Joan Chetofi Biography
Ivan Chetofi was born in Rome in 1916.
It is part of the current of Italian futurism, specifically aeropainting which is a declination of the latter. Aeropainting expresses the enthusiasm for flight, speed and, last but not least, the myth of the machine.
His painting has been defined as "an intimately poetic transposition of the physical data of the sensitive world which inspires him. The expressive ways are broad and simple, far from anecdote and description, the color is understood tonally and responds to an internal need interpretative rather than imitative".
After training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he worked on the stage design of Goldoni's Locandiera, directed by Anton Giulio Bragaglia at the Teatro degli Indipendenti in Via degli Avignonesi in March 1926. Subsequently, he organized some exhibitions dedicated to scenography Italian in South America.
Thanks to his acquaintance with Domenico Belli (1909-1983) and Augusto Favalli (1912-1969), Chetofi came into contact with the futurist movement and became friends with Enrico Prampolini (1894-1956). In 1933 he participated in the first national exhibition of futurist art in Piazza Adriana in Rome and the following year in the second international exhibition of colonial art in Naples.
In the first half of the 1930s he worked with Belli, Sebastiano Carta, Bruno Tano and Sante Monachesi. In the second half of the 1930s, he participated in several collective exhibitions of aeropainting. He exhibited at some Roman exhibitions, including Aeropitture futuriste, organized in 1937 by the Ministry of Aeronautics, and participated in the third and fourth editions of the Quadrennial of National Art.
He participated in the Venice International Art Exhibition for three consecutive editions, in the exhibitions commissioned by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. During the war, he was sent to the Aegean and executed a cycle of frescoes for the headquarters of the Air Force command in Rhodes, later destroyed by German troops after the Italian armistice.
During his career, he also illustrated children's books and translated Mayakovsky's poems from Russian, published by Feltrinelli.
After a long break he returned to exhibit, again in Milan, in 1968 at the Il Summit Gallery, which dedicated a solo exhibition to him.
