WHAT IS THE Giubbe Rosse ?
This violent appeal out of Paris richocheted all the way to extremely traditional Florence, and the tables of the "Giubbe Rosse", where it was joyously received by Giovanni Papini: "When the first manifest arrived", the author recalled some years later, "I immediately showed it to Soffici at the café "Giubbe Rosse", who said: "At last there is someone in Italy, who has had enough of all the dead weight our predecessors have heaped upon our heads, and attached to our legs. Finally there is someone , who wants to try something new, who welcomes courage and violence, and believes in freedom and destruction. Too bad, though, that they feel the need to write with such emphasis and l6th century preciousness barely masked by mechanics, which makes them look like sad clowns trying to shock the placid audience at a theatrical matinee. It is possible to be much more forceful, and yet make much less of a racket. Therefore we don't feel any obligation to show sympathy for the new movement. But in reality practically the only one to have any reservations, was Soffici. Papini was already attempting to adhere to Futurism. He wanted to find out more about it, by trying to locate every text on the subject he could find, and also met with Palazzeschi, who in those days was the only Futurist to reside in Florence, and with whom he soon became friends. Even before having founded the magazine "Leonardo" together with Prezzolini and Cecchi, and before having published alternative books such as "Crepuscolo dei Filosofi", or to attack the cultural myths of the era, with the ferocious "Stroncature", Giovanni Papini already was a Futurist ; even before the term was coined: a small David, armed with a sling against the giant Goliath - against a hostile world full of conventions. His ongoing battle against windmills took him from enthusuastic youth to desperate scepticism, as he himself reveals in his famous literary self portrait "Un uomo finito". At the same time Marinetti's Futurist Manifest was published, a Florentian group had formed around Prezzolini's "La Voce"; and it was from the pages of this magazine, that Ardengo Soffici violently critized the first exhibit of Futurist paintings in Milan, which included among others paintings by Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo. This article was the cause of the first confrontation between the 2 groups, which until then had developed separately. Carlo Carrà describes it thus in his memoirs: "Marinetti, Boccioni, Russolo and I, decided to react to this insult immediately, and we left for Florence. When we arrived, Palazzeschi took us to the café "Giubbe Rosse", where we knew the "La Voce" group to be. Very soon, in fact, Soffici was pointed out to us, and Boccioni called out: "Are you Ardengo Soffici?" When he responded in the affermative, he was slapped. Soffici reacted in kind by hitting left and right with his cane. Very quickly, pandemonium reigned. Tables were overturned, sending trays full of glasses and cups, which had been stacked on top, crashing to the floor; people who were sitting close by ran away yelling and screaming, waiters entered the fray to try and reestablish order, and finally a police commissioner showed up, who was able to get things back to normal. Even Prezzolini, who had come with Soffici, did not come away unscathed. The next day another fight took place at the station, which finally culminated in a discussion, when the 2 groups realized, their ideals and aspirations were the same, and former ennemies became friends." The Futurist and the Vocianist Movement were in fact two young and impetuous chips off the same block: both wanted to create new things, by breaking down the old bourgeois structures, so weighed down by rigid rules, that creativity was stifled. The adhesion of the Florentian Group to the Futuristic Movement dates from that moment; and the "Giubbe Rosse" café in Florence became its' official "office"
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