presents
Every mixture
stems from
an alchemy of intents
WWhen you’re at the Camparino, either sitting at a table with your friends or standing at the bar, you always end up stealing glances towards the entrance door. You’re trying to get lucky enough to make eye contact with the intellectuals and artists that step in so often. Indeed, they’ve done so since day one.
This meeting place in the Galleria of Milan is one of those that have hosted illustrious encounters, able to change the course of history. In fact, several cafés in cities such as Rome and Turin used to host the meetings of Futurists who would carry out their early experiments in the field of the so-called Eight Art:
of cocktails that they would call
So, the Futurists discovered a new way to express their art through food and drink combinations, in which innovation translated into flavours. The palate experience became revolutionary, creative, unrepeatable and multi-sensory.
To the Futurists, creating a polibibita recipe would mean devising a performance able to evoke inspiring sensations, thanks to its special ingredients, but also pairings with food, music, light, and more.
In certain instances, flavours were paired with tablets that were touched to provide a tactile experience while drinking, thus turning the tasting experience into a game of art, made of simultaneous sensory experiences and bold genius.
almost prefigured a modern bartender, who mixes the elements of a cocktail by following their imagination, aimed at giving customers surprising, tailor-made combinations.
A single unwritten rule would apply to all the Futurist polibibite and whatever came with them: the selection of food, wines and liquors was strictly local, as an original reaction to the inventions that came from the States. This is one of the reasons why Bitter and Cordial Campari were often featured in the mixtures of the time.
And yet, it’s hard not to see in
“L’Affettuoso Tira a Campari”
and other mixing creations attributed to Fortunato Depero a real sign of fate, rather than a mere celebration of Italianness.
They almost appear to predict his encounter with Davide Campari, which happened a few years later, thus stressing that a sort of invisible thread existed between these two 20th century pioneers of art and communication.
They had an alchemy of intents that defined a new recipe for the future. We have no doubt that they recognised it at first sight. Who knows, maybe in a café during aperitivo, before sitting down at a table and inventing one of the greatest mixtures of their time, the union between the design of an iconic bottle and the versatility of an inimitable product which was about to step into the homes of the whole world: