La città sale. L'immaginario e la realtà del grattacielo tra Italia e Stati Uniti nei pittori di inizio secolo

[Autom. eng. transl.] At the beginning of the twentieth century, painters confronted themselves with a new image of the city, marked by the unusual heights of buildings, its yards, and the transfiguring brightness of electric light. These urban aspects graft a different perceptive dimension into the artists, who adapt their painting to the new way of seeing reality. In Italy the futurists, in their drive towards modernity, interpret the vertical city as the realization of the spirit, the Bergsonian "vital impulse" of modern man. The vertigo of height is evident both in the works of Boccioni, which show the swarming of the sites of the new buildings on the outskirts of Milan, and in the aerial visions of Tato and Tullio Crali, who dive into their aircraft between the buildings of the metropolis of the future. These works inevitably confront the American spirit of the paintings and photographs of Stieglitz, Steichen, Coburn and above all of Joseph Stella, who, recovering the Futurist spirit, immortalized the skyscrapers of New York in his paintings. However, the futurist optimism of modernity will soon clash with the First World War. This will inevitably lead to a change of vision of the urban reality and its tall buildings will be configured as the symbol of a lost dream. It is captured in Italy in the metaphysical paintings of Carlo Carrà and in the Milanese suburbs of Mario Sironi. In these years the skyscraper still takes on the metaphoric value of modern man, but it no longer represents man's challenge to gravity, but rather the gray and silent refuge of his solitude.