Ivo Pannaggi as a Painter, Architect and Synthetic Caricaturist

Ivo Pannaggi started as illustrator and painter. He was among the many artists active at the Casa d’arte Bragaglia opened in Rome in 1918 together Giacomo Balla and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Thus Pannaggi joined the so-called “second futurism”. Thanks to his knowledge of Futurism and of other avant-gardes, Pannaggi orientated toward abstract painting before the official abstract painters of Como and Milan. In the Casa d’arte Bragaglia Pannaggi could experiment the design of theatrical space for the scenography in a direct confrontation with other artists and architects like Prampolini. In the 20s and 30s Pannaggi worked as illustrator for several magazines and books, producing synthetic caricatures of intellectual personalities with an original imprinting. Futurist machinisme pushed Pannaggi to become a modern architect himself. In 1926 he left Italy for Germany and then again, after the close of Bauhaus in 1933 he left Germany for Norway where he worked also as an architect until his retirement. His international experience and taste put him away from nationalism in coherence with the idea that you cannot be a revolutionary in arts and a conservative in politics, yet a minority position in his time.