Renato di Bosso

RENATO DI BOSSO (Italy, 1905-1982).
Untitled, 1930.
Pencil on paper.
With informative label on the back.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 14 x 8 cm; 44 x 36 cm (frame).
Renato Di Bosso is the pseudonym of Renato Righetti, born in Verona in 1905 in a family of craftsmen and artists. His grandfather, father and uncle studied at the Cignaroli Academy in Verona and excelled as carvers and sculptors. Following that tradition, Renato Di Bosso first attended the School of Applied Arts for Industry and then entered the Cignaroli Academy, where he graduated in 1925. He began his career exhibiting works influenced by late 19th-century verismo, but a decisive turn came between the 1920s and 1930s, when he read Umberto Boccioni's Pittura e scultura futurista, which oriented him toward the Futurist movement.
Di Bosso thus became a key figure in the second Futurism. It was Marinetti himself who gave him his artistic name, 'Di Bosso', in honor of the sculptor's passion for boxwood, the material with which he created most of his sculptures. His work moves fluidly between sculpture and painting, marked by the influence of the great Boccioni, to whom he dedicated a futurist group he founded in Verona in 1931: the Gruppo veronese futurist Umberto Boccioni. He also collaborated on several manifestos, among them the one dedicated to the scenography of the open-air opera in the Verona Arena in 1932.
From that year on, Di Bosso extended his interest to painting, especially Aeropittura, presenting in 1933 in Rome his work Aerovisioni sintetiche simultanee del Lago di Garda, which was later exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1934. Although his main material was wood, he also explored other unconventional supports such as glass and aluminum, with the latter creating emblematic pieces such as the Anticravatte.