FUTURISM

Revision

History

The Italian Futurism is the first art movement that can be considered an avant-garde movement.

They introduced with their art an ideological interest that affected deeply culture and even social costumes, when denies all the past, substituting it by stylistic and technical experimentation.

Artists

It officially began with Marinetti’s manifesto in 1909

The manifesto was signed by Balla, Carra, Boccioni, Russolo and Soffici.

Philosophy

The avant-garde movements are a phenomenon typical of non well developed countries in which the movement appears as a rebellion in front of the official culture, normally moderate.

They align in the side of progressive political movements.

Even being intentionally revolutionary, their effort is more polemic. In the futurist manifest they mention the destruction of historical city and museums

Philosophy

They appeared in favour of the new city, imagined as a machine in movement.

Their revolution is the industrial or technological revolution, this is, a bourgeois revolution.

In the new civilization the machines, the intellectual-artists represent the genius.

Characteristics

The futurists define themselves as anti-romantic, and they want to follow their own moods so works are highly emotive.

They exalt: science

and technique but they want them to be

poetic and lyric.

Characteristics

They assure they are socialist, but they are not interested in working class fights and they consider the intellectuals of avant-garde as the aristocracy of the future.

When they have to choose in politics they prefer the nationalism. The movement lasted until the end of WW1 but it was dissolved after it.

Characteristics

The characteristics of the movement were their interest in an art forged out of the beauty of speed and a glorification of war.

The physical movement, as long as speed is concerned, is the cohesive factor that allows the fusion of object and space

Characteristics

They aimed at eliminating the basic dualism of the traditional culture.

The unit of the real should not be produce in the thoughts but in sensations, in an emotive way.

The artist must underline dynamism to make it more emotive

Characteristics

Forms are full of freedom, breaking the elements but sometimes is not completely abstract

Important use of colour, in contrast with the cubism, to which it keeps some similes in form

Strong lines and combination with pointillist technique

Compositions full of movementSubjects compromised with society

Balla

Carrá

Boccioni

• He was the author of the Futurist Manifest in 1910• In order to free artists from the past he advised them to enter

in the modern world, using for that purpose:– Movement– Speed– Dynamism

• Although he received cubist influences he did not use straight lines

• He used colour to give the impression of vibration • In order to depict dynamism he represented different

movements at the same time• In sculpture he combined wood, iron and glass• He wanted to depict the interrelation in between an object in

movement and the space around it.

Boccioni