Italian Futurism

Italian Futurism. Officially launched in 1909 when Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian intellectual, published his “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” in the French newspaper Le Figaro. Marinetti’s continuous leadership ensured the movement’s cohesion for three and half decades, until his death in 1944.

To be a Futurist in the Italy of the early 20th century was to be modern, young, and insurgent. Inspired by the markers of modernity—the industrial city, machines, speed, and flight—Futurism’s adherents exalted the new and the disruptive. They sought to revitalize what they determined to be a static, decaying culture and an impotent nation that looked to the past for its identity.

Futurism began as a literary avant-garde, and the printed word was vital for this group. Manifestos, words-in-freedom poems, novels, and journals were intrinsic to the dissemination of their ideas. But the Futurists quickly embraced the visual and performing arts, politics, and even advertising.

Futurist artists experimented with the fragmentation of form, the collapsing of time and space, the depiction of dynamic motion, and dizzying perspectives. Their style evolved from fractured elements in the 1910s to a mechanical language in the ’20s, and then to aerial imagery in the ’30s. No vanguard exists in a void—all are touched by their historical context.

The Futurists’ celebration of war as a means to remake Italy and their support of Italy’s entrance into World War I also constitute part of the movement’s narrative, as does the later, complicated relationship between Futurism and Italian fascism.

This exhibition endeavors to convey the spirit of Italian Futurism in all of its complexity. The Guggenheim Museum’s architecture lends itself to the display of this multidisciplinary idiom.

Taking its cue from the Futurists’ concept of the “total work of art” (an ensemble that surrounds the viewer in a completely Futurist environment) and their aim to achieve a “reconstruction of the universe,” the presentation integrates works in multiple mediums on all levels of the rotunda. Objects are organized in a roughly chronological order, with filmic components bringing to life some of the movement’s more ephemeral activities, such as performance and declamation.

The Futurists were insurrectionary and stridently vocal, and thus Italian Futurism welcomes a certain amount of visual and aural cacophony.

Futurism was punctuated by paradoxes: while predominantly antifeminine, it had active female participants; while calling for a breakdown between “high” and “low” culture, it valued painting above other forms of expression; while glorifying the machine, it shied away from the mechanized medium of film.

By 1929, the artists who had denounced traditional institutions saw their leader, Marinetti, become a member of the Academy of Italy. And many of the revolutionary Futurists complied in some way with the Fascist regime. Through a comprehensive examination of Italian Futurism’s full history, the exhibition offers an opportunity to reassess one of the most contentious of modernist movements.

Over the course of more than thirty years, Futurism attracted many artists. Works by the 79 individuals below appear in the New York exhibition.

A
Giovanni Acquaviva, 1900–1971
Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880–1918
Fedele Azari, 1895–1930
B
Francesco Balilla Pratella, 1880–1955
Giacomo Balla, 1871–1958
Barbara (Olga Biglieri), 1915–2002
Benedetta (Benedetta Cappa Marinetti), 1897–1977
Mario Bellusi, 1893–1955
Ottavio Berard, 1896–1975
Romeo Bevilacqua, 1908–1958
Piero Boccardi, active 1930s
Umberto Boccioni, 1882–1916
Enrico Bona, 1907–1976
Aroldo Bonzagni, 1887–1918
Anton Giulio Bragaglia, 1890–1960
Arturo Bragaglia, 1893–1962
Alessandro Bruschetti, 1910–1980
Paolo Buzzi, 1874–1956

C
Mauro Camuzzi, 1893–1964
Francesco Cangiullo, 1884–1977
Pasqualino Cangiullo, 1900–1975
Mario Carli, 1889–1935
Carlo Carrà, 1881–1966
Mario Castagneri, 1892–1940
Giannina Censi, 1913–1995
Cesare Cerati, 1898–1969
Mario Chiattone, 1891–1957
Gilbert Clavel, 1883–1927
Bruno Corra (Bruno Ginanni Corradini), 1892–1976
Tullio Crali, 1910–2000
D
Tullio D’Albisola (Tullio Mazzotti), 1899–1971
Ferruccio Demanins, 1903–1944
Fortunato Depero, 1892–1960
Nicolaj Diulgheroff, 1901–1982
Gerardo Dottori, 1884–1977
F
Fillìa (Luigi Colombo), 1904–1936
Luciano Folgore (Omero Vecchi), 1888–1966

G
Corrado Govoni, 1884–1965
M
Virgilio Marchi, 1895–1960
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 1876–1944
Alberto Martini, 1876–1954
Pino Masnata, 1901–1973
Filippo Masoero, 1894–1969
Angiolo Mazzoni, 1894–1979
Torido Mazzotti, 1895–1988
Alberto Montacchini, 1894–1956
Nelson Morpurgo, 1899–1978
Bruno Munari, 1907–1998
N
N. Nicciani, active 1930s
P
Vinicio Paladini, 1902–1971
Aldo Palazzeschi (Aldo Giurlani), 1885–1974
Ivo Pannaggi, 1901–1981
Giovanni Papini, 1881–1956
Osvaldo Peruzzi, 1907–2004
Carlo A. Petrucci, active 1920s
Ugo Piatti, 1880–1953
Zdenka Podhajska, 1901–1999
Ugo Pozzo, 1900–1981
Enrico Prampolini, 1894–1956

R
Riccardo Ricas (Riccardo Castagnedi), 1912–1999
Maria Ricotti, 1886–1974
Enif Robert (Enif Angelini Robert), 1886–1974
Romolo Romani, 1884–1916
Rosa Rosà (Edyth von Haynau), 1884–1978
Ottone Rosai, 1895–1957
Luigi Russolo, 1885–1947
S
Valentine de Saint-Point, 1875–1953
Antonio Sant’Elia, 1888–1916
Bruno Sanzin (Bruno Giordano Sanzin), 1906–1994
Alberto Sartoris, 1901–1998
Emilio Settimelli, 1891–1954
Gino Severini, 1883–1966
Mario Sironi, 1885–1961
Ardengo Soffici, 1879–1964
Mino (Stanislao) Somenzi, 1899–1948
Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni), 1896–1974

T
Thayaht (Ernesto Michahelles), 1893–1959
V
Lucio Venna (Giuseppe Landsmann), 1897–1974
Z
Růžena Zátková, 1885–1923