Gerardo Dottori (1884-1977)
Dottori gained his diploma in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia and lived for a short time (between 1906 and 1907) in Milan. On returning to Perugia, he worked on interior design commissions for private patrons and church decorations. In 1909, he became a contributor to the Florence-based magazine La Difesa dell'Arte, in the course of which collaboration he met Emilio Settimelli and Mario Carli. Between late 1911 and early 1912 he met Balla and joined the Futurist movement. Throughout the First World War he continued to draw and to write short stories, in addition to composing several 'free-word' poems that were published in Roma Futurista under the pseudonym G. Voglio. In Perugia, together with the writer Presenzini Mattoli, he founded the avant-garde periodical Griffa! (1920) and also held his first one-man exhibition at Bragaglia's gallery in Rome. In 1924, he submitted work to the Venice Biennale and was accepted, making him the first Futurist to win admission there. He would go on to be included alongside the Futurists in all its exhibitions between 1926 and 1942, the year in which he was granted a one-man show. His work was also included in all the exhibitions of the Rome Quadriennale from 1931 to 1948. In 1926 he moved to Rome, where he lived until 1939. After working on its first draft with Mino Somenzi in 1928, he undersigned the 'Manifesto of Futurist Aeropainting' (1931) and wrote his own 'Umbrian Manifesto of Aeropainting' (1941). Dottori was the first Futurist to analyse and capture fully the dynamism inherent within the natural world and the countryside of his native region of Italy - Marinetti's followers previously having been concerned solely with that generated by machinery and the urban environment. In 1939 he accepted the post of Chair of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia. He was director of the Academy between 1940 and 1947, and was a teacher there until 1967.
