WITH THE FREE PATRONAGE OF
CARNEVALE DI PUTIGNANO
CHURCH OF SAN PIETRO APOSTOLO
New papier-mâché processing techniques and new technologies for the movements of parade floats
after the war, in the 1940s and 1950s
In the immediate post-war period and to be precise from 1946, after the war break, allegorical floats were resumed and together with Fedele Dalessandro and Rocco Faniuolo other tankers dedicated themselves to the artistic realization of artistic artefacts in papier-mâché. Among these we should mention Angelo Notarangelo (Iang'l u zupp), Giuseppe Bianco and the painter Peppino Costanzo. The involvement of several generations in the art of papier-mâché processing is now evident and the first of Fedele Dalessandro's school was joined by the young son Valentino, who with the collaboration of three other colleagues and friends, Franchino Netti (u musch'vet), Tonino Pagliarulo and Armando Genco improved the quality of the puppets.
Guided by the creative flair of Genco, the four managed to make the papier-mâché characters more realistic and dynamic in their features, through a more accurate modeling of the wire. The lines of the profiles were thus emphasized and the puppet was no longer squashed or squared as in the past. The first chariot that contained these new dynamics was entitled "Più ti denudi e men c'illudi" from 1949 which, moreover, caused a sensation for a daring neckline that prompted the then archpriest Don Saverio Losavio to scold heavily the four young people artists. The following year, in 1950, the group built another chariot with the same technique entitled "Two girls and a sailor".
Simultaneously with the aforementioned processing method another one developed in parallel, this time by Giannetto Basile who, instead of iron wire, preferred the hexagonal mesh net that was used to enclose chicken coops, which once modeled was covered with paper impregnated with flour glue.
In the early 1950s the locomotion system of wagons also changed, adapting to the technological evolutions of post-war transport systems. The wagons were originally pushed or pulled by hand or by a donkey or a mule, from the beginning of 1950 they began to be pulled by the first trucks that appeared on the road network south of Bari, which were integrated into the wagon. The camouflage truck traveled in reverse, in practice with the cabin in the rear part of the wagon and the poor driver proceeded for the whole parade looking at the road and the path through a window created in the scenography. Only in the 1960s did the first tractors appear that definitively solved the problem of the advancement of the wagons.
Guided by the creative flair of Genco, the four managed to make the papier-mâché characters more realistic and dynamic in their features, through a more accurate modeling of the wire. The lines of the profiles were thus emphasized and the puppet was no longer squashed or squared as in the past. The first chariot that contained these new dynamics was entitled "Più ti denudi e men c'illudi" from 1949 which, moreover, caused a sensation for a daring neckline that prompted the then archpriest Don Saverio Losavio to scold heavily the four young people artists. The following year, in 1950, the group built another chariot with the same technique entitled "Two girls and a sailor".
Simultaneously with the aforementioned processing method another one developed in parallel, this time by Giannetto Basile who, instead of iron wire, preferred the hexagonal mesh net that was used to enclose chicken coops, which once modeled was covered with paper impregnated with flour glue.
In the early 1950s the locomotion system of wagons also changed, adapting to the technological evolutions of post-war transport systems. The wagons were originally pushed or pulled by hand or by a donkey or a mule, from the beginning of 1950 they began to be pulled by the first trucks that appeared on the road network south of Bari, which were integrated into the wagon. The camouflage truck traveled in reverse, in practice with the cabin in the rear part of the wagon and the poor driver proceeded for the whole parade looking at the road and the path through a window created in the scenography. Only in the 1960s did the first tractors appear that definitively solved the problem of the advancement of the wagons.
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