Anton Giulio Bragaglia: The archive of a visionary
In 2021, the Roman National Gallery put on a wonderful retrospective on Anton Giulio Bragaglia (Frosinone 1890 – Rome 1960)
His career began in 1960 in Rome as an assistant director at Cines, his father’s film production company. The Futurist technique of photodynamism was his.
In 1916, Anton Giulio Bragaglia founded ‘Cronache di Attualità,” a periodical about the figurative arts, music, theater, literature, and politics with an international avant-garde slant. In the same year, he founded the film production company ‘Novissima-film’, making three futuristic films, the best known of which is the Perfido Incanto (Wicked Enchantment) with sets by Enrico Prampolini.
Casa d’arte Bragaglia
In 1918, he and his brother Carlo Ludovico opened the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia with an exhibition by Giacomo Balla, at Via Condotti 21, which moved in 1922 to Via degli Avignonesi.
Exhibitions put on here included Umberto Boccioni, Bocklin, Oppi, De Angelis, Gerardo Dottori, Ferrazzi, Ottone Rosai, and Enrico Prampolini.
In December 1924, Antonio Donghi‘s solo show opened, where the painter, a master of Magic Realism, showed about twenty works, including Via del Lavatore.
In 1923, there were the exhibitions of Massimo Campigli, Paladini, Ivo Pannaggi, Sant’Elia, German woodcutters, and a group show of landscape artists.
From 1921 to 1924, Anton Giulio Bragaglia published “Index Rerum Virorumque Prohibitorum.”
Also in Via degli Avignonesi, it opened the Teatro Sperimentale degli Indipendenti [Experimental Theater of Independents], which was active until 1936. It staged plays by Pirandello, Marinetti, O’Neill, Apollinaire, Laforgue, Jarry, and Strindberg.
In the 1929–1930 season, it brought Brecht’s Threepenny Opera on tour for the first time in Italy with the Compagnia Spettacoli Bragaglia.
In 1937, A. Pavolini, president of the Confederation of Professionals and Artists, asked Anton Giulio Bragaglia to direct the Teatro delle Arti, which operated in connection to the Galleria di Roma; he held the role until 1943.
