(Perugia 1884–1977)
Sorvolando il lago, 1934, signed, oil on wood, 60.5 x 57.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Galleria Fonte d’Abisso, Milan (photo certificate available, label on the reverse)
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Venice, XIX Biennale di Venezia, 1934, exh. cat. no. 21 p. 174, titled “Sui laghi” (label on the reverse)
Paris, Les futuristes italiens. Art plastique mural aéropeinture futuriste art sacré futuriste décoration futuriste, 150 oeuvres exposées par 20 artistes, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune&C, 3–27 April 1935, exh. cat. no. 14 with ill.
Turin, L’estetica della macchina. Da Balla al futurismo torinese, Palazzo Cavour, 29 October 2004–30 January 2005, exh. cat. no. 115, p. 157 with ill.

Literature:
G. Ballo, T. Loreti, Dottori Aeropitture Futurista, Editalia, Rome 1970, no. 119 with ill.
M. Duranti (ed.), Gerardo Dottori: Catalogo Generale Ragionato, EFFE Fabrizio Fabbri Editore, Perugia, 2006, vol. II, p. 512, no. 317-403 with ill. (wrong support)

The present work, ’Sorvolando il lago’ (Flying over the Lake), dated 1934, is important as it reveals one of the distinctive features of his artistic research: aeropainting. The prominent art critic Guido Ballo described Dottori’s painting as follows: “... Dottori is deeply attached to his home­land, Umbria, but he expresses it through total landscapes, at the limits of an abstract method, or even through non-figurative compo­sitions. These always evoke the personality of the painter, his affections, his conception of reality and also his dialogue with nature through lines and colours, which is deeply assimilated to the point of being reconstructed or invented, so much so as to become ’other nature’. This is where Dottori’s coherence and expressive strength lies: he eventually overcomes the stimuli of Futurism itself. He was influenced by its poetics without being subject to its norms, and - in his best works - was able to implement his visionary language with rigour, but also with freedom of imagination, up until his final years.”
The bird’s-eye view used extensively in Dottori’s work recalls the attentive gaze of Minerva’s owl described by Hegel in the last paragraph of the preface to his Philosophy of Right. It is no coincidence that Dottori refers to his painting stating: “Through the nature of aeroplane speeds, I have been able to create the terrestrial landscape, isolating it from space and time by feeding it with sky so that it becomes paradise”. The aerial perspective theorised in the Renaissance is taken up by Dottori and filtered through the subjective gaze of the artist, and on these terms we can define him as one of the creators of modern 'landscape painting’.