[...] Baldessari introduces a direct element of “reality” within the composition, reconfiguring its characteristics as an advertisement within the narrative context of the work [...]

After training at the Accademia in Venice, Roberto Marcello Baldessari and his family moved to Florence in 1915, where he came into contact with the group of artists revolving around the Caffè Giubbe Rosse and forged friendships with the Futurists working in the city. His adhesion to the movement, already apparent in his works from 1916, was not made official until a year later, in December 1917. His name was in fact listed on the pages of the fortnightly L’Italia Futurista as a member of the “Florentine Futurist painting group”, mentioned alongside the painters Primo Conti, Arnaldo Ginna, Emilio Notte and Ottone Rosai.¹ 

Although the work did not feature in Futurist exhibitions from the period - not even in the ones held during the 1920s and 1930s - Cocomeraia (Watermelon Seller) is one of Baldessari’s most accomplished and significant pieces, especially in the field of collage, which he explored in depth during those years. The composition, which shows a market scene (more specifically a female watermelon seller, accompanied by a boy and a woman seen from behind), can be associated with the research into plastic dynamism developed a few years earlier by Umberto Boccioni, revealing Baldessari’s preference for absorbing the style of the leading Futurists rather than following the line adopted by the Tuscan group.² 

Cocomeraia fits into the tradition of the Futurist collage, which began with the experiments conducted by Carrà and Boccioni from 1914 onwards (with the exception of a one-off earlier piece by Severini) in response to Picasso and Braque’s earlier explorations of Cubism.³ The tradition is updated here by introducing the graphic suggestions of Marinetti’s “words-in-freedom” rendered through the application of pairs or groups of letters, which acquire a potential meaning within the context of the work itself.⁴ 

In addition to the stylistic evidence, inspecting the cuttings - incorporated within the fabric of the painting - can provide us with some useful information for uncovering the genesis of the work and showing the potential applications practised by Baldessari through the use of collage. By inserting the advert for the “G. Peri & C. figli di Eugenio Migone successori” candle and soap business in Florence, placing it in a central and easily legible position, Baldessari introduces a direct element of “reality” within the composition, reconfiguring its characteristics as an advertisement within the narrative context of the work (almost representing a poster or billboard inside the painting). 

Meanwhile, at the bottom, a newspaper article is used to construct the base underlying the composition as a whole, exploiting the visual and chromatic effects of the cutting. This large fragment, positioned horizontally and partly legible, reproduces Giuseppe Ortolani’s article entitled “History of Other Times. Europe against Frederick II”, published in the Florentine weekly Il Marzocco in June 1917.⁵ As well as reiterating Baldessari’s proximity to the Florentine environment,⁶ the identification of the cutting helps us to place the work in time, confirming the date originally added by the artist next to his signature but no longer visible today.⁷ Over and beyond the formal and stylistic aspects (which, as we have mentioned, should be associated with the early developments of the movement), the subject of the Cocomeraia fits fully into the climate of Tuscan Futurist research and its vernacular derivatives. Indeed, Baldessari’s work shows great similarities to the eponymous Watermelon Seller by Primo Conti (fig. 1), also painted in 1917. 

Alessandro Botta

¹ Gruppo pittorico futurista fiorentino 1917, p. 1.

² To this regard, Maria Drudi Gambillo claims that “his [Baldessari’s] works are stylistically much closer to the first signatories of the Futurist manifestos than to the Florentine group” (M. Drudi Gambillo, “Roberto Iras Baldessari”, in Dopo Boccioni 1961, p. 18).

³ On this aspect in particular see F. Rovati, “‘On change son fusil d’épaule’. Collage cubisti e futuristi negli anni dieci”, in Turin 2007-08, pp. 264-279.

⁴ In the right-hand portion of the work, two juxtaposed fragments of cuttings form the writing “COCO”, probably intended to evoke the very motif of the composition, the Watermelon Seller.

⁵ Ortolani 1917, pp. 2-3 (the cutting is on p. 2).

⁶ Baldessari would devote a collage composition to Il Marzocco magazine in 1918, Il Marzocco (Rovereto, Trento, Museo Civico).

⁷ As we learn from the general catalogue of Baldessari’s Futurist works, the autograph date “1917”, originally written beneath the artist’s signature, was later removed; see Scudiero 1989, p. 185.