TATO

(GUGLIELMO SANSONI) (1896-1974)

Coppa Schneider a Venezia

Footnotes

This work is listed in the Archivio Ventura.

Provenance
Private collection, Italy.

The Coupe d'Aviation Maritime Jacques Schneider ('Coppa Schneider') was set up by Jacques Schneider, a French financier and aircraft enthusiast. The race encouraged technical progress in aviation and was held twelve times from 1913 to 1931, the trophy being awarded to the fastest seaplane over a fixed course.

The Schneider Trophy became particularly popular in the twenties and early thirties, attracting crowds of over 200,000 people. The competition was organised in different cities and hosted by the previous winners. After the Italian team's victory, the race came to Venice in Italy in 1920, 1921 and 1927. By then, the Schneider Trophy had become a major sporting event and the Italians spared no expense to organise it. The event was of great importance for the artists of the Aeropittura movement who, by the end of the 1920s were looking to aviation as the best representation of dynamism, power and speed, giving the Futurist movement a new lease of life.

Aeropainting found a codification with the publication of the Manifesto dell'Aeropittura futurista, written by Marinetti after a long seaplane flight over the Gulf of La Spezia. Entitled Prospettive di volo and published in 1929, it was signed by Benedetta Cappa, Fortunato Depero, Gerardo Dottori, Fillìa, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Enrico Prampolini, Mino Somenzi and Guglielmo Sansoni (Tato). Showcasing the latest technological advances and state-of-the-art machines, the Schneider Trophy was the perfect arena in which the Aeropittura artists would find inspiration.

Despite Britain's victory in the 1927 competition, the Italian team remained in Venice to try and beat the speed record. They succeeded on 30 March 1928: Major Mario De Bernardi was the first man in the world to overcome the 500 kilometres per hour wall - he celebrated this extraordinary feat with a series of acrobatics in the sky around the bell tower of the Basilica di San Marco. This achievement was widely reported in the press and surely inspired the Aeropittura painters, if they were not already on the beach in Venice to witness it with their own eyes.