- What is Futurism?
- Historical and social context of Futurism
- Characteristics of Futurism
- Futuristic poems
- Futuristic painting
- Futuristic architecture
- Authors and representatives
We explain what futurism is, the historical and social context and its characteristics. Poems, painting and futuristic architecture.
What is Futurism?
Futurism was known as one of the many artistic currents that made up the European avant-gardes of the 20th century, which emerged in Italy in 1909, when the Italian poet, playwright and editor Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his Futurist Manifesto in the Le Figaro newspaper in Paris.
It was an eager movement to break away from the tradition, the past and what was considered until then as the main features of the art and the poetry, postulating instead the exaltation of the sensual, the national and irreverence.
Futurism was offered as a current, fierce and aggressive movement, as it can be read in the Futurist Manifesto:
“… We affirm that the magnificence of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car, with its radiator adorned with thick tubes like snakes of explosive breath… a roaring car, which seems to be running on shrapnel, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace ”
And although its main axis had to do with literature, also had an important impact on the painting, which becomes evident with the signing of the Manifesto of Futurist Painters the year after the publication of Marinetti's text.
Futurism and its manifesto set an important precedent for later artistic movements, such as the surrealism, and it is considered as a naturally involuntary antecedent of the fascist thought which was to emerge in Mussolini's Italy almost thirty years later.
Historical and social context of Futurism
Futurism was born in Milan, Italy, and is considered a fundamentally Italian movement, given its nationalist, misogynistic and warmongering temperament, which led its greatest exponents to enlist when the first trumpets of the city sounded. First World War.
Few returned from the front lines, and those who did did not necessarily continue the movement, so the operational center of Futurism shifted from Milan to Rome. Thus, when Marinetti died in 1944, Futurism had already become a much more submissive movement, delivered to the academy, betraying its rebellious spirit.
Characteristics of Futurism
Futurism defined itself by its obsession with speed, which it considered a virtue of the times to come. I appreciated the technology, the Energy, force, and this tried to be reflected in his pictorial or poetic works, using forms, rhythms and transparencies, as well as successions of images as in a kaleidoscope.
On the other hand, it exalted originality, nationalism, bustle and consideration of the life as a constant struggle, for which beauty, according to them, was necessarily involved in the confrontation. His songs to the Revolution, boldness, objectivity and the rejection of traditional aesthetics were frequent, embracing instead contemporary life, the machine and the movement. In that sense, he could resort to any expressive method (plastic arts, architecture, urbanism, fashion, movie theater, advertising, music, etc.) in order to create an “art in action”.
Futuristic poems
Futurist poetry was sparsely cultivated in Futurist Italy, and much more so in its Russian variant, which emerged in the years before the First World War. Great Russian poets such as Mayakovski and Burliuk, who also practiced painting, were enthusiastic Futurist poets, so devoted to scandal and their own perspectives that they even booed Marinetti himself on his visit to Russia in 1914.
In these poems it is common to find revolutionary enthusiasm, perhaps an admonition of what would happen in the October Revolution of 1917, when Communist militants would overthrow Tsarism and establish a Soviet regime. The song of modernity, the machine, progress and the speed of change are felt in his verses. Here is a clear example of this:
- "Poet and worker" by Vladimir Mayakovski. We are even. Comrades, within the working mass. Proletarians of body and soul. Only together will we beautify the world. And we will propel it with hymns.
- "Song of the car" by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (fragment). Vehement God of a race of steel, an automobile drunk with space, that paws with anguish, with the brake in its strident teeth! Oh formidable Japanese monster with forge eyes, nourished by flames and mineral oils, hungry for horizons and sidereal prey, your heart expands with its diabolical taf-taf (…) "
Futuristic painting
Futurist painting was a direct heir to the cubism, to such a degree that the first Italian paintings ascribed to Futurism could well have been exhibited as Cubist. However, they quickly sought a style of their own, based on their desire to represent the reality in their strokes and shapes.
They used the color pure and the geometric forms, painting objects successively, as in movement, or smudging them, as is done today in the comic books. Many of its cultivators will reach abstractionism, through their foray into rayonism.
Futuristic architecture
Embracing anti-historicalism, futuristic architecture also pursued the representation of speed, through long horizontal lines that aspired to convey urgency, movement, restlessness.
It was a dynamic architectural trend, which valued calculation, audacity and simplicity, pointing to materials that provide agility and lightness, such as reinforced concrete, iron, glass, cardboard and textile fiber, to replace wood , brick and stone.
Futurist architecture wanted to find its inspiration in the modern world, just as the ancients found it in the natural world around them, and therefore they wanted an architectural art that would accept its own expiration, its transience, allowing each generation to make its own town, burying the previous ones.
Authors and representatives
Some of the main representatives of Futurism in its various artistic disciplines were:
- Futuristic poetry. Filippo T. Marinetti, Giovanni Papini, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Carlos Felipe Porfirio, and the Russians Vladimir Mayakovski, David Burliuk, Aleksei Kruchónyj, Velimir Khlébnikov,
- Futuristic painting. Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, Antonio Sant’Elia, or the Argentine Emilio Pettoruti.
- Futuristic architecture. Angiolo Mazzoni, Antonio Sant’Elia, Nikolay Diulgheroff.