Aeropainting in Arco finds its poetic homecoming at the Galleria Civica Giovanni Segantini in Palazzo dei Panni, where the exhibition “Aerovita: The Machine, Aesthetics, and the Myth of Gianni Caproni” celebrates the 140th anniversary of the aviation visionary’s birth.
Born in Massone di Arco on July 3, 1886, aeronautical engineer Gianni Caproni transformed the human dream of flight into monumental machines that made international aviation history. This autumn, the town of Arco pays tribute to its most inventive son, exploring how the avant-garde movement of Aeropittura (which flourished between the 1920s and early 1940s) captured the sublime speed, dizzying aerial perspectives, and mechanical beauty of Caproni’s aeroplanes.
While major retrospectives on Futurism have been held in Milan, Bologna, and Rovereto, the Arco exhibition radiates a uniquely lyric and personal resonance. Curated with rare archival materials, it showcases masterpieces by Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero, Gerardo Dottori, and Tato, displaying paintings, tapestries, original blueprints, and flight goggles alongside scale models of the famous multi-engine Caproni biplanes that conquered the skies above Rome and Venice.
Open through January 6, 2027, the exhibition illuminates the fertile dialogue between engineering genius and artistic revolution in the upper Lake Garda basin, reminding visitors that flight was never merely a technical conquest, but an enduring leap of the human imagination.
Exhibition review by Maria Teresa Martini for GN Magazine.
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