Futurism/DanniPosted: May 10, 2011
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 19th century. The futurists practiced in every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture and even gastronomy.
The founder of Futurism and its most influential personality was the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He and others espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. Futurism was presented as a modernist movement celebrating the technological, future era. The car, the plane, the industrial town were representing the motion in modern life and the technological triumph of man over nature.
They published first a general manifesto, “The Manifestos of Futurist Painters,” in February 1910, then, in March, the more specific “Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto.” It was not until much later in the year, however, that the painting of the three most notable of the first signers, Carlo Carrà (1881-1966), Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), and Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), showed revolutionary formal changes consistent with the procedures set forth in the Technical Manifesto. Futurism influenced many other twentieth century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism, Surrealism and Dada.
Futurism as a coherent and organized artistic movement is now regarded as extinct, having died out in 1944 with the death of its leader Marinetti, and Futurism was, like science fiction, in part overtaken by ‘the future’.