We explain what futurism is and its characteristics in literature, painting and other arts. Also, its main representatives.
Futurism creates rhythms through shapes, colors and repetitions.
What is futurism?
futurism It was an artistic movement founded at the beginning of the 20th century in Italy, which was part of the currents of the artistic avant-garde and whose distinctive feature was that exalted the new features of modern society: speed, energy, dynamism and machines.
The founder of futurism was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), who was an Italian poet, painter, playwright and editor. He is also considered one of the ideologists of Italian fascism, which took shape in the figure of the dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) at the end of the 1920s. In fact, nationalism, misogyny and militarism, central to fascist ideology.
The founding act of futurism was the publication of the Futuristic manifesto in 1909 in the newspaper The Figaro of France, a gesture that set a trend among avant-garde artistic movements.
In that text, Marinetti exalted violence as values of the movement (“there is no beauty except in the fight”), war (“the only hygiene in the world”) and aesthetic irreverence (“a roaring car that seems to run on shrapnel). It is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
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Characteristics of Futurism
The futurist movement was characterized by the following:
- It was a mainly pictorial and poetic movement.although he also dabbled in sculpture, photography and theatre.
- In general, his artistic works They tried to reproduce and exalt the speed of modern timesincorporating a lot of movement, a lot of energy and strength, if not successions of images in the style of a kaleidoscope or a film.
- His Followers They fervently pursued originalityand they tried to capture the characteristic aspects of the contemporary world: cities, cars, machines, sports, war, hustle and bustle, etc.
- It broke with Italian tradition and with the conventional signs of art history., trying to become an “irreverent slap” to the institutions. In his manifesto, Marinetti called to “destroy museums, libraries, various academies” but also to “fight moralism, feminism and all other opportunistic and utilitarian cowardice.”
- It was the first artistic movement that was organized as such.. In fact, his manifesto set a precedent that was later imitated by other European avant-garde movements, such as surrealism.
- It was an eminently Italian movement.but it also had followers in other countries, such as Russia, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and even on the other side of the Atlantic in Argentina and Uruguay.
futuristic literature
Futurist literature cultivated unusual genres.
Futurist literature shared many of the fundamental features of the movement, such as its passionate, aggressive, controversial rhetoric, and its guidelines were expressed in the literary manifesto of futurism, under the title “Destruction of Syntax-Wireless Imagination-Words in Freedom”, published in 1913.
Some of the characteristics of futurist literature were:
- Poetry predominated, although dramaturgy also was important. The latter was known as “synthetic theater” and was characterized by its plots lasting no more than 10 minutes.
- The use of fast language, which conveyed the speed of the contemporary world: stripped of adjectives and adverbs, and with verbs in the infinitive, as well as an important use of onomatopoeia in the poems, especially when representing machines and war. A clear example of this is Marinetti’s poem “Zang, Tumb, Tumb” which contains verses like “zang-tumb-tumb-zang-zang-tuuumb tatatatatatatata picpacpampacpacpicpampac uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu”.
- Futurist writers used many media other than the book to circulate their texts: pamphlets, poems on posters, and magazines that intermingled poetic texts, illustrations, and theoretical pronouncements.
- They cultivated unusual poetic genressuch as calligram, free word poetry and concrete poetry.
futuristic painting
Although Futurism was mostly literary, it had important manifestations in painting. Futurist painting was also dominated by exercises in movement and violence, as well as themes of urban culture, such as machines, sports, wars and moving vehicles. In general, its painting was characterized by:
- Its great task was to represent movement and dynamismthus rejecting static objects. Movement was represented through compositions with vibrant colours and simultaneous figures, that is, the same body in multiple positions, to intensify the sensation of action and movement through the repetition of the image or also by capturing lines of force.
- His paintings could resemble the repetitions of a kaleidoscope or a film tape, creating rhythms through shapes, colors and repetitions. Thus, a human figure could have multiple arms or legs, to demonstrate its movement.
- Futurism always preferred vibrant colorsresplendent, although he also often used transparencies. This often served to represent moods.
- Abstraction It was also present among the Futurist paintings, especially those of Luigi Russolo.
Main Futurist Authors and Artists
Vladimir Mayakovsky initiated Russian Futurism and supported the Russian Revolution.
A list of the main authors and painters of Futurism includes, apart from the name of Filippo Marinetti, those of:
- Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), Italian painter and sculptor, greatly influenced by Cubism, who was among the pioneers of Futurism after his arrival in Milan at the beginning of the 20th century. Towards the end of his life, however, he moved away from Futurism and followed the influence of Cezánne. His best-known works are The city rises (1910), The street in front of the house (1911), Dynamism of a cyclist (1913) and Under the pergola in Naples (1914).
- Carlo Carrà (1881-1966), Italian painter who began painting murals, including the pavilions of the Universal Exhibition in Paris. He joined futurism on his return to Italy, after a period in London, where he came into contact with anarchism. At the end of his life he ended up venturing into metaphysical painting. Among his most famous works are Funeral for the anarchist Gali (1911) and Tomorrow at sea (1928).
- Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), Italian painter and composer, author of the manifesto The art of noises (1913), in which he proposed to the futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella a new sound palette that approximated the sounds of the contemporary world. In fact, he is considered the precursor of music noisefor his attempts to use noise for aesthetic purposes between 1913 and 1914.
- Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), Italian painter and sculptor, originally an impressionist, whose work made abundant use of pointillism as a way of dissolving the visible and expressing senses of movement and dynamism. However, his work was free of violence, unlike the rest of the futurists. In 1918 he published the “Manifesto of Color”, where he studied the use of color in the avant-garde movements, and from 1930 he ended up moving away from Futurism. Some of his best-known works are Dynamism of a dog, Girl running on the balcony and The violinist’s handall from 1912.
- Anton Giulio Bragaglia (1890-1960), Italian artist of varied and versatile interests, considered a pioneer of futurist photography and cinema in his country. In 1911 he approached futurism with his Photodynamism treatisebut it was rejected by the leaders of the movement who did not take it into account in 1916 for the Manifesto of Futurist Cinema. The paradox is that he was the only artist capable of creating a futuristic film, thus becoming the only representative of futurist cinema in history.
- Giovanni Papini (1881-1956), Italian writer and academic, close to Futurism, despite his conversion to fervent Catholicism starting in 1920. He was famous for dedicating his History of Italian literature “to Benito Mussolini, friend of poetry and poets” in 1937. His most famous works were The futuristic experience (1920), gog (1931), Jacob’s Ladder (1932) and The devil (1953).
- Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), Russian poet and playwright, one of the great figures of early twentieth-century poetry. Initiator of Russian Futurism, when he published his manifesto together with other poets The slap to the public’s taste in 1912. A supporter of the Russian Revolution, he also wrote film scripts and plays. Some of his most famous works are Myself (1913), The cloud in pants (1915) and The bed bug (1929).
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