He joined the Lombard Volunteer Cyclist Battalion and was seriously wounded at Malga Camerona on Mount Grappa. Like other exponents of Futurism, including Boccioni, Antonio Sant’Elia, and Mario Sironi, Russolo in 1917 became involved in wartime turmoil and enlisted in order to participate in World War I. Russolo, in any case, replicated the concert in Genoa and London, coming to know Igor Stravinsky. He caused a sensation with the Gran concerto futurista per intonarumori in 1914 at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, in which he put together an orchestra for 18 intonarumori, however, encountering a rather violent reaction from the audience amid whistles, shouts and various scuffles, until the police intervened. Russolo often organized the “noisemaker concerts,” which, however, did not arouse much appreciation among the audience, who also protested vociferously by throwing objects at the musicians. What’s more, Russolo invented new musical instruments that he built by his own hand, to which he gave the name Intonarumori: these were machines that could reproduce sounds of various kinds (bangs, bursts, laughter, rustles and so on) and modify them at will by turning a crank. Russolo, in the first lines of the Manifesto, explained precisely how up to that time men’s lives had been conducted “in silence or mostly in silence,” and how music, on the other hand, had adapted to the novelties, veering toward polyphony and seeking increasingly complex and dissonant structures and chords. The twentieth century, after all, thanks to the development of industrial society was characterized by an increasingly widespread use of machinery that punctuated daily days with their noises, not to mention then the invention of the automobile. In 1913 he drafted the Noise Manifesto, in which he theorized the use of noises for musical purposes based on some experiments he used to devote himself to, in the midst of the futurist climate. However, after painting several Futurist works, for a long period Russolo abandoned art, preferring to devote himself completely to music. Thus, his entry into the movement officially took place, and Russolo began to be present at all Futurist evenings and exhibitions, both in Italy and abroad. They became close friends and together with them, and other artists, he had the opportunity to meet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the progenitor of Futurism, in person in February 1910. In this year he produced his first works, participated in the annual Black and White Exhibition at the Famiglia Artistica in Milan, and through this occasion met the Futurist painters Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà. In 1909 several important events occurred in Russolo’s artistic career. In Milan he took some courses at the Brera Academy and worked as an apprentice during the restoration of the decorations of the rooms of the Castello Sforzesco and Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. From an early age Russolo had been interested in music, a passion widespread in his family, and once he grew up he also became interested in painting. After attending high school gymnasium, in 1901 Russolo followed his two older brothers, Giovanni and Antonio, both students at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, to Milan. He was the penultimate of five siblings born from the union between his father Domenico, a watchmaker as well as organist of the town’s cathedral and director of the Schola Cantorum of Latisana, and his mother Elisabetta Michielon. Luigi Russolo was born in Portogruaro, near Venice, on April 30, 1885. In the last phase of his painting, he landed on landscape representations with obvious philosophical and spiritual influences, which he had embraced in his life. In addition, Russolo studied the movement of people and machines, in affinity with the research of Giacomo Balla and Umberto Boccioni, with whom he established a confidential relationship. Russolo’s paintings initially ranged between Symbolism and Divisionism, later assimilating the Futurist dictates of decomposition and interpenetration of planes. Russolo, in fact, came from a family of musicians, and his contribution in the field of composition was decidedly innovative, introducing noises as a musical element and dodecaphony and making novel musical instruments that he called Intonarumori. His pictorial elaborations are not in large numbers, as for a long period he devoted himself exclusively to music, a field in which he tried his hand at an early age. Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo (Portogruaro, 1885 - Laveno-Mombello, 1947), painter, composer and inventor of musical instruments, was one of the leading exponents of Futurism: his name appears among the signatories of the Manifesto of Futurist Painting and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Luigi Russolo, one of the leading exponents of Futurism, is also known for his research on music.
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