Futurism

Futurism was an Italian avant-garde artistic and literary movement that began in the early 20th century. It emerged with the publication of the Futurist Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in the French newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909, which urged a breaking with the past and an embrace of speed, technology, youth, and urban modernity. The movement sought to capture dynamic energy and the experience of modern life, particularly through speed, machinery, and movement.

Key figures in Futurism included painters such as Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, and Gino Severini, as well as the writer and organizer Marinetti and the composer Luigi Russolo. The movement produced a series of manifestos and publications, including the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting (1910) and the exploration of new poetic forms, notably the use of parole in libertà (words in freedom) in poetry. In music and sound art, Russolo's experiments with the Art of Noises (1913) proposed integrating industrial and everyday sounds into composition.

A central aim of Futurism was to valorize the machine age and the modern metropolis, often represented through dynamic, fragmented forms and a rejection of traditional aesthetic conventions. The movement also sought to redefine art’s relationship to society and politics, and some Futurists endorsed nationalist ideas or aligned with fascist currents in the 1920s and 1930s. This association contributed to controversy and a decline in influence after the early 20th century, though Futurism left a lasting impact on modern art, design, and literature by foregrounding speed, technology, and urban life as subjects for artistic exploration.