Ardengo Soffici, futurism, cubism, return to order 

Prof. Francesco Carelli

Ardengo Soffici (1879 – 1964) was an Italian writer, painter, poet, sculptor and intellectual. In 1900 he moved from Florence to Paris, where he lived for seven years and worked for Symbolist journals. While in Paris, he became acquainted with Braque, Derain, Picasso, Juan Gris and Apollinaire.
On returning to Italy in 1907, Soffici settled in Poggio a Caiano in the countryside near Florence (where he lived for the rest of his life) and wrote articles on modern artists for the political and cultural magazine La Voce. In August 1911 he wrote an article in La Voce on Picasso and Braque, which probably influenced the Futurists in the direction of Cubism. At this time Soffici considered Cubism to be an extension of the partial revolution of the Impressionists. In 1912-1913 Soffici painted in a Cubist style.

After visiting the Futurists’ Exhibition of Free Art in Milan, he wrote a hostile review in La Voce. The leading Futurists Marinetti, Boccioni and Carrà, were so incensed by this that they immediately boarded a train for Florence and assaulted Soffici and his La Voce colleagues at the Caffè Giubbe Rosse. Reviewing the Futurists’ Paris exhibition of 1912 in his article Ancora del Futurismo (Futurism Again) he dismissed their rhetoric, publicity-seeking and their art, but granted that, despite its faults, Futurism was “a movement of renewal, and that is excellent”. Gino Severini was despatched from Milan to Florence to make peace with Soffici on behalf of the Futurists – the Peace of Florence, as Boccioni called it. After these diplomatic overtures, Soffici, together with Giovanni Papini, Aldo Palazzeschi  withdrew from La Voce in 1913 to form a new periodical, Lacerba, which would concentrate entirely on art and culture. Soffici published “Theory of the movement of plastic Futurism” in Lacerba.

Discovering a new reverence for Tuscan tradition, became associated with the “return to order” which manifested itself in the naturalistic landscapes which thereafter dominated his work. Remaining in Poggio a Caiano, he painted nature and traditional Tuscan scenes. There, he continued to write and paint and was visited by many artists, some of whom he helped in finding their place in the art world.