In 1909 Renzo Provinciali (Parma, 14 mar.1895-Roma, 2 ott.1981) founded a Fascio Anticlericale ’Francesco Ferrer’ in Parma and the following year established an ’independent’ Futurist group in Parma arguing for an Anarcho-Futurism that was free from the influence of Marinetti’s political thinking. Provinciali argued that a revolutionary art like Futurism could not survive in a bourgeois society whereas a revolutionary political organisation needed an avant-garde art and should lose traditional aesthetics.
Parma was the centre of the Anarcho-Syndicalist movement and Renzo Provinciali was a widely known anarchist who united the Parma Anarchists and Futurists in a Circolo Liberatorio di Studi Sociali. Between May 1912 and January 1913 the group produced seven issues of the anarchist journal La barricata.
In his 20’s Illari joined the Parma Socialist Party and worked on their paper L’idea . By about 1920 Pietro Illari was heading the Parma Futurist group that had been founded by the anarchist Renzo Provinciali. Illari steered the vision of the group from Anarcho-Futurism closer towards the Left wing and actively involved the group with the Arditi del Popolo.
In 1922 he joined the Italian Communist party and worked on their journals L’ordine nuovo and Idea communista becoming the Parma Party Secretary in a short space of time.
Illari had strong links with Marasco’s Futurist group in Florence and was also in contact with the Anarcho-Futurists in La Spezia who were all militant anti-Fascists, very critical of Marinetti and violently opposed to the pro-Fascist element within Futurism headed by the Mario Carli / Emilio Settimelli faction.
He was in contact with the Communist-Futurist Franco Rampa Rossi who collaborated on his periodical Rovente, a journal that, while inherently Left wing and anti-Fascist, was also in violent opposition to the ’official’ political line of mainstream Marinettian Futurism.
Suddenly, however, in June 1922 he quit the Communist party for unknown reasons but possibly because the Communist Central Committee forced him to choose between Communism and Futurism.
Illari, under no illusion that he could survive either artistically or politically under a Fascist government, emigrated to Argentina in 1924 where he taught children of Italian immigrants.