Alberto Martini - Il Tetiteatro - 1924

Alberto Martini
The Tetitheatre. The Theatre of Art on the Water
Milan: Bottega di Poesia, 1924.
Folio (cm. 40 x 30). 99 pages
Text by E. Castelbarco, with black and color illustrations by Alberto Martini.
Editorial binding in half cloth and red boards, with titles and figures printed in gold on the covers.
Original edition. Printer’s proof copy, unnumbered, from a limited edition of 602 copies. The author, painter and engraver (Oderzo 1876–Milan 1954), precursor of Surrealism in Italy, presents in this work a new conception of the theater of art on the water. Mariani, Storia della scenografia italiana, Florence, Rinascimento del Libro, 1930, pp. 105-106: "Closely connected to the cubist and constructive movement of avant-garde theaters, there is the tetitheatre, a curious stage built on a lake, with masses playing against each other, predominantly static, on which mobile lights and their reflections in the water at dusk would produce fantastical effects [...]." The work reproduces the phantasmagoric scenographies invented by Martini for works by Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Wagner, Wilde, D’Annunzio, and others.
In excellent condition.