Futurism in Italy

 

      In their paintings and sculptures the Italian Futurists artists sometimes verged on total abstraction, but for the most part they drew upon imagery derived from the physical world. Futurism was first of all a literary concept, born in the mind of a poet and propagandist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1908 and announced in a series of manifesto’s in 1909, 1910, and subsequently. It began as a rebellion of young intellectuals against the cultural torpor into which Italy had sunk during the nineteenth century, and as so frequently happens in such movements, its manifestos initially focused on what they had to destroy before new ideas could flourish.

    In late 1909 or early 1910 the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra’, and Luigi Russolo joined Marinetti’s movement. Later it also included Gino Severini, who had been working in Paris since 1906, and Giacomo Balla. The group drew up a second manifesto in 1910. This again attacked the old institutions and promoted the artistic expression of motion, metamorphosis, and the simultaneity of visions itself.