TATO

TATO (Guglielmo Sansoni. Bologna, 1896-Rome, 1974).
Futurist composition, ca.1920.
Photograph.
Signature on dry stamp.
Provenance: Historical biographical archive of the magazine "Il Popolo d'Italia" (stamp of the Ufficio Storico-biografico del Popolo d'Italia").
Size: 15,5 x 21 cm.
Guglielmo Sansoni, artistically known as Tato, was an outstanding member of Italian futurism and one of the protagonists of aeropainting. Trained as a self-taught painter, he was a painter, photographer, set designer and director, coming to Futurism in 1918. During the First World War, for which he volunteered, he became friends with Umberto Boccioni and Mario Sironi. In 1920 he organised a mock funeral to "die" as Guglielmo Sansoni and be reborn as a Futurist Tato. He met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti for the first time in Bologna in 1922 (a city where he was one of the promoters of the Futurist movement called Gruppo futurista bolognese, together with Angelo Caviglioni, Leo Longanesi, Aldo Giovannini, Fanelli and Federico Valli) and became friends. With Marinetti, he also organised a travelling Futurist exhibition, starting from Bologna and then reaching Parma, Turin and Salsomaggiore. After moving to Rome in 1924, in 1929 together with other Futurists he published in La Gazzetta del Popolo the Manifesto Dell''aeropittura. He learned the first rudiments in the field at the Bologna Minghetti factory. At the end of the war, he exhibited some works at the Decorative Arts exhibition in Rome and later at the Venice Triennial and at international exhibitions in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, New York, Brussels and Amsterdam, winning prizes and awards. In 1928, his first Futurist ceramics were made in the Vietri sul Mare kiln. In the 1930s he established himself with his aeroceramics. In 1934 he took part in the II^ Colonial Art Exhibition with some rectangular tiles with representations of Africa and colonial reality, while the following year he produced a Futurist-style majolica at the Royal Artistic Institute of Naples. Between 1933 and 1938, in collaboration with the "M. G. A." factory in Albissola, he devoted himself to the production of large ceramic works, including a large panel celebrating the march on Rome, donated by the artist to Mussolini. From 1926 he directed the photographic agency La Serenissima, where he produced scattralizazioni, solarizazioni and photomontaggi, continuing the discourse initiated by the Bragaglia brothers, Anton Giulio and Arturo, during early Futurism. In September 1930, together with Marinetti, he organised the First National Photographic Competition, and between that year and 1931 they proposed the Manifesto of Futurist photography. In 1941 he wrote The Autobiography of Tato as told by Tato.