Carrà, Carlo

Carrà, Carlo (1881–1966). Italian painter and writer on art, a prominent figure in both Futurism and Metaphysical Painting. He joined the Futurists in 1909, and visits to Paris in 1911 and 1912 introduced Cubist influence into his work. In his best-known painting, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (1911, MoMA, New York), for example, he combined the dynamism typical of Futurism with a sense of Cubist structural severity. In 1915 he met Giorgio de Chirico and turned to Metaphysical Painting, producing about twenty works with de Chirico's paraphernalia of posturing mannequins, half-open doors, mysteriously significant interiors, etc., though generally without his typically sinister feeling. In 1919 Carrà published a book entitled Pittura metafisica, but in the same year he broke with de Chirico and abandoned the style. In the 1920s and 1930s he supported the classical ideals of the Novecento Italiano, championing the return to traditional values in the journal Valori plastici and also in the Milan newspaper L'Ambrosiano, of which he was art critic from 1921 to 1938. From 1941 to 1952 he was professor of painting at the Brera Academy. In his work after the Second World War his style became somewhat looser, with freer brushwork.