³

For modern works, and particularly for Futurist artworks that explicitly and voluntarily define themselves as modern, the very idea of modernity seems to have obliterated the perception of the passing of time, as if a Futurist work were by definition not subject to time and to the manipulation that its custodians have imposed upon it. This is partly due to the value we place on the conceptual moment in the definition of modernism. The modern work crystallizes the artist’s conception. Its material realization is often presented as a secondary, albeit necessary, aspect that cannot and should not prove problematic so as not to alter the ideational centrality of modern art.⁴ Moreover, as opposed to the conservation of contemporary art, which seems to age quickly in front of our eyes, that of modern art has elicited less critical interest.⁵

Modern art seems to reside, therefore, upon a material and temporal amnesia. For Futurism, this material and temporal amnesia is something that also results from the historical timeframe in which these artworks were born and started to age. Futurist artworks lived at the time of a revolution in conservation and restoration practices. If in the nineteenth century, we could disassemble a polyptych, cut up a panel, or wash a canvas with caustic soda, in the twentieth century, these practices were openly criticized as anachronistic and rejected.⁶ Progressively, we acquired the perspective that the manipulation of artworks was the result of a bygone era, something that would not stand the judgment of our (Futurist) times. On top of that, the Futurists themselves loudly refused the concept of age value in their manifestos. In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote: “Let the joyful arsonists, with their charred fingers, come! Here they are! Here they are! . . . Come on! Set fire to the shelves of the libraries! . . . Turn the course of the canals to flood the museums! . . . Oh, the joy of seeing the old, glorious canvases, torn and faded, float adrift on those waters!”⁷ This celebratory cleansing of the past by those in the present was not intended to spare the Futurists themselves. Marinetti overtly summoned the image of a new generation that would “throw us in the wastebasket,” in an incessant cycle of destruction and cleansing of artistic remains.⁸ In the Manifesto of Futurist Architecture (1914), we read: “Futurist architecture will be fundamentally short-lived and transitory. Our houses will last less time than we do. Every generation will have to make its own city anew.”⁹

While ostentatiously embracing this willed obsolescence, over the years the Futurists engaged in more subtle practices of updating. Already in the 1910s, they systematically reissued their manifestos with minute corrections, revealing their evolving theoretical concerns.¹⁰ They are also known for correcting their own artworks. In 1912, before exhibiting in Paris, they repainted several of their canvases to discard any naturalistic or traditional details.¹¹ The most famous of these Futurist updates is probably Carlo Carrà’s The Swimmers (1910–12; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh). The women, now sporting colorful bathing suits, were originally portrayed naked.¹² In 1914, just a few weeks after the publication of his book Futurist Painting Sculpture, Umberto Boccioni addressed the issue of the temporality of artworks, and of Futurist artworks in particular. He wrote: “When we look at a masterpiece—and nobody really knows which works merit that name—we should recall that it is the lone survivor among thousands of masterpieces that have been aborted or have disappeared, and that even within the life of its creator, although it may represent a moment of completeness, it may also not be his best moment, at least not in this sense, that he is discovering or tracing out something new. The work called a masterpiece has remained alive for thousands of unknown or accidental reasons, alone among thousands of sketches, drafts, and paintings which have vanished for reasons equally unknown and accidental. Each masterpiece, we should recall, is transmitted to us through many generations, each of which has added its own stratum of meaning to the work in the form of poetry or commentary, a poetic sediment that renders the work unrecognizable.”¹³ For Boccioni, therefore, the material history of an artwork was interconnected with the history of its critical interpretation, potentially leading to an accumulation of misunderstandings.

The Futurists’ stark refusal of the idea of conservation, mixed with twentieth-century innovations in conservation practices, might suggest that Futurist works are somehow naturally protected from their material frailty and from any significant form of manipulation. However, we can indeed find striking examples of the contrary. The restoration, or repeated restorations, of Umberto Boccioni’s Dynamism of a Speeding Horse + Houses (1915; Peggy Guggenheim Collection; Venice) has rightly been called “problematic.”¹⁴ When, in 1986, the museum decided to restore the work, scholars and technicians engaged in a lively debate on whether to eliminate or maintain the elements that had been added during a previous restoration done in the 1940s. In a rare initiative, the debate itself was later made public along with a detailed report of the methodological choices that accompanied the restoration process.¹⁵ More recently, the manner in which Futurism’s founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, displayed Boccioni’s horse in his home has raised new questions about its original conception and construction.¹⁶ Indeed, this drive to pinpoint the artist’s original concept has somewhat shrouded the technical dead-ends in Boccioni’s work. Scholars have tackled the artist’s sculpture as a seamless manifestation of his paintings and theories. When the current appearance of a work does not match historical photographs, as in the case of Boccioni’s sculpture Antigrazioso (1913; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome), art historians have been keener to hypothesize the existence of several originals, instead of considering the possibility that Boccioni himself might have reworked or repaired his work. This critical attitude has, in turn, obfuscated the artist’s struggle with the material challenges posited by the medium he chose, and the clues of the subsequent changes and reworkings that he undertook, something that we can truly retrace only by approaching Boccioni’s theoretical development in light of the very material history of his artworks.¹⁷

That said, the frailty of Boccioni’s works appears to be almost a byproduct of his unique experimental approach, and scholars seem resistant to the idea that other Futurist works might have endured such radical challenges and manipulation.

But let’s get back to Prampolini’s polymaterials.

An eventful journey

Upon opening the crates, the Winstons became aware of some damage that the works had sustained during the Atlantic crossing. There is a letter dated July 24, 1958, on the subject in the archive of Lydia Winston Malbin, housed at Beinecke Library, Yale University, which the Winstons sent to Alessandro Prampolini. It is a veritable list of grievances:

1. Auto Matismo - Poli Materico “A”
size 31 by 38 centimeters. This collage was received with a sea horse broken and the sponge and rubber piece loose, and it had dropped to the bottom of the painting.

2. Auto Matismo - Poli Materico “C”
size 33 by 42 centimeters. The plaster is broken across the painting and is chipped out around the supports where it is attached.

3. Auto Matismo - Poli Materico “F”
size 41 by 31 centimeters. This was the collage that was shown at the Biennale in 1942. The glass ball is broken. However, this particular painting is in better condition than the number 1 and number 2.¹⁸

The correspondence between the Winstons and Prampolini and the subsequent documents attesting to the restoration of the works while in the collection of Lydia Winston Malbin allow us to understand what kind of interventions took place on the polymaterials. They also allow us (and this is perhaps of most interest to the art historian) to learn about some of the particularities of the artworks themselves that only the process of reconstruction, disassembly, and reassembly can reveal.

On August 6, 1958, Alessandro Prampolini replied to Harry Winston. He sent a letter with several attachments: three photographs of the works, taken before their departure, and an envelope with seven bird feathers (fig. 4). First, however, Prampolini corrected the collector regarding the titles. Winston had inadvertently referred to Automatismo Polimaterico C as Automatismo Polimaterico A and vice versa.

Of Automatismo Polimaterico C (fig. 2), dated 1940, Prampolini wrote that neither he nor Piero Dorazio, who had assisted him in the sale, could figure out where the seahorse might have come off. In the photo he had of this work, a copy of which was included with the letter, no seahorse can be seen. “Perhaps it was glued to the white disc on the lower right,” he stated and included a drawing on transparencies to explain where it might have been.¹⁹ In any case, Alessandro had decided to contact an old friend in Capri, who had originally procured seahorses for his brother, and planned to mail one to the Winstons as soon as he obtained it. Prampolini added that the piece of sponge and the rubber tubing should be reattached following the photograph.

A later photograph found in the Winston Malbin archive shows Automatismo Polimaterico C reassembled and almost completely identical to the image sent by Prampolini. It shows a small metallic disk (the balance wheel of a watch) toward the center of the work, to the left of the white disk. This wheel is today still attached to the work itself, but it is missing from Prampolini’s original photograph. Several other gearwheels are inserted in small white disks, probably made of plaster and scattered in the upper right-hand section. In both photographs in the Winston Malbin archive, a mainspring is positioned above them. Today, this element appears repositioned below, underneath the five white disks farther to the right. A few marks in the background are harder to detect: They are groups of deep incisions that, along with some small but deep holes, previously enlivened the surface and enhanced the material effect of the background.²⁰ We will come back to these markings, and to the restoration of the three works, but it is important for the moment to stress that some confusion remains even today among scholars regarding not only the specific materials used by Prampolini in his polimaterici but also the nature of this type of work. In the 1973 catalogue of the Winston Malbin Collection, in fact, they are identified simply as a “collage” or “collage and oil on board”; while in the 1992 retrospective dedicated to Prampolini and curated by Enrico Crispolti, they figure, in a similar reductionist fashion, as “polimaterico on board.”²¹ As mentioned above, in his correspondence, Harry Winston referred to Automatismo Polimaterico A as a work made of plaster, while the 1990 catalogue of the Malbin collection sale lists it as “collage on ceramic.”²²

Exhibitions and putative genealogies

These works went on to experience a somewhat unexpected comeback in the United States, when interest in the practice of collage and assemblage flourished following the emergence of the neo-avant-gardes. Automatismo Polimaterico C, in particular, was the only one selected from the polimaterici owned by the Winstons to feature in the 1961 Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) show The Art of Assemblage. On this occasion, we find a first attempt to identify the elements scattered across its surface. The catalogue lists “oil on cardboard with rubber tubing, clock works, mica, sponge, bone.”²³ The exhibition offered a reductive interpretation of the Italian Futurists’ involvement with collage; in the words of the curator William Seitz, “unlike the cubists their aims could not .… lead to an examination of textures, materials, or objects.”²⁴ Polimaterico C offered enough in terms of textures and materials. The nonnatural objects on its surface (tubing and clock gears) merge almost seamlessly with the marine theme of the composition, creating a subtle contrast between the mechanical and the natural. We glimpse a jellyfish, moving seamlessly. Only at a second glance do we perceive the mechanical apparatus. The complex layered structure of Prampolini’s work destabilizes the distinction between surface and background—something that critics such as Seitz, accustomed to traditional Cubist collages, perhaps found difficult to decipher. Furthermore, in order to avoid the issue of the Futurists’ involvement with the Fascist regime, Seitz erased the very idea of a survival of Futurism after WWI, stating that the Futurists’ innovations were carried out “after the decline of futurism[,] by the dadas, who were pacifistic and internationally minded rather than nationalistic and war-like.”²⁵ Therefore, Prampolini’s 1941 Automatismo Polimaterico C found itself somewhat isolated, hung on the side of the wall connecting a room housing pasted paper collages—including Kazimir Malevich’s 1914 Lady at the Advertising Pillar and Henri Laurens’s 1918 Seated Woman—to another room that displayed E.L.T. Mesens’s 1960 Mouvement Immobile (pasted printed papers with ink on cardboard), Ceri Richards’s 1938 The Variable Costerwoman (painted wood, perforated galvanized metal, brass, pearl buttons, rope, and string on partially painted wooden boards), and Lee Bontecou’s 1960 Untitled (steel, canvas, cloth, and wire).²⁶

In 1974, all three of Prampolini’s polymaterials were shown in Detroit in the exhibition Cobra and Contrasts, dedicated to works by Cobra from the Winston collection. Once again erasing the artist’s engagement with Futurism, but capitalizing on the theoretical framework of the earlier MoMA show, the Cobra exhibition referred to Prampolini’s polimaterici as “late Surrealist works [that] are related to Surrealism and are not unlike the collages of Daniel Spoerri.”²⁷ In line with Spoerri’s trap paintings, in Detroit Prampolini became not only a late surrealist but also a proto-neo-Dadaist. Spoerri’s assemblages, however, are situations created by chance and simply fixed by the artist for future memory. As he explained, his “traps” are

objects found randomly in situations of disorder or order .… attached to their support in exactly the position they are in. The only thing that changes is the position with respect to the observer: the result is declared a picture, the horizontal becomes vertical. [For] example: the remains of a breakfast are attached to the table and, together with the table, hung on the wall.²⁸

It would be hard to imagine that Prampolini’s polimaterici were merely intended to reflect the way in which a group of objects was scattered about when the artist found them.

The question remains: What is automatic in his works? Automatism is a term that the Italian artist connected to the concept of psychic automatism, defined by the writings of both Marinetti and Breton.²⁹ It is a form of automatism removed from the idea of chance. As Prampolini explained in his 1944 book Arte polimaterica (Verso un’arte collettiva?) (Polymaterial art [Toward a collective form of art?]): The artist who makes polimaterici should create on the basis of intuition and sensitivity, “in a state of almost mediumistic automatism.”³⁰ As opposed to the Surrealists, who often employed reality for what Prampolini terms a “polemical goal,” his automatism is attuned to the evocative value of matter itself, in its “immanent, biological value.”³¹ Sometimes the work can even incorporate an actual, entire organism.

Prampolini reworked several of his earlier “cosmic idealism” compositions through his polimaterici.³² On the occasion of his 1941 solo show at the Galleria di Roma, the artist made clear that his polimaterici reflected the idea of “metamorphosis,” a continuous variation on the theme of the “transmutation of matter” (divenire della materia).³³ According to Prampolini, the inclusion of veritable matter in the works led to “the formation of a new aesthetic, a biological-plastic aesthetic” (estetica bioplastica). Appropriating Boccioni’s coded term “plastic,” Prampolini explained that new scientific experiments had brought about a new aesthetic understanding of matter:

This autonomous interpretation of new aspects of nature revealed by science also helps us create a new plastic nomenclature. The technique of Futurist painting had already led to the solidification of impressionism, to line-forces, to the interpenetration of planes, to the synthesis of form-color. Today, with forms that are immanent [in our modern world], developing and living in new atmospheres and new organisms, we have arrived at what I call plastic analogies.³⁴

Within this conceptual and lexical framework, the polimaterici are works in which “the use of objects and different materials, in their natural state, aim to create a new emotional dimension, spurred by the contrast among them.”³⁵

Prampolini tried repeatedly to find an appropriate definition for this type of artwork. Between 1937 and 1941, he appropriated the expression “plastic state of mind,” drawn from Boccioni’s 1914 book Futurist Painting Sculpture.³⁶ Then he made use of “plastic analogies,” a term coined in the 1910s by Boccioni and fellow Futurist Gino Severini. Finally, he christened his work “polymaterial automatism.” Prampolini dealt assiduously with these theoretical and lexical issues. There are no less than five rounds of drafts for the volume he published in 1944, Polymaterial Art (Toward a Collective Art?).³⁷

The fact that these works found themselves in an American collection in the second part of the twentieth century led to a kind of “engulfment” of their artistic identity by formal and interpretive categories proper to the international neo-avant-gardes. The Winstons needed to present a coherent theoretical genealogy for their collection, so from time to time the polimaterici had to justify themselves in the face of the latest artistic trends. It would be important, however, to see if this critical attitude had any impact on the material life of the artworks. Did the overwriting of Spoerri on Prampolini’s works result in certain choices on the part of their restorers?

In a comparison of the photographs of Automatismo Polimaterico C sent in 1958 by Alessandro Prampolini with those held in the Winston Malbin archive, I identified some marks in the background in the form of incisions and holes that are today less visible and appear to have been almost erased. These were minute notations, and could have been rightfully discarded if they did not put this 1940 work by Prampolini in correspondence with the unrelenting and much more visible way in which Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana later tackled the material surface of their works.³⁸ Indeed Seitz’s The Art of Assemblage exhibition featured two of Burri’s earliest works: Sack Number 5 (1953; Vinavil® and tempera on burlap and cloth) and All Black (1956; Vinavil® glue, tempera, rags on canvas). Both works are illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, which also cites an excerpt from James Johnson Sweeney’s 1955 essay on the artist: “Collage with Burri has taken on another dimension. It is no longer a primarily compositional activity, a jeu d’esprit or a gesture, he has given it a living quality, a sensuous character.”³⁹ We know that Burri started working in the 1950s, following Prampolini’s example of involvement with matter, and that Prampolini overtly supported the younger artist until his death in 1956.⁴⁰ Prampolini’s new take on the concept of the “transmutation of matter” and “metamorphosis,” as mentioned above, led him to redefine his artistic practice in a distinctly procedural way: Matter is, in itself, constantly subject to change, and the artist operates on it and with it in order to transform it and reveal its multiple potentiality.⁴¹ He redefined the nature of collage by dissolving its compositional concern into a sustained reworking not only of the materials glued to the surface, but of the material nature of the support itself. Indeed, in the polimaterici, the distance between object and background is erased. It is hard not to notice how, in the end, Sweeney celebrated Burri for the same engagement with living matter that Prampolini had previously laid bare. Sweeney omitted any reference to Prampolini, and Burri, in this American show, became the initiator of a postwar turn toward bioplasticism. “What would have remained with the cubists a partial intensification of a painted composition .… becomes with Burri a living organism,” Sweeney wrote.⁴²

It appears that the markings on the surface of Automatismo Polimaterico C were smoothed out inadvertently by the restorers, pushing the work to the realm that the critics had identified for it: in Sweeney’s terms, that of a cubist composition or a surrealist jeu d’esprit. While the connection between Prampolini and Burri was known in Italian art circles, and acknowledged by critics there, the relative lack of attention to the artist in the United States left him open to the interests and critical categories of local curators. It also contributed to isolate Burri and Fontana from their immediate historical precedents, leading one contemporary scholar to speak of Italian art of the 1950s as something that developed in the “notable absence of Futurism.”⁴³

Futurist materiality and restoration materials

The Winston Malbin archive reveals that private works such as Prampolini’s polimaterici were routinely restored in conjunction with their display in exhibitions organized by American museums. Therefore, it would be worthwhile to further examine the interactions between modern art’s critical assessment and its restoration. In order to do so, we might want to return to the case of the detached seahorse: the seahorse that the Winstons had found along with Automatismo Polimaterico C and that Alessandro Prampolini had assured them did not belong to that work. Enrico Prampolini had used a seahorse in another polimaterico, created around 1937 and exhibited at the Galleria di Roma in 1941 and at the Venice Biennale the following year. It was titled first Stato d’animo plastico marino and then Automatismo Polimaterico B (fig. 5) and consists of different materials, including a small float and a seahorse.

Echoing the 1961 MoMA Assemblage show, the 1974 Detroit exhibition devoted to Cobra focused on the individual objects inserted in Prampolini’s work. Automatismo Polimaterico C was renamed Sea Theme (Polimaterico Automatismo C), and to further clarify the “sea” reference in the new title, the catalogue reported as a fact the hypothesis disproved by Alessandro: “replacement for sea horse, broken in shipment, supplied by Alessandro Prampolini but not as yet installed.”⁴⁴ Little to no attention was given to how Prampolini had engaged with the texture of the background. Similarly, the sinuous and smooth Polimaterico Automatismo A (1940) was described as a “collage of painted wood, bone, string and glass Christmas ornaments,” while the highly texturized Polimaterico Automatismo F (1941) was identified as a “collage and oil on board with feathers, leaves, cork bark, cotton, wool, paper, colored wire and glass Christmas ornaments.”⁴⁵ While it is probably true that Prampolini took the small glass balls used in these two works from a box of Christmas decorations, one would be hard pressed to find any symbolism relating to the holiday itself. As noted earlier, the catalogue also explicitly identified them as “Surrealist” and read them in light of Spoerri’s assemblages (“late Surrealist works [that] are related to Surrealism and are not unlike the collages of Daniel Spoerri”).⁴⁶ Prampolini was exhibited in a section of the show devoted to the Dadaists and Surrealists and listed alphabetically between Picabia and Schwitters. Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri figured instead in another section, devoted to Cobra and its contemporaries.⁴⁷

A brief handwritten note dated to 1961 in the Winston Malbin archive seems to suggest that Automatismo Polimaterico C was first restored at the time of the MoMA exhibition. However, from a more comprehensive restoration note written in April 1975 by the conservator of the Guggenheim Museum, Orrin H. Riley, we find proof of the work performed on it. Riley wrote that the artwork was “disassembled and generally cleaned”⁴⁸ and indicated that some parts were flaking off. The surface was originally painted by Prampolini with oil paints, and the base—again according to the restoration documents—consisted of a plywood board. Riley reattached with gelatin the parts of pigment that had lifted over time and mitigated several losses in what is referred to as the “red overlay” with inpainting. This probably minimized the cuts and holes that were originally more visible. Finally, “a special mounting was made to alow [sic] for the concealing of these minute losses.” Riley also gives us an additional glimpse of the complex overlay of materials that Prampolini used in the background of this work, identifying the use of a section of cork (absent from the materials listed in the 1961 and 1974 exhibition catalogues), which had to be reset because it had become separated from the background.

A photograph of Automatismo Polimaterico A in the Winston Malbin archive shows a crack on the lower right side (fig. 1). In the aforementioned letter of August 6, 1958, to Harry Winston, Alessandro Prampolini had suggested restoring the plaster part by gluing a strip of cloth along the slit on the back and creating small plaster additions in the parts surrounding the protruding metal elements on the sides. I could not locate a restoration file for this work, but it seems that it was indeed restored following Alessandro’s advice. Two more recent condition reports for Automatismo polimaterico B, carried out by the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, show similar conservation issues at the corners of the plaster supporting structure.⁴⁹

Finally, regarding Automatismo Polimaterico F (fig. 3), Alessandro Prampolini in 1958 had reminded Winston that the glass ball had originally been broken on purpose by his brother, as Piero Dorazio also recalled. At that point, Alessandro, perhaps fearing for the work’s fate in America, had added, “you should check on the photo if the feather on the upper right is at its place, this one is particularly one of the best polimaterici by Prampolini and I would appreciate if it could be completely restored.”⁵⁰ To this end he had sent an envelope with several bird feathers that could be used to replace the original one if damaged (fig. 4). From a comparison with a more recent photograph in the Winston Malbin archive, it indeed appears that the feather has been replaced. Through the 1975 restoration account, we also learn that the glass ball underwent further disintegration since the 1950s. Riley attempted to salvage and rejoin the fractured parts of the broken ornament. The most minute pieces, which he could not reattach, were placed in an acetate envelope (“glassine”) on the back. Again, the supporting element, a “pressed-wood panel,” had to be reinforced because it had “come close to dry-rot at its corners and margins.”⁵¹

The information contained in these condition and restoration reports is at times at odds with the data on the artist’s mediums found in the exhibition catalogues. The reports call attention to the presence of a plurality of materials, including cork and plaster, used to create a layered system of supporting structures and to multiply textural effects. They also urge scholars to revise the current appraisal of the artist’s modus operandi and suggest that Prampolini’s material experiments were moving away from traditional collage aesthetics and opening the road for the procedural innovations of Burri and Fontana.

Old and new sequins

Prampolini’s feathers are not the only objects originally glued to Futurist works that were replaced through the direct intervention of the artist or his family members. They are also not the only objects to cast new light on the specific characteristics of Futurist collages.

According to the records in the Winston Malbin archive, this seems to have been a common practice. It is the case, for example, for Gino Severini’s Mare=Danzatrice. Dancer beside the Sea (1913-14, private collection), the first Futurist work to enter the Winston collection, in 1951. A number of documents from 1960–61 testify to the restoration carried out on the work by Jean Volkmer, painting conservator at MoMA, on the occasion of the museum’s 1961 exhibition dedicated to Futurism. From these we learn that almost all the sequins glued to the surface of the painting were replaced with other sequins that Severini himself had procured for the Winstons.⁵² The replacement became necessary because the original adhesive, according to Volkmer’s account, was an aqueous substance that caused the film of the yellow underlying color to lift, making it unstable and uncovering the brown preparation of the canvas. Volkmer reported that Severini had used two different techniques to glue the sequins together. Either he had simply inserted them into the still-fresh color (especially in the blue areas), or he had attached them with a thick brushstroke of glue over the sequin itself. The damage to the original sequins was of two kinds: not only simple detachment, but also discoloration and browning of the reflective surface.⁵³ Volkmer identified the missing sequins using an old photograph and the marks still existing in the pictorial film. The new sequins were bonded with a polyvinyl acetate emulsion and then covered with a layer of the same compound.⁵⁴ However, if we compare different photographs of the work in the Winston Malbin archive, it seems that Severini did not send enough sequins as some appear to be missing.⁵⁵ A passage from one of Volkmer’s letters to the Winstons also clarifies the fate of at least one other Severini work that did not have as much luck: “I am delighted that you have the original sequins, for we could not find an American version of our “Bal Tabarin” sequins, and I had to use nasty substitutes which did not compare with the originals.”⁵⁶

The 1961 Futurist exhibition at MoMA led to a full-fledged campaign to restore works from the Winston Collection. Volkmer corrected “the crack pattern in the canvas” of Giacomo Balla’s The Stairway of Farewells (Saying Goodbye) (c. 1909-10, private collection), and filled in some damaged areas of the surface of Work (c. 1902, private collection) with plaster. She also identified an “extra signature” on this painting, which she suggested should be X-rayed. In addition, Volkmer added a layer to the canvas of Luigi Russolo’s Perfume (1910, MART, VAF-Stiftung Collection, Rovereto) and removed two nails. Finally, she removed a “badly discolored” layer of varnish from the painting’s surface. Perhaps this is why the color effect of the work today is much more striking than that of other works by the artist.⁵⁷

Russolo’s varnish, as well as the different techniques that Severini used to insert sequins in works, reveal how concerned the Futurists were at that time with the search for luminosity and reflectivity. It also shows how choices in conservation taken in the last fifty years have impacted the current appearance of these works.

The most striking example of this is probably offered by Giacomo Balla’s Injection of Futurism (c. 1918, private collection). In this work, the pictorial material was already remarkably fragile; some parts were in pencil, never painted, and some showed the raw canvas. Volkmer started to clean it with water and, in some areas, a detergent mixture. She decided to apply a colorless plastic resin varnish and insert a transparent mylar sheet.⁵⁸ During a second restoration twenty years later, while filling in some cracks on the surface with plaster and pigments, Volkmer came to the conclusion that the work was not created with oil paint alone but with (unspecified) “mixed media.”⁵⁹ While she planned to pass this information on to curator Anne d’Harnoncourt, it was not reported in subsequent publications. The work has rarely been exhibited, and scholars have continued to list it simply as an “oil on canvas.”⁶⁰

A similar situation is evidenced by Volkmer’s account of her work on Balla’s Iridescent Compenetration (generally dated 1912 but probably created later; private collection): “The paint film, especially the white, is extremely soluble in water. And on top of this paint film the artist has used red wax crayon, which is extremely soluble in most solvents. This is a terrible combination.”⁶¹

The “inherent vice” of cutting-edge research

But the most valuable and perhaps most impressive information is what the Winston Malbin archive reports on Balla’s sculpture Boccioni’s Fist (1916-18; private collection).⁶² In her 1961 report, Volkmer indicated that the sculpture was made of two pieces. She explained:

The top part was meant to be removable. The bottom was intended to be attached to the base; but the screws have given way with time, and the sculpture is loose from the base. Some insect or worm had attacked the piece, leaving tiny holes here and there in the wooden areas. Fumigation has been applied, but no trace of insects was found. They had probably left when the work left the climate that they enjoyed. Test cleaning indicated that the piece is quite dirty. The tape reinforcements at the various joints have either torn or pulled away in many places. The wooden base is starting to crack in one place, and it is curling upward slightly, for there is no sealer on the underside of the wood. ⁶³

To remedy the lifting of the wood, Volkmer planned to apply a coat of shellac, fill the insect holes with colored wax, insert new pegs at the base, add a wood reinforcement, and apply a resin varnish in an opaque spray to protect the painted surface and intensify the color a little. In June, she reported that she had removed the additions of adhesive strips that did not fit with the rest of the work, and replaced them with the same material originally used by the artist, pieces of good rag paper, “cut to conform with the sweep of the sculpture’s movement.”⁶⁴ The paper was colored to match the rest of the adjacent, original painting. In the end, no wooden support was added. In February 1962, when the MoMA exhibition had just closed in Los Angeles and the work was back in Detroit at the Winstons’ residence, Volkmer was called in for further repair. However, as she wrote to the owners, MoMA refused to pay for the damage sustained during shipment because the museum did not feel that this was a valid insurance claim, “but rather an inherent vice condition. The materials used by the artist in this piece are not stable, and they could not be expected to withstand the changes in climate incurred during the loan.” While agreeing to travel to Detroit to restore the statue, she added: “This work is too sensitive to travel, we have discovered the unhappy way.”⁶⁵

In 1976, the Guggenheim’s Orrin Riley also intervened on the sculpture, which had fallen from a height of about 76 centimeters and was deformed in the central part of the top piece. To restore it, the top piece was detached and reattached. It is not clear from the account how Riley reinforced it by using strips of linen.⁶⁶ A little over a decade later, Lydia Winston Malbin had the sculpture returned to MoMA because the internal structure appeared to have collapsed in on itself.⁶⁷

As in the case of Injection of Futurism, Boccioni’s Fist, remains visible almost exclusively through the image published in the catalogue of the Winston Malbin auction sale in 1991. This virtual presence, in the face of the object’s inherent fragility, is foreshadowed in a 1973 letter. On that occasion, Lydia Winston even suggested to Norbert Lynton of the British Arts Council, which was organizing an exhibition titled Pioneers of Modern Sculpture, that they should publish an illustration taken from an old black-and-white photograph, but appropriately colored, to obviate the fact that Boccioni’s Fist could not be exhibited or even, it seems, photographed in its state at the time.⁶⁸

Comings and goings

One final question remains. In the case of Prampolini’s Automatismo polimaterico C, how did the broken seahorse cross the ocean?

We know that Enrico Prampolini had included a seahorse in Stato d’animo
plastico marino (Automatismo Polimaterico B; fig.
5). We also know that his brother Alessandro and Piero Dorazio did not recall the presence of a seahorse in Automatismo Polimaterico C and that the photograph Alessandro had of this work showed no seahorse. It has never been noted that, on a formal level, Automatismo Polimaterico B and C resemble each other remarkably. In both, a circular element on the left (a white ring buoy in B and a sponge section in C) corresponds to a smaller, circular element on the right (a ball in B and a flat disk in C). Above, between the two circular elements, there are contrasting elements in both: a round, pierced piece of wood in B; a translucent blue surface, resembling the head of a jellyfish, in C (fig. 2). In Automatismo Polimaterico B, the seahorse is positioned between the two circular elements, while in Automatismo Polimaterico C this space is empty but ideally enclosed by the line created by the rubberized cable or tube.⁶⁹ If both had had a horse in the center and one had come off in Automatismo Polimaterico C, before Enrico Prampolini’s death, it would have been his choice not to restore the work. It is possible, however, that the inclusion of the broken seahorse in the case of the three polimaterici purchased by the Winstons was fortuitous.

From the 1942 Venice Biennale catalogue, it is known that Prampolini exhibited at least two polimaterici at the event.⁷⁰ The aforementioned letter of July 24, 1958, from Harry Winston to Alessandro makes clear that one of the two works exhibited there was Automatismo Polimaterico F. Winston must have gleaned the information from the label pasted on the back of the work. Consulting the Biennale archives, we find that the other work exhibited was Automatismo Polimaterico B.⁷¹ If Prampolini exhibited only Automatismo Polimaterico B and F in Venice, how could a seahorse have ended up in the Winstons’ crate more than a decade later?

An old photograph of Automatismo Polimaterico B, preserved in the file dedicated to Prampolini at the Venice Biennale archives and dated around 1942, shows the work as we know it: a small ball on the right, the pierced piece of wood in the upper part, the white ring buoy on the left. Only one detail in the old Biennale photo appears to be oddly out of place: the seahorse. In the Biennale photograph, its tail is straighter, almost vertical. Looking more carefully, it is evident that in Automatismo Polimaterico B the seahorse from the 1942 photo has been replaced with another. The new seahorse is very similar in size to the older one, but its body creates a slightly different line, slanted to the left (fig. 5). We do not know when this substitution took place, but it is possible that, on its return from Venice, the seahorse in Automatismo Polimaterico B had become detached. Perhaps, inside the crate, it broke, fell, and became entangled in the frame of the other work, later purchased by the Winstons. Or the detachment took place in Venice, and a less than careful attendant perhaps inserted the two fragments of the broken seahorse into the crate used to ship the polimaterici back to Prampolini—the crate that was later reused by the artist’s brother to ship the works to the Winstons. An alternative theory may be that the attendant more carefully inserted them into the frame of the wrong artwork. Only years later, with the jolts of the transatlantic voyage, the seahorse that was stuck and forgotten in the wrong place might have reappeared at the bottom of the crate.

The precise details of how the seahorse came to be in the crate remain a mystery. But its story, retraced from a few lines in a collector’s letter, has allowed us to grasp the indelible link between Futurism’s success in the global art market over the past seventy years, its canonization in the world’s major public and private collections, and the choices made in the restoration of its artworks. The technical challenges posited by these works, which often stemmed from the Futurists’ marked technical experimentation, revealed the limitations not only of the conservation philosophies but also of the critical assessments that have succeeded one another over the decades.

Moreover, today’s restorations, made very sophisticated by scientific and technological advances, are faced with a stratigraphy of interventions that is often difficult to manage or correct. Therefore, engaging with the archival documents left behind by the sequence of restorations that a work has undergone becomes essential. These documents guide the efforts of the modern restorer, but they should also make critics and the public aware of the temporal instability of the work of art. Knowing its material history allows us to understand the distance between a work’s present appearance and its original one, and sometimes between different moments of “originality,” sanctioned on several occasions by the hands of the artist restoring his own work. As Boccioni suggested in 1914, scholars must delve further into that “stratum of meaning” that time has impressed onto the work, the “sediment that renders the work unrecognizable.”⁷² The case of the documents in the Winston Malbin collection is perhaps unique in the history of Futurism because of their relative accessibility in a research library. But how much of this information becomes part of the wealth of knowledge offered by catalogues raisonnés, exhibition catalogues, and public and private collections’ databases?

1. Information about these works and their purchase can be found in the Lydia Winston Malbin Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, YCAL MSS 280 (hereafter Winston Malbin Papers). The three works were sold at auction after Lydia Winston Malbin’s death and are currently in private collections. I would like to thank Massimo Prampolini and Elena Cazzaro of the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee–Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, the Beinecke Library, Davide Morandi of the Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati, and Gabriele Salvaterra of the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (MART) for their help with my research, and the three anonymous readers of Materia for their suggestions. ↩︎

2. Anthony W. Smith, “Bleaching in Paper Conservation,” in Restaurator: International Journal for the Preservation of Library and Archival Material 33, nos. 3–4 (2012): 223–48. See also The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art, ed. Gerard W. R. Ward (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), where the technique of chemical bleaching is discussed for the restoration of drawings (p. 170), ceramics (p. 98), and textiles (p. 709). ↩︎

3. Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin (1903),” trans. Kurt W. Forster and Diane Ghirardo, Oppositions, no. 25 (1982): 21–51. ↩︎

4. Rosalind Krauss addressed this topic, with reference to sculpture, in her The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985). For a critical assessment of this paradigm in light of the issue of posthumous casts, see Maria Elena Versari, “Recasting the Past: On the Posthumous Fortune of Futurist Sculpture,” Sculpture Journal 23, no. 3 (2014): 349–68. ↩︎

5. See, however, Ursula Shädler–Saub and Angela Weyer, eds., Theory and Practice in the Conservation of Modern Contemporary Art: Reflections on the Roots and the Perspectives (London: Archetype, 2010). ↩︎

6. See Marco Ciatti, “Science and Conservation at the Florentine O.D.P. and Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch,” in Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface, ed. Antonio Sgamellotti, Brunetto Giovanni Brunetti, and Costanza Milani (Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2014), 253. See also “Pulimento dei dipinti ad olio,” in L’arte del restauro: il restauro dei dipinti nel sistema antico e moderno secondo le opere di Secco-Suardo e del Prof. R. Mancia, ed. Gino Piva (Milan: Hoepli, 1988), 146–49, 161–62. ↩︎

7. F. T. Marinetti, “Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism,” in Umberto Boccioni, Futurist Painting Sculpture: Plastic Dynamism, trans. Richard Shane Agin and Maria Elena Versari, ed. Maria Elena Versari (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2016), 164. ↩︎

8. Marinetti, 164. ↩︎

9. Antonio Sant’Elia, “Futurist Architecture,” in Futurism: An Anthology, ed. Lawrence Riley, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 201. ↩︎

10. See Maria Elena Versari, introduction to Boccioni, Futurist Painting Sculpture, 1–55, 281–83. ↩︎

11. Fabio Benzi, Il Futurismo (Milan: Federico Motta, 2008), 57. ↩︎

12. Sharon Hirsh, “Carlo Carrà’s The Swimmers,” in Arts Magazine 53, no. 5 (1979): 122–29. For Carrà’s practice of updating his works, see Niccolò D’Agati, “Carlo Carrà, 1911–1913: Simultaneità e Ritmi d’oggetti; rimaneggiamenti e puntualizzazioni cronologiche,” Critica d’Arte 78 (January–June 2020): 69–84. For an innovative take on the importance of scientific investigation in the study of Futurist art, see Roberta Cremoncini and Mattia Patti, eds., More Than Meets the Eye: New Research on the Estorick Collection, ed. (London: Estorick Foundation, 2015). ↩︎

13. Umberto Boccioni, “Absolute Motion + Relative Motion + Dynamism,” in Riley, Poggi, and Whitman, Futurism: An Anthology, 192–93. ↩︎

14. Sergio Angelucci and Philip P. Rylands, “Umberto Boccioni, ‘Dinamismo di un cavallo in corsa + case’: un restauro problematico,” Bollettino d’Arte 77, no. 76 (1992): 133–42. ↩︎

15. See Piero Pacini, “Un inedito e un ‘restauro’ di Boccioni,” Critica d’arte, nos. 154–56 (1977): 150–64; Angelucci and Rylands, “Umberto Boccioni”; Sergio Angelucci, “Dinamismo di un cavallo in corsa + case: una ricostruzione e una rilettura,” in Umberto Boccioni: Dinamismo di un cavallo in corsa + case, ed. Philip P. Rylands (Venice: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, 1996), 25–41). ↩︎

16. Federica Rovati, “Opere di Umberto Boccioni tra 1914 e 1915,” Prospettiva, no. 112 (2003): 44–65. ↩︎

17. I have offered some suggestions on these issues in “Recasting the Past”; and more recently in “On the Unicity of Forms,” in Boccioni no Brasil/Boccioni in Brazil: Reassessing Unique Forms of Continuity in Space and Its Material History, ed. Ana Gonçalves Magalhães and Rosalind McKeever (São Paulo: Edusp/MAC, 2022), 103–46. ↩︎

18. Harry Winston to Alessandro Prampolini, July 24, 1958, Winston Malbin Papers, box 13, folder 121. ↩︎

19. Alessandro Prampolini to Harry Winston, August 6, 1958, Winston Malbin Papers, box 13, folder 121. ↩︎

20. The incisions are quite visible in the photograph sent by Prampolini. They are located on the upper left side of the work, above the round sponge and underneath the upper four circular elements (a horizontal incision), on the lower left side (a curved incision), in the far right upper corner (a series of three, short, vertical markings), and in the lower center (a diagonal incision). Deep, narrow holes are still visible on the left-hand side and in the lower center. ↩︎

21. See, for instance, the entry “4/P/45 AUTOMATISMO POLIMATERICO C,” in the catalogue Prampolini dal Futurismo all’Informale (Rome: Carte Segrete, 1992), 328; and the entries for Prampolini in the catalogue Futurism: A Modern Focus; The Lydia and Harry Lewis Winston Collection (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1973), 240. Of the three polimaterici listed in the Winston catalogue, only Automatismo Polimaterico F offers a minimum of additional information, listing the support and the presence of oil pigments (“collage and oil on board”; p. 240). ↩︎

22. Sotheby’s, New York, The Collection of Lydia Winston Malbin, May 16, 1990, 80. ↩︎

23. William Chapin Seitz, The Art of Assemblage (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961), 162 ↩︎

24. Seitz, 26. ↩︎

25. Seitz, 30. ↩︎

26. See the installation view of the exhibition The Art of Assemblage, October 4, 1961–November 12, 1961, Photographic Archive, Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York, IN695.26, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1880?installation_image_index=25. ↩︎

27. Cobra and Contrasts: The Lydia and Harry Lewis Winston Collection (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Art, 1974), 166. ↩︎

28. Stefano Pezzato, ed., Daniel Spoerri, Not by Chance (Prato: Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, 2007), 56. ↩︎

29. Enrico Prampolini, Arte polimaterica (Verso un’arte collettiva?) (Rome: OET Edizioni del Secolo, 1944), 9. ↩︎

30. Prampolini, 9. ↩︎

31. Prampolini, 9. ↩︎

32. Giovanni Lista, Enrico Prampolini, Futurista Europeo (Rome: Carocci, 2013), 248. ↩︎

33. Enrico Prampolini, preface to XLI Mostra della Galleria di Roma con le opere del pittore futurista Enrico Prampolini, repr. in Prampolini dal Futurismo all’Informale, 313. See also Francesco Guzzetti, Enrico Prampolini: opere dal 1926 al 1941 (Milan: ML Fine Art, 2023), 9–41. ↩︎

34. Prampolini, preface to XLI Mostra della Galleria di Roma, 313. ↩︎

35. Prampolini, preface to XLI Mostra della Galleria di Roma, 313. See also Eva Ori, Enrico Prampolini tra arte e architettura: teorie, progetti e arte polimaterica (PhD diss., Università di Bologna, 2014), 133, accessed December 2016, http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/6275/. ↩︎

36. For the “plastic” adaptation of the concept of states of mind, I refer to my essay and the references therein; Versari, introduction to Boccioni, Futurist Painting Sculpture. ↩︎

37. Ori, Enrico Prampolini tra arte e architettura, 129. ↩︎

38. The use of scratches, abrasions, and marks by Prampolini as well as by Fontana and Burri merits further study. See, at least, Luciano Caramel, ed., Prampolini: Burri e la materia attiva (Modena: Fonte D’Abisso, 1989). ↩︎

39. James Johnson Sweeney, Burri (Rome: Galleria L’Obelisco, 1955), cited in Seitz, Art of Assemblage, 136. ↩︎

40. See, in particular, Caramel, Prampolini: Burri e la materia attiva. A 1952 letter in Prampolini’s correspondence shows how the Futurist had helped the younger artist. See Prampolini, Carteggio, 1916–1956 (Rome: Carte Segrete, Rome, 1992), 266. ↩︎

41. In addition to the concept of “transmutation of matter” and “metamorphosis” (see above), Prampolini also appropriated a term from Catholic theology, referring to the process of “transustanziazione” (transubstantiation) of matter, to suggest the transformation of pure matter into artistic matter. See Emily Braun, Megan Fontanella, and Carol Stringari, eds., Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2015), 53. ↩︎

42. Sweeney, Burri, 136. ↩︎

43. Jaleh Mansoor, Marshall Plan Modernism: Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 10. ↩︎

44. Cobra and Contrasts, 166. ↩︎

45. Cobra and Contrasts, 166*.* ↩︎

46. Cobra and Contrasts, 166. ↩︎

47. Cobra and Contrasts, 166, 45, 61. ↩︎

48. Orrin Riley, manuscript note [1975], Winston Malbin Papers, box 13, folder 122. ↩︎

49. Condition reports for Stato d’animo plastico marino (Automatismo polimaterico B), January 23, 2017, and December 3, 2019, Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto Archives. ↩︎

50. Alessandro Prampolini to Harry Winston, August 6, 1958. ↩︎

51. See note 48. ↩︎

52. “Almost all of the sequins had to be replaced.” Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, June 8, 1961, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

53. Volkmer to Lydia Winston, March 27, 1961, Winston Malbin Papers, box 15, folder 134. ↩︎

54. “A poly-vinyl acetate emulsion was used to adhere the new sequins, and these in turn were coated with a transparent layer of poly-vinyl acetate. The picture is lined with fiberglass. Because the sequins do not permit true flattening, the inscription on the back of the original canvas is not as clear as it usually appears in a normal fiberglass lining.” Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, June 8, 1961, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

55. This is evident if one compares the photographs kept in the Winston Malbin Papers, box 15, folder 134. See also the comparison between the sharp image of the work in J. C. Taylor, ed., Futurism (New York: Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1961), 73; and the hard-to-read color image in the Guggenheim’s 1973 catalogue Futurism: A Modern Focus, 191. Given the fact that the MoMA catalogue was printed in Germany and published in May 1961, and that Volkmer was still working on the restoration at that time, we can deduce that MoMA’s 1961 images predate the 1960–61 restorations. ↩︎

56. Volkmer to Lydia Winston, [December 1960], Winston Malbin Papers, box 15, folder 134. The problem of the replacement of sequins in Severini’s works is also evident from a comparison of the current state of Ballerina Blu (1912; Gianni Mattioli Collection) and the photograph of the same work published in the catalogue of the 1961 MOMA exhibition devoted to Futurism, where numerous white spots caused by the detachment of the original sequins can be seen. See J. C. Taylor, ed., Futurism, 2. ↩︎

57. Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, June 8, 1961, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

58. Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, August 20, 1961, Winston Malbin Papers, box 1, folder 11. ↩︎

59. Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, July 9, 1980, Winston Malbin Papers, box 1, folder 11. ↩︎

60. See Fabio Benzi, Giacomo Balla: Genio futurista (Milan: Electa, 2007), 169; and Elena Gigli, 12–29 Futur Balla (Milan: Arte Centro, 2008), 20. ↩︎

61. Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, March 29, 1961, Winston Malbin Papers, box 1, folder 12. On the issue of the dates for Balla’s Compenetrations, and for this work in particular, see Benzi, Il Futurismo, 142–45, and Benzi, “Giacomo Balla e le Compenetrazioni iridescenti: approfondimenti e novità documentarie,” Storia dell’Arte 139, n. 39 (2014): 157-173. ↩︎

62. On the history of the preservation of this work and for the copies that were made of it, see Versari, “Recasting the Past.” ↩︎

63. Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, May 11, 1980, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

64. Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, June 8, 1980, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

65. Volkmer to Lydia and Harry Winston, February 20, 1962, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

66. Orrin H. Riley to Lydia Winston, January 21, 1976, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

67. “To strengthen the sculpture’s inner construction that seems to have collapsed.” Unsigned note dated April 1987, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

68. Lydia Winston Malbin to Norbert Lynton, March 6 and April 6, 1973, Winston Malbin Papers, box 18, folder 166. ↩︎

69. However, Giovanni Lista identifies this element as “metallic rope.” See Lista, Enrico Prampolini, 248. ↩︎

70. XXIII Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte La Biennale di Venezia (Venice: Ferrari, 1942), 240nn139–40 (as Automatismi polimaterici). See Prampolini dal Futurismo all’Informale, 328. ↩︎

71. The subfile devoted to 1942, in the file dedicated to the artist at Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee (ASAC), contains only one photographic reproduction, that of Automatismo Polimaterico B. ↩︎

72. Boccioni, “Absolute Motion + Relative Motion +Dynamism,” 193. ↩︎