(Fondo/Trento 1892–1960 Rovereto)
Mongolfiera sopra New Milford, 1948, oil on canvas, 80 x 105 cm, framed

Provenance:
Galleria d’Arte Poggiali e Forconi, Florence
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Florence, Fortunato Depero. Attraverso il Futurismo. Opere dal 1913 al 1958, Galleria Poggiali e Forconi, 1998, exh. cat. with ill.
Turin, Depero Futurista, Fondazione Palazzo Bricherasio, 19 February – 30 May 2004, exh. cat. p. 136 with ill.

Literature:
M. Scudiero, Il segno di Depero, Edizioni d’Arte Il Castello, 1992, p. 124 with ill.

In the autumn of 1947, Depero made another attempt to establish himself in America. He hoped to break through with ’Buxus’, but ended up spending the winter of 1947–1948, one of the coldest in New York in recent memory, in solitude, almost starving, sleeping in the back of an office.
He found only hostility and closed doors for Futurism and his own work: the wounds of war were still open.
Luckily, in the spring of 1948, his wife also joined him from Italy and they found hospitality in a beautiful villa in New Milford, Connecticut, about 150 miles from New York. There, immersed in rural peace, he found a sense of serenity and was able to work hard. “Nature,” he wrote to a friend, “is simply oceanic here. We are surrounded by hills of exuberant vegetation... We are immersed in a palette of greens and plants of all kinds... All I hear is the rustling leaves of six giant, typical American poplars. Very few cars pass by, because here we are in real countryside with vast estates of pied cattle... To think that yesterday I even painted Rosetta and myself naked on the grass, while in the sky of New Milford a hot air balloon passed by..“

M. Scudiero, D. Magnetti, Depero Futurista, Turin 2004