Benedetta
Exhibition Catalog
Goldie Paley Gallery
Moore College of Art & Design
Philadelphia, 1998
I admire Benedetta’s genius; she is my equal, not my disciple.
—F. T. Marinetti
Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, known as Benedetta, was born in Rome, in 1897. She developed a range of artistic skills under the tutelage of renowned futurist painter Giacomo Balla, and added her own distinctive voice to the written and visual language of futurism.
Futurist theory was rife with misogynist rhetoric. Within this seemingly male-dominated and restrictive movement, Benedetta, wife of futurism’s founder, F. T. Marinetti, played a central role. She exhibited her artwork regularly, participating in the Rome Quadriennali and the Venice Biennale throughout the twenties and thirties, and was the first woman to have a painting reproduced in a Biennale catalog. From 1919 to 1944, she produced two distinct but related bodies of work: one literary and one pictorial.
The examination of Benedetta’s artistic achievement leads to questions about the relationship between futurism and women and the reality of feminism in futurist Italy. Benedetta created a body of work that, although actively engaging and furthering futurist ideology, was stamped with an individual hand. She was able to incorporate spirituality and emotion into a movement that railed against sentimentalism, romanticism, and moralism.
Goldie Paley Gallery
Moore College of Art & Design
Philadelphia, 1998
I admire Benedetta’s genius; she is my equal, not my disciple.
—F. T. Marinetti
Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, known as Benedetta, was born in Rome, in 1897. She developed a range of artistic skills under the tutelage of renowned futurist painter Giacomo Balla, and added her own distinctive voice to the written and visual language of futurism.
Futurist theory was rife with misogynist rhetoric. Within this seemingly male-dominated and restrictive movement, Benedetta, wife of futurism’s founder, F. T. Marinetti, played a central role. She exhibited her artwork regularly, participating in the Rome Quadriennali and the Venice Biennale throughout the twenties and thirties, and was the first woman to have a painting reproduced in a Biennale catalog. From 1919 to 1944, she produced two distinct but related bodies of work: one literary and one pictorial.
The examination of Benedetta’s artistic achievement leads to questions about the relationship between futurism and women and the reality of feminism in futurist Italy. Benedetta created a body of work that, although actively engaging and furthering futurist ideology, was stamped with an individual hand. She was able to incorporate spirituality and emotion into a movement that railed against sentimentalism, romanticism, and moralism.