[Fillia] goes on to describe himself as a “Spiritual interpreter of mechanical life […] Essentially plastic, or rather pictorially anti-literary”, and his works are referred to as “a balanced construction of form and colour, fused in subjective architecture”. 

A key figure in the second wave of Futurism, Fillìa interprets Italian avant-garde themes through his diverse use of languages and activities, often opening up to the broader European context. A painter, poet, critic and cultural organiser, in 1923 he founded the “Movimento futurista torinese - Sindacati artistici” together with Tullio Alpinolo Bracci, rapidly establishing himself on an Italian level, to the point that he was considered one of the main driving forces of Marinetti’s Futurist movement, both in terms of exhibitions and advertising. 

Il saldatore della velocità (The Speed Welder) dates to his early years as a painter (his career was very brief, as he died at the young age of just thirtyone), begun independently as a selftaught artist in 1922 and immediately characterised by his use of the lyrical terms specific to “mechanical art”, discussed in the 1922 manifesto of Enrico Prampolini, Ivo Pannaggi and Vinicio Paladini. 

Fillìa places the image of a welder at the centre of the composition, intent on joining a large metal beam to an even larger iron structure, using the oxy-fuel welding technique. The work takes place at a great height above ground, on a building site, which is emphasised by the schematic vision of a city seen from above - recognisable in the bottom section of the work - which adds a sense of vertigo to the overall composition. Painted in 1927,¹ this work was produced at a key moment in Fillìa’s artistic career, at a point when the artist had achieved total command of his expressive media. In February of that year, in an article written in the third person for the Roman newspaper L’Impero, Fillìa talks about his “very rapid development” as a painter, which had led him to achieve “a vast plan of achievements”; he then goes on to describe himself as a “Spiritual interpreter of mechanical life […] Essentially plastic, or rather pictorially anti-literary”, and his works are referred to as “a balanced construction of form and colour, fused in subjective architecture”.² 

Exhibited in November 1927 in the Trentaquattro pittori futuristi exhibition at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan,³ the work must have been presented in its initial version (smaller, or perhaps conceived by the artist with a different technique, in keeping with common practice at the time) at Turin’s Quadriennale in May of that year with the title Mechanical Construction.⁴ 

Exhibited again in 1928 at the LXXXVI Esposizione Nazionale di Belle Arti organised by the Promotrice di Torino, where Fillìa was present with a solo exhibition, Il saldatore della velocità featured again two years later in the Artisti della nuova Italia. Künstler des neuen Italien exhibition in Berne, organised by the architect Alberto Sartoris, a friend of the artist who worked with him on a number of publishing projects. 

Distinguished by its colourful palette and its more intense geometric elements than the artist’s earlier pieces from the first half of the 1920s, Il saldatore della velocità belongs to a series of works that explore the world of “mechanical art”, a Futurist poetic that the artist developed between 1923 and 1928 in keeping with a highly personal emotional and psychological language, which was the subject of some major theoretical explorations published by him from 1925 onwards.⁵ Certainly influenced by both Italian and foreign models - in the latter case, primarily northern European “purism”⁶ - Fillìa tackles a subject that resonates strongly in his parallel literary work, which was always closely tied to his figurative pieces. Indeed, in Il saldatore della velocità he seems to transcribe in painting a motif that he had already developed in the verses of his long poem entitled “Sensibilità meccanica”, included in his collection of poetry Lussuria radioelettrica dated 1925: 

“mechanical daring / the welder is the Futurist construction of / a man with a flamethrower who, within the metal / setting of a city and workshop operates against the reduced steel / slabs of an armoured fortress machine”⁷ 

Over and beyond the historical exhibitions, the work experienced a revival of interest alongside a more general focus on the second generation of Futurists, which started to develop in Turin in the late 1950s. Presented in a series of retrospectives on Fillìa (as well as in exhibitions on a broader theme) from the next decade onwards, the work was purchased by Francesco Federico Cerruti at a Sotheby’s auction in 1999. 

Alessandro Botta 

¹ Although the work is lacking an autograph date, the most widely accredited studies have dated it to 1927 (see Evangelisti 1986, p. 233, no. 39; Crispolti 1988, pp. 29, 30).

² L. C. [Luigi Colombo (Fillìa)] 1927.

³ In addition to the information provided in the list of works enclosed with the catalogue, the back of the painting features a label from the “Galleria Pesaro”, applied directly to the canvas. This is the only historical record present on the work. The replacement of the original frame, probably in around the mid-1960s, irremediably removed any traces of stamps or labels that could be associated with other earlier exhibitions.

⁴ Indeed, no doubts are left by Fillìa’s description of this first painting in the margin of an article he wrote for L’Impero, designed to illustrate the Futurist presence within the broader subalpine exhibition; Mechanical Construction was outlined as “a worker suspended above a house under construction as he welds the various metals. Pictorial links between human and mechanical matter, in the frenzy of height” (Fillìa 1927). Regarding the identification of this first version see Evangelisti 1986, p. 233, no. 39; Crispolti 1988, p. 29.

⁵ Particularly the text entitled “L’idolo meccanico”, published in the daily L’Impero on 19-20 July 1925, followed up by the “Arte Sacra Meccanica” manifesto (signed together with the Futurists Pino Curtoni and A. C. Caligaris) published in the weekly La Fiamma on 2 May 1926 and reproduced in numerous other publications.

⁶ As regards the Italian context, Depero and Prampolini were also indicated, while as regards France, it included the names of Gleizes, Gris, Jeanneret and Ozenfant (see M. M. Lamberti, “La pittura del primo Novecento in Piemonte (1900-45)”, in Pirovano 1992, p. 65).

⁷ “Arditismo meccanico / il saldatore è la costruzione futurista di /un uomo con lanciafiamme che nell’ambiente metal-lizzato di una città - officina opera contro le ridotte lastreacciaio di una macchina fortezza blindata”, in Fillìa 1925, p. 29. See Ottieri 2012.