Oil on canvas applied to cardboard, 49×39 cm
signed and dated lower left U. Conti 1917
On his return from Rome, where he met Giacomo Balla, and from Naples, where he gave a reading of the manuscript of Imbottigliature to Marinetti, who was enthusiastic about the Parole il libertà contained therein, Conti performs this Vicolo notturno , which signals his passage into the Futurist ranks. It contains many of the motifs typical of Conti’s futurism: the signs and writing on the walls, the spatial incongruence between figure and environment, in which already hovers that much of the metaphysical that, immediately, distinguishes it, the theme of drunkenness, which since 1915 has accompanied Conti’s work, the curious dissonance between the rough, popular theme and the refinement of the painting, in which an ‘arpeggio of music and sound seems to echo.
