Roberto Marcello Baldessari IRAS

Roberto Marcello Baldessari, known by the pseudonym Iras, was born in Innsbruck on March 23, 1894, and died in Rome on June 22, 1965. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Rovereto due to anti-Italian unrest. From a young age, he engaged with art, attending the Royal Elisabethan School in Rovereto and later the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he met key avant-garde artists such as Gino Rossi and Arturo Martini. In the 1920s, he adopted the pseudonym Iras by reversing the last letters of his surname to distinguish himself from the architect Luciano Baldessari, also a futurist.
Throughout his career, Baldessari focused on painting and engraving, exploring various artistic movements including futurism, dadaism, and abstraction. He participated in significant futurist exhibitions, including the 1921 Paris show, the 19th Venice Biennale, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Aeropainting exhibition in 1934. His travels across Europe—Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands—allowed him to engage with leading avant-garde circles, enriching his artistic language.
After a period of experimentation and a brief return to futurism, he settled permanently in Rovereto, where he produced engravings and frescoes. His work is characterized by simple geometric lines, a focus on light and shadow as constructive elements, and a personal reinterpretation of Boccioni's plastic dynamism. Baldessari is remembered as a versatile and innovative artist who successfully blended tradition and modernity within the Italian 20th-century art scene.