lit a candle 5h ago83. Never read him but my wife's whole thesis was built on his Futurism books.
Their story
Giovanni Lista was an Italian art historian and art critic who became one of the leading specialists on Futurism and the artistic culture of the 1920s. Born on 13 February 1943 in Castiglione del Lago, in the province of Perugia, he settled permanently in Paris in 1970 and spent most…
Giovanni Lista was an Italian art historian and art critic who became one of the leading specialists on Futurism and the artistic culture of the 1920s. Born on 13 February 1943 in Castiglione del Lago, in the province of Perugia, he settled permanently in Paris in 1970 and spent most of his career in France as a researcher and later director of research at the CNRS. He died in Paris on 3 October 2026 at the age of 83.
Lista studied at universities in Italy and France before joining the CNRS in 1974. Associated with research laboratories directed by Denis Bablet and Louis Marin, he was appointed director of research in 1992. In 1988 he founded the review Ligeia, dossiers sur l'art, named after the Greek siren cited by Plato. He was a member of AICA and of the Society of Men of Letters of France.
Between 1973 and 1988 he translated and anthologised writings by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Luigi Russolo, Umberto Boccioni and other Futurists for French readers. In 1976 he published an early biography of Marinetti and later mapped Futurist politics, including left-wing currents and links with anarchism. He rejected the Italian formula of a "Second Futurism" after Boccioni's death, proposing instead a decade-based history: Plastic Dynamism in the 1910s, Mechanical Art in the 1920s, and Aeroaesthetics in the 1930s. He also established Futurist postal art as a historiographic field, researched Futurist photography and cinema, and curated major exhibitions in Paris, Milan, Rovereto, Barcelona and elsewhere.
His books range from La Scene futuriste and Futurism: Creation and Avant-garde to studies of Giorgio de Chirico, Medardo Rosso, Loie Fuller, Arte Povera, Dada, and the Stella d'Italia. In 1989 he received the Georges Jamati Prize; in 2002 the Filmcritica and Giubbe Rosse prizes; in 2010 the Venetian Academy Silver Medal. In 2011 France named him Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, and Italy named him Cavaliere of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
A death notice published in Liberation on 13 October 2026, placed by his companion Laurence and his children Marcella, Salvatore, Giovanni and Clara, recorded his death in Paris on 3 October and announced a ceremony at Notre-Dame du Travail and burial at Pere-Lachaise. Cause of death was not made public. Lista leaves a body of scholarship that reshaped how Futurism is taught and exhibited across Europe.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), Liberation death notice via Odella, Bibliotheque nationale de France. Wikipedia ↗
Photos
1Giovanni Lista (2009), photograph by Paolo Aldi
Oct 2008 · by People Forever
