In 1924, when Benedetta Cappa published her first book Le forze umane: romanzo astratto con sintesi grafiche, Futurism was undergoing a radical reinvention that softened its previous ideological impetus. Like other representatives of “Second Futurism” – including her husband, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – Benedetta gradually made this transition, trying to capture the occult, cosmological side of the phenom- ena traditionally glorified by the movement. Her literary works, which become verbal-visual in parolibere (liberated words) compositions accompanied by graphic syntheses, describe seemingly ordinary characters who have extraordinary, mythic experiences. In Le forze umane, autobiographical realism alternates with abstract chapters in pseudo-scientific language, accompanied by nineteen ink illustrations: a few sinuous lines sum up the forces of the female body; a tangle of broken ones suggests a powerful male physicality; or, in the “graphic synthesis” Contatto di due nuclei potenti (femminile e maschile), a strange mixture of the two evokes the sparks that fly from their relationship. This drawing encapsulates ideas the artist must have absorbed from her Waldensian and Steinerian upbringing. Dreams and reality, rationality and spirituality, and the conscious and subconscious mind are also fundamental themes in her later novels, and in an oeuvre that places humanity at the centre of a new, cosmological Futurism.
Stefano Mudu
