(Rome 1898–1974)
Tendenze di idealismo sensoriale, 1919/1920, signed EVOLA, oil on cardboard applied on wood panel, , 61 x 61 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Francesco Tedeschi, Milan, 3/2/2017

The work is registered in the Archivio delle opere di Julius Evola, curated by Carlo Fabrizio Carli

Provenance:
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibited:
Taipei-Taiwan, Race in to the Future: Futurism Centennial Exhibition, curated by Maurizio Scudiero, Chiang Kai-schek Memorial Hall, August/November 2009 (label on the reverse), cat. p. 200 with ill.

Julius Evola (Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola) was born in Rome in 1898 to an aristocratic family of Spanish origin. Despite his strong interest in art and the experiences of thought from early adolescence, the young Evola enrolled in the faculty of engineering, abandoning his studies shortly before graduation due to his disdain for academic titles.

Evola was a controversial figure in the artistic and philosophical postwar landscape.
He expressed himself via painting for some years, and then dedicated himself for the rest of his life to philosophical studies and ideological writing. His friendship with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giacomo Balla, and the circle of Roman Futurists led to an intense period of artistic activity concentrated between 1915 and 1922.

In 1919 Evola took part in the Great Futurist Exhibition at Palazzo Cova, in Milan, followed by the Futurist Exhibition organised by Enrico Prampolini in Geneva in 1920, and then a solo exhibition at the Bragaglia gallery in Rome.
Evola’s pictorial experience can be divided into two periods; the first, up until 1920, is markedly tied to Futurist dynamism, and was defined by Evola himself as “inclinations toward sensory idealism”.

The second period (1920-1922), linked to an intense epistolary exchange with Tristan Tzara, is distinguished by Evola’s adhesion to Dadaism, a movement of which the artist is one of the most important Italian exponents. Nonetheless, in both pictorial phases strong impressions emerge which swing between Viennese secessionism, esotericism and Oriental mysticism in line with contemporary Central European trends in the field of the visual arts, common to Schad, Eggeling, Richter, Taueber, Arp and Itten.