FORTUNATO DEPERO (1892-1960) FUTURISTA. Bolted book. 1927.
9 1/2x12 1/2 inches, 24x13 3/4 cm. Editions Dinamo, Milan.
Condition B+: minor water staining on front cover; minor creasing at edges of cover; toning to pages and covers; bound with two aluminum industrial bolts. This copy has a previously unrecorded red and metallic silver title page. It is neither hand-signed nor numbered. From an edition of 1000.
Depero designed this groundbreaking, tour-de-force book as a Futurist manifesto, personal propaganda and self-promotional portfolio, which not only highlighted his immense typographic abilities but also his various artistic enterprises around Italy, including his Casa d'Arte. F.T. Marinetti referred to it as a "typographical racing car," and indeed, it is a virtuosic graphic masterpiece, often cited as a landmark Art Book. Each page is an innovative, dynamic and distinguished type-set masterpiece. The tome is colloquially and reverentially called "the Bolted Book," as each book is held together with bolts that could be unscrewed, allowing Depero to display pages as advertising for his own portable art gallery. These 'machine parts' align with the Futurists' veneration of modern technology and industrialization. The intended printed edition of this original 1927 version was 1000, though it is unclear if that many were actually produced. Rare. Mechanical Age pl. 10, Page Design p. 112, MoMA 202.1997.

From the estate of Alexander Kaplen.