(Macerata, Italy 1901–1981)
Studio per decorazione tessile, 1926, signed, dated Pannaggi/26, tempera on wooden panel, 13 x 93.3 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Prof M. Calvesi, Rome 11/03/14

Provenance:
Collection of L. B., Rome
Galleria Andrè, Rome
Private Collection, Italy

Born in Macerata in 1901, Ivo Pannaggi had an eclectic personality. As early as 1919, when he exhibited two Futurist paintings at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in Rome, his work enthused Marinetti and Balla. In 1922, together with Vinicio Paladini, he wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Mechanical Art, whilst also working with Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti as a set designer. At the same time, he established himself as a successful graphic designer and caricaturist. He went to the Bauhaus from 1927 until 12 April 1933, the day it was closed down. Subsequently, he matriculated at the Faculty of Architecture and worked as an architect and designer in Italy and in Norway, where he settled in 1942. Pannaggi’s project for the interiors of the Zampini family house in Esanatoglia, in the Marches, dates back to the year 1926. It is one of the very rare examples of Futurist furnishing designed for the interior of a private house. Everything is carefully studied down to its finest detail, with new lines and forms, designed to coexist harmoniously with the pre-existing space. Of the four rooms furnished by Pannaggi, the Neo-plastic Hall (“Anticamera Neoplastica”) was transferred to the Pinacoteca in Macerata in 1971. Two rooms are still preserved in the house, whereas the fourth one was destroyed. Pannaggi’s work in Esanatoglia is well documented in the monographic catalogue, “Pannaggi e l’Arte Meccanica Futurista”, edited by Enrico Crispolti (Mazzotta, 1995).
The present work is a study of a blanket embroidery intended for the bedroom, of which only a sample fragment was executed
(E. Crispolti op. cit., p. 117, G/45 [with ill.])