The work belongs to the period of greater closeness to the Metaphysical school, [...] in which Sironi brought different experiences together in an experimental synthesis of the new subject.

While the Paesaggi urbani, or urban landscapes, are one of the most original inventions of Mario Sironi and indeed of 20th-century Italian art as a whole, their birth and whether they belong to the final developments of Futurism or the nascent “return to order” have yet to be clearly established. 

In actual fact, until the end of 1920, they formed an integral part of the complex debate of the international avant-garde and in particular of Futurism, the movement to which Sironi still belonged, confronted with the various new avant-garde trends of Metaphysical art and the “consolidation” of form after the deconstruction of the early avant-garde movements. 

Sironi’s invention of the Paesaggio urbano first manifested itself in the tenements in the background of the Brera Camion (The Lorry 1914-15, fig. 1). This was followed in January 1916 by an illustration for Gli Avvenimenti in which the landscape, again in the background, is more distinct and spatially defined, and the two Ciclisti (Cyclists, formerly Sarfatti Collection; Venice, Guggenheim Museum) of 1916. As we can see, the period of incubation was quite long. The theme was tellingly developed in its own right for the first time between April and June 1919, when the artist was in Rome. This is proof of its degree of abstraction and visionary, symbolic nature, as the tenements and urban outskirts are unquestionably Milanese but depicted at a distance through the filter of Carrà’s images (L’ovale delle apparizioni) and de Chirico’s handling of space.¹ The works are “states of mind” born not out of contingent factors through the observation of reality but out of a pure Futurist vision. 

The urban landscapes of this period (April-June 1919) are not many and in actual fact boil down to just a couple: the Paesaggio urbano e camion addressed here and the Camion giallo (Yellow Lorry, fig. 2, private collection, on loan to the Maga Museum in Gallarate), which is identical in technique, colour and style. In the latter, the artist’s avowed and indeed enthusiastic allegiance to Futurism is emphasised by the cuttings of Marinetti’s Zang Tumb Tumb incorporated into the lorry (but clearly present also in the very similar Cerruti canvas). The vehicle depicted in Camion giallo is a Fiat 15 ter, a light lorry used on a large scale by the Italian army in the Great War (the Marinetti cuttings underscore the reference to the war). La 15 ter is indeed the title of a work included in the solo show at the Galleria Bragaglia in July 1919, with which the Gallarate painting is unquestionably to be identified, as the similar lorry in the Cerruti work is a more generic representation of the same (see note 2). 

Stylistic and technical analysis of the paintings of this period (practically all of which were included in Sironi’s solo show at the Bragaglia of 3-30 July 1919) makes it possible to draw many interesting and definitive conclusions, especially from the numerous collages that characterise this period and constitute a more compact series that was previously thought. The dates of the newspapers from which the cuttings were taken can be reconstructed to provide information of great importance for dating purposes.

The chronology of the Cerruti Paesaggio urbano e camion in the literature is somewhat uncertain. Often dated 1917 on the grounds of an inscription legible on the back (fig. 3),² it was instead certainly painted in 1919, as confirmed both by the newspapers used for the collage as well as other implicit evidence. One cutting mentions a commemorative seminar for three illustrious mathematicians killed in the war held at Rome University by three equally illustrious colleagues, which took place on 22 June 1918.³ Another consists of wedding announcements and lost and found ads with addresses again in Rome. While June 1918 clearly constitutes a terminus post quem, it obviously cannot be taken as the date of execution. Sironi may well have used an old newspaper and possibly a long time afterwards. This is indeed what happened, as the Roman announcements demonstrate. Sironi evidently had an accumulation of old Roman dailies at his disposal in the home of his relatives, where he was living, but can have used these after June 1918 only at some time between mid-March and August 1919, as he was serving in the army before then and had at most two short periods of leave in Milan. It also appears absurd to suggest that Sironi took old Roman papers of the year before to Milan in September 1919, not least because he set off with the bare minimum of luggage, staying initially in a hotel and then in a tiny furnished room.⁴ 

The date attribution of this extraordinary urban landscape to the second quarter of 1919 has implications for the chronology of the entire corpus of Paesaggi urbani. The work belongs to the period of greater closeness to the Metaphysical school, encountered in Rome between March and September, in which Sironi brought different experiences together in an experimental synthesis of the new subject. The collage is intrinsically Futurist in its vocabulary, just as the urban subject with a lorry derives literally from the first version of this theme (the Brera Camion of 1914-15). The diagonal position of the vehicle and the positioning of the urban landscape in the background are both identical. The way in which the objects and tenements are reduced to motionless geometric solids and the steep perspective of the roadway instead recall the absolute space of Metaphysical art. 

Milan had become the centre of Sironi’s activities, at least as an illustrator, at the beginning of the war and he was also developing closer relations with the cultural sphere of Marinetti and Margherita Sarfatti. The definitive decision to move there in September 1919 was born out of the hostility between the Valori Plastici group (Mario Broglio had harshly criticised his show at the Galleria Bragaglia) and the Milanese circles led by Sarfatti and Marinetti. Sironi’s decision was thus also a matter of choosing sides in addition to reflecting his albeit conflicting affinities with the modern and dynamic industrial environment of Milan. The conflict manifests itself in the heavy, disorienting atmosphere of the Paesaggi urbani, images not simply of a modern city but of a threatening, alien and alienating reality riddled with contradictions.⁵ 

The Galleria Arte (degli Ipogei) was inaugurated in Milan on 20 March 1920 with a group exhibition organised by Margherita Sarfatti and the Futurist art critic Buggelli (a comrade of Sironi in the cycle battalion). While practically all of the artists were more or less closely connected with Futurism at the time, de Chirico also took part and - curiously enough - the “Roman-Milanese” Carrà, the object of an explicit attack in the Futurist manifesto Contro tutti i ritorni in pittura, signed by Sironi precisely in the period of the exhibition (dated January but actually April). It was there that Sironi showed three urban landscapes in oils for the first time. The subject initially addressed in the Cerruti and Gallarate paintings was established from then on as one of the classic iconographic elements of Sironi’s work and indeed of 20th-century Italian art. 

Fabio Benzi

The work, which came from the Milanese collection of Cesare Tosi, was already in the collection of Francesco Federico Cerruti in 1993, as demonstrated by the handwritten inventory of assets in the villa in Rivoli, drawn up in June of that year [Ed.].

¹ For the numerous references to Carrà and de Chirico, see F. Benzi, “Mario Sironi: il percorso della pittura”, in Rome 1993-94, pp. 13-37, and the entries of the works, in Ibid., pp. 87-367. For a minute analysis of the chronology and the Paesaggi urbani as a whole, readers are referred to the contribution by this author in Pordenone 2018, p. 105.

² The work was executed on cardboard, on the back of which it is possible to read through the open weave of the canvas support an apparently autograph note (“Montebelluna Montello 1917”) and a study of a capital (possibly a drawing made at the academy or more probably a loose sketch). This indicates that the work may have been executed on an earlier study of 1917, when Sironi was in the war zone, or that the inscription referred to a previous episode regarding a sketch for Il Montello (1918).

³ The mathematicians Roberto Marcolongo, Guido Castelnuovo and Salvatore Pincherle (the names are given in the article with minor misprints) commemorated their fallen colleagues (respectively Orlando, Torelli and Levi) on 22 June 1918. See Seminario Matematico della Facolta di Scienze della R. Università di Roma: seduta del 22 giugno 1918: onoranze a Luciano Orlando, Ruggiero Torelli, Eugenio Elia Levi, Adolfo Viterbi… caduti in guerra, Rome 1918. Elena Pontiggia (in Rome 2014-15, p. 120) has identified another cutting that mentions the lawyer “Oppezzi of the Durst defence” and refers to a trial commenced in June 1918. This leads her to confirm the dating of 1919 put forward by the present author in 1993 and to identify the work as the one shown at the Bragaglia with the title La 15 ter. The wartime Fiat vehicle with that number has a hexagonal radiator (exactly like the Brera Camion), however, and does not therefore correspond perfectly to the one in the work, which can instead be identified with greater iconographic precision of the Gallarate Camion giallo.

⁴ Pontiggia 2015, p. 100.

⁵ This reading is borne out by a letter to Luciano Folgore of April 1920, the period in which the largest number of Paesaggi urbani, or urban landscapes, were produced: “Are you coming to Milan then? You’ll see a big, ugly ‘trough’, as Costantini puts it, ugly and affluent […]. Excellent for working with your face in the fatigue of reality, horribly ugly but solid, and the memories of so many illusions” (in Salaris 1997, p. 307). A letter to his wife in September 1919 again conveys a grim and contradictory impression of Milan: “What can the city of commerce make me feel other than disgust and the need for protection against its power?” (in Sironi 1971, p. 270).