GIULIO (JULIUS)

EVOLA (1898-1974)

Composizione

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comitato Scientifico per l'opera artistica di Julio Evola.

Provenance
Galleria Gissi, Turin (1960s).
Private collection, Rome.

Giulio Evola was born in Rome in 1898, and was one of the key contributors to the Italian avant-garde during the first period of its development (1915-1921). In 1920 he held a solo show of 54 works at Galleria Bragaglia in Rome. The works he showed there were classified by Evola into two distinct groups: Tendeze di idealismo sensoriali (1915-1918) ('Sensorial Idealism'), that had its roots in Futurism, sharing that movement's interest in simultaneity, and Tendenze di astrattismo mistico (1918-1920) ('Mystical Abstraction'). The present work belongs to this second period, or group, where Evola chose to concentrate on the depiction of the inner universe, using a mixture of geometric and organic forms suspended in space. Moving away from the aesthetic regularities of Futurism, Evola's Mystical Abstraction drew inspiration from the contemporary developments of Central European avant-garde figures such as Kupka and Kandinsky, and the development of his own theories on Dada, that he developed in tandem with the poet-critic Tristan Tzara.

Evola was among the first artists, alongside Prampolini and Sanminiatelli, to introduce Dadaism to Italy, hosting an exhibition dedicated to the movement in 1921 again in collaboration with Galleria Bragaglia. Having decided that the avant-garde was becoming threatened by bourgeois academic conventions, his painterly endeavours came to an end in around 1921, bringing to a close a brief but intensely unique and fascinating career as a painter.