Farewell to Gino Agnese, biographer of Marinetti and scholar of Futurism

He closed his eyes forever this morningGino Agnese, intellectual, essayist, journalistfounder in 1982 of the magazine “Mass Media” which anticipated by decades the path that the most varied forms of communication would takeninety yearscelebrated last March 10th in his home in Rome, together with his family, alongside his beloved wife Rosanna. An attic in the area called Città Giardino, with a view of the eclectic dome of the church of the Santi Angeli Custodi, in Piazza Sempione, where thefunerals.

He had lived here since the sixties, he who had come fromNapoliwhere he began working as a journalist, after irregular studies, after having attended Emilio Notte’s atelier and having embraced the political passion for Young Italy. ThereNeapolitannessnever denied, rather investigated in the most creative and centrifugal, non-conformist and explosive aspects: in recent years, for example, he was, among other things, working with incessant diligence onbiography of Francesco Cangiullopoet, writer, painter and composer. But together with the bond for her city, Agnese knew how to go beyond national borders. His interest inmodern and contemporary artit led him to meet internationally known exponents, from Umberto Mastroianni to Piero Dorazio, from Alberto Burri to Antoni Tàpies, Kenneth Noland, Emil Schumacher. Until being nominatedPresident of the Rome Quadrennialwhich he led for ten years from 2002, ensuring the Foundation’s new headquarters in Villa Carpegna, where the Library and Historical Archive have been located. And he was, Agnese, a profound connoisseur of theFuturismwhich managed to become all the rage beyond Italy, in France and Russia. A predilection that made it the first and fundamentalMarinetti’s biographer(“Marinetti, una vita explosive”, 1990, then “Marinetti Majakovskij”) and ofUmberto Boccioni(“Life of Boccioni”, 1996). The latter investigated in more than one volume, up to his last essay, “Boccioni’s hat“, released last April by Rubettino with the subtitle “A long Russian thread”. In which Agnese, in the elegant and light narrative style that distinguished him, delves into the artist’s destiny, which was too often traversed by encounters, inspirations and works relating to Russia, especially in that mysterious “journey of life” to Tzaritzyn, in the Lower Volga, following his Russian lover, Augusta Popoff, with whom he had his only son, Piotr, always kept quiet like his relationship with the woman.

Journalism and digital vision

Agnese’s journalistic activity, after starting at the Secolo d’Italia, unfolded for thirty years at the newspaper “Time”, dove fu special correspondent ed editorialist. As director of “Mass Media” he called upon not only Italian scholars to collaborate, including Derrick de Kerckhove, Andrej Tarkovsky, Robert White, Armand Mattelart. And in 1995, whenInternetwas not yet widespread in Italy, Agnese organized and directed the conference at Montecitorio – he was director of Culture under the presidency of Gianfranco Fini –Bit & Polis”, a pioneering vision of how theinformation technology and the Internetculture and politics changed.

A champion of tradition and innovation

Of this interweaving betweentradition and innovation, past and future, poetry and artjoy and thoughtfulness, randomness and planning, study and spontaneity, Gino Agnese was asample. As he reveals in the interview – his last – published in August 2024 on our “Mag 1861”.