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# 78 APRIL 18 , 2016
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ITALIAN ART:
6 things you probably didn’t
know about futurism
By Giulia Carletti
Born as the most instinctual and – possibly – irrational response to 20th
century scientific and technological innovations,
Futurism was an artistic
Italian movement celebrating the energy, speed,
and power of the machine, thereby advocating
the vitality of modern life
and the purifying effect of
war ("the world's only hygiene"). In the visual arts,
this doctrine was mirrored upon the optical reproduction of movement
and upon the exaltation
of speed, through repetitions of forms (in painting)
and multiple planes (in
sculpture).
lious Italian intellectuals
pointed their fingers at
museums, libraries, and
the whole classical heritage – from Ancient Rome to
Renaissance to modern times – as if that culture had
become obsolete and
thus something to fight
against and, eventually,
defeat.
That is what Futurism was
about: destroying of the
old system of ideas in order to give space to the
roaring modernity. And
this is probably what most
of Italian-art enthusiasts know about Futurism.
However, there are some
other interesting facts,
which will undeniably inThose angry and rebel- trigue you, and that will
12 | WE THE ITALIANS
www.wetheitalians.com
reveal something more
about this bombastic movement.
1• A movement born in
Italy. It is a not-well-known yet confirmed fact
that Futurism’s Manifesto,
written in 1909 by Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti, was
first published in Italy, and
not in France. Many Italian
newspapers, such as the
Tavola Rotonda of Naples,
the Gazzetta dell’Emilia
of Bologna, the Gazzetta
di Mantova, and L’Arena
of Verona were the first
disseminators of the new
“doctrine”, which, only later, reached the French
newspaper Le Figaro. That
highlights Futurism as a
specifically Italian move-