Galleria Museo “Fortunato Depero”, Rovereto

A unique museum-laboratory in Italy, realizes the project designed by Depero.

The Casa d’Arte Futurista Fortunato Depero is the third branch of the Mart (in addition to those in Trento and Rovereto) and was inaugurated, after a long period of renovation, in January 2009 on the occasion of the centenary of Futurism. It is not just a museum, but a laboratory that fully realizes the project designed by Depero in 1919 and only partially realized in 1959 in the historic building of the Galleria Museo Fortunato Depero, one year before his passing. Next to the room where the large fabric tapestries, which constitute the most precious and original treasure of the entire Depero collection, are displayed, there are spaces dedicated particularly to the years 1917–1918, a period of extraordinary creativity for the young Depero in contact with the international world of Diaghilev’s Russian Ballets, and to the years 1928–1930, the so-called New York period.

A unique example of a Futurist museum realized in Italy by the Futurist himself, the idea was born in 1957, with an agreement stipulated between Depero and the Municipality of Rovereto which, in exchange for the artist’s production, allocated a building from medieval Rovereto, the former Monte di Pietà headquarters, to permanently house the master’s Futurist works. About 3000 objects were left by the artist to the city, including paintings, drawings, fabric and boxwood tapestries, collages, posters and playbills, furniture, toys, and applied art products. The collection also constitutes an excellent overview of the entire Italian Futurism.

The reopening of the venue also completes a museographic path that leads the visitor through the historic center of Rovereto.