Futurism

Futurism was an early-20th-century artistic and social movement that began in Italy, with smaller followings elsewhere. It celebrated dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and modern inventions like cars, airplanes, and industrial cities. Leading figures included Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. The movement glorified modernity and, as its doctrine stated, sought to free Italy from the burden of its past.

Though primarily Italian, similar movements appeared in the Russian Empire, where some Russian Futurists later formed their own groups; other countries had a few Futurists or movements inspired by it. Futurists worked across all art forms, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, urban design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture, and cuisine. The movement influenced Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, and Dada to some extent, and more strongly Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism. Passéism represents an opposing attitude.

Italian Futurism was founded in Milan in 1909 by poet and art theorist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He launched it with his *Manifesto of Futurism*, first published on 5 February 1909 in *La gazzetta dell’Emilia*, then reprinted in the French newspaper *Le Figaro* on 20 February 1909. Painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, and composer Luigi Russolo soon joined him. Marinetti expressed a deep hatred of everything old, especially political and artistic traditions, declaring, “We want no part of it, the past.” The Futurists admired speed, technology, youth, violence, cars, airplanes, and industrial cities—all symbols of humanity’s triumph over nature—and were passionate Italian nationalists. They glorified modernity, rejected the cult of the past and all imitation, praised originality “however daring, however violent,” proudly bore “the smear of madness,” dismissed art critics as useless, rebelled against harmony and good taste, swept away previous art’s themes and subjects, and glorified science.

Publishing manifestos was a key feature of Futurism, and the group (often led by Marinetti) wrote them on topics like painting, architecture, music, literature, theatre, cinema, photography, religion, women, fashion, and cuisine. In these manifestos, they described their beliefs and methods, as well as their disdain for traditional Italian Renaissance art and its subjects. According to the 1910 *Manifesto of the Futurist Painters* by Boccioni, Russolo, Severini, Balla, and Carrà: “We want to fight implacably against the mindless, snobbish, and fanatical religion of the past… We rebel against the spineless admiration for old canvases, old statues, and old objects… and we deem it unjust and criminal that people habitually disdain whatever is young, new, and trembling with life.” They believed art should be inspired by modern technological marvels: “Just as our forebears took the subject of art from the religious atmosphere that enveloped them, so we must draw inspiration from the tangible miracles of contemporary life.”

The founding manifesto lacked a positive artistic programme, which the Futurists tried to create in their subsequent *Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting* (published as a leaflet in Milan on 11 April 1910). It committed them to a “universal dynamism” to be directly represented in painting. Objects in reality were not separate from each other or their surroundings: “The sixteen people around you in a rolling motor bus are in turn and at the same time one, ten four three; they are motionless and they change places… The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the motor bus and are blended with it.”

The Futurist painters were slow to develop a distinctive style and subject matter. In 1910 and 1911, they used Divisionist techniques—breaking light and color into stippled dots and stripes—adopted from Giovanni Segantini and others. Severini, who lived in Paris, later attributed their backwardness in style and method at that time to their distance from Paris, then the center of avant-garde art. Cubism also helped shape Italian Futurism’s artistic style. Severini was the first to encounter Cubism, and after a visit to Paris in 1911, the Futurist painters adopted Cubist methods, which gave them a way to analyze energy in paintings and express dynamism.

They often painted modern urban scenes. Carrà’s *Funeral of the Anarchist Galli* (1910–1911) is a large canvas depicting events the artist was involved in during 1904. The action of a police attack and riot is rendered energetically with diagonals and broken planes. His *Leaving the Theatre* (1910–1911) uses a Divisionist technique to depict the scene.