The Paintings of Tullio Crali
Born in the Montenegro town of Igalo in December of 1910, Tullio Crali was a Dalmatian Italian artist associated with Futurism, an artistic and social movement that emphasized speed, dynamism, technology, youth and
the achievements of the industrial age. A self-taught artist who painted in a variety of styles, Crali is most closely associated with the genre of aeropittura, the aerial landscape views that dominated Futurism during the 1930s.
In 1922, Tullio Crali moved with his family to Gorizia in northeastern Italy where, three years later, he attended the local technical institute. While a student, Crali discovered Futurism through readings of Giornale il Napoli’s art periodical “Mattino Illustrato”. Trading his school textbooks for books on art, Crali became acquainted with the treatises written by such Futurist artists as Filippo Tommaso Marnetti, Umberto Boccioni, and Ardengo Soffici.
Encouraged by Marnetti and Sofronio Pocarini, the founder of the Giuliano Futurists, Crali became an official member of the movement in 1929 and undertook an intense period of artistic experimentation. The first presentation of his paintings occurred at
the second annual Goriziana d’Arte Exhibition. In 1931, a signed manifesto on aeropainting, entitled “Manifesto of Aeropittura”, launched a new vision in art that united the Futurists’ passions for battle, machines and patriotism. It also altered conventional artistic detail and perspective through the promotion of aerial views.
Tullio Crali’s earliest aeropaintings, such as the 1929 “Aerial Duel” and “Aerial Squadron”, were similar to other Futurist works. However, he continued his endeavors to communicate the dynamics and experience of flight to the viewer. Despite recognizable details such as clouds, wings and propellers, Crali’s later paintings challenged conventional realism by his use of dynamic perspectives, simultaneous viewpoints and the combination of figurative and abstract elements.
Tullio Crali began the 1930s with one of his most famous works, “Le Forze della Curva”, an intensely colored painting that glorified the power and speed of an automobile on a curved road. He was later invited to exhibit as one of the “7 Furturists from Padua” and later at the 1932 Italian Futurist Aeropitori in Paris and Brussls.
In 1936, Crali exhibited hs “Lotta Grecoromana (Greek Roman Wrestling)” and “Lotta Livera (Wrestling Match)” at Italy’s second National Exhibition of Sports. These paintings were later selected for the 1936 International Olympic Exhibition of Sports Art in Berlin.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Crali was the undisputed champion of the Italian artistic-futurist scene and a vocal advocate of the movement under Marnetti’s leadership. In 1943, he again exhibited at the Quadrennial of Art in Rome and, in the next year, at the last exhibition of the Futurists in Venice. As a soldier during the war, Crali served at the Masking Centers of Civitavecchia, first in Rome and Parma and then later in Macerata and Gorizia. At the end of the war, he was arrested in Gorizia by Italian-Slav partisans; Crali was one of twenty prisoners from the one hundred-fifty arrested who survived.
Tullio Crali moved at the war’s end with his wife and child to Turin where he taught and continued to exhibit. Instead of decreeing the end of Futurism as others had done, he dissociated himself and began exhibiting at Milan’s Galleria Bergamini. In 1951, Crali began the first of a series of “Diaries”, a collection of impressions, preparatory
sketches and travel memoirs, that would continue for more than thirty years. From 1950 to 1959, he remained in Paris where he produced a series of canvases and drawings that were praised by the French critics.
Crali relocated in 1960 to Egypt where, for a seven year period, he served as the Director of Painting at the Italian School of Art in Cairo. He gave interviews on futurist art at Radio Cairo and organized both exhibitions and conferences. In 1968, Crali returned to Italy and resumed his futurist commitment by participating in several exhibitions; however, he rejected joining any official movement and focused on his own research of spatial paintings. In 1970, Crali exhibited at the first post-war Futurist Aeropainting Exhibition at Milan’s Galleria Blu. In 1975, he participated in the fifth “Central European Conference on Painting Between 1890 and 1930” held in Gorizia.
Tullio Crali created, in 1977 at his Milan studio, the Futurist Documentation Center for his students’ research. He was invited to write an introductory article for the catalogue of 1978 exhibition at Venice’s Galleria Spazio Due. A designer of jewelry in his early career, Carli exhibited his 1956 collection of aircraft jewelry at the Vicenza Jewelry 
Fair of 1986. Beginning in 1987, he formed a long and productive relationship with the Pattuglia Acrobatica della Frecce Tricolori, an organization of Italian acrobatic air pilots. A 1993 series of aeropainting canvases was dedicated by Carli to this precision team of pilots.
Between 1986 and 1990, Cralie participated in several important exhibitions: the exhibition of his mechanical lithographs in Russia; an exhibition at Arte Giuliana in Melbourne, Australia; a solo exhibition entitled “Aeronautical Structures” at Lima, Peru; and a prominent place at the exhibition, “Futurismo Veneto”, a collaborative presentation with noted architect Salvan Rebeschini and other Veneto region artists. In 1994, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART) held a retrospective of Carli’s paintings, sculptures, and other works. Carli later presented forty of his works and a great amount of documentation, books and manuscripts on Futurism to the museum.
Tullio Carli died in Milan on the fifth of August in 2000 at the age of eighty-nine. He is interred, as he requested, at the commune of Macerata, his family’s home in central Italy. Carli’s work is held by many modern art museums, including New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Italy’s Mart Rovereto, and London’s Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, as well as many private collections.
Notes: All images of Tullio Crali’s work, unless noted, are from the Futurali Cultural Foundation. The official Tullio Crali website is located at: https://www.tulliocrali.com
A short article, written by Perwana Nazif, on Tullio Crali with several images of his work can be found at the Coeval Magazine website: https://www.coeval-magazine.com/coeval/tullio-crali
Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Tullio Crali (Right) with Aviator and Artist Steve Poleskie, Milan”, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print
Second Insert Image: Tullio Crali, “I Sommersi II (The Submerged II)”, 1933, Oil on Canvas, Futurcrali Cultural Association
Third Insert Image: Tullio Crali, “Monoplano Jonathan”, 1987, Oil on Canvas, Futurcrali Cultural Association
Fourth Insert Image: Tullio Crali, “I Sotterranei (The Dungeons)”, 1934, Oil on Canvas, 80 x 70 cm, Futurcrali Cultural Association
Bottom Insert Image: Tullio Crali, “Autoritratto (Self Portrait)”, 1935, Oil on Plywood Panel, 42 x 36 cm, Futurcrali Cultural Association