futurismo! angry modern artists

“11 Oc­to­ber 1908, hav­ing worked for six years at my in­ter­na­tion­al mag­a­zine Poe­sia, in an at­tempt to free the Ital­ian lyri­cal ge­nius that was un­der sen­tence of death from its tra­di­tion­al and com­mer­cial fet­ters, I sud­den­ly felt that ar­ti­cles, po­et­ry and con­tro­ver­sies were no longer enough. It was ab­solute­ly cru­cial to switch meth­ods, get out into the streets, lay siege to the­aters, and in­tro­duce the fisticuffs into the artis­tic strug­gle ••• My Ital­ian blood raced faster when my lips coined out loud the word FU­TUR­ISM.”
—Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so Marinet­ti (1876–1944)
 

Wat is Fu­tur­ism?

The Fu­tur­ist Art Move­ment thrived be­tween the 1910s and 1920s, start­ing in and with its high­est pop­u­lar­i­ty in Italy.

 

In the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, ide­o­log­i­cal cre­ator Fil­ip­po Tom­ma­so (F.T.) Marinet­ti was one of the biggest pro­mot­ers of change in art.

In his mind, the world around was chang­ing fu­ri­ous­ly fast and it was not ac­cept­able to keep the cul­tur­al tra­di­tions of the past.
 

His ideas were rad­i­cal; soon, as a poet, he an­nounced in his man­i­festo:
True art was about the fu­ture and all of the old must be de­stroyed!
 

 
“Art, in fact, can be noth­ing but vi­o­lence, cru­el­ty and in­jus­tice.”
—F.T. Marinet­ti
 

Fu­tur­ism was not just a metaphor of fast in­dus­tri­al progress; no, Marinet­ti was quite lit­er­al – he preached for burn­ing the mu­se­ums and eras­ing the clas­si­cal cul­ture of his home­land (once the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man Em­pire), in­clud­ing the mas­ter­pieces of the Re­nais­sance.
 

 
“I am the caf­feine of Eu­rope!”
—Marinet­ti
 

To­day, it might sound like a naive dream of a ran­dom hooli­gan, but, with the rad­i­cal at­mos­phere swirling around the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the Fu­tur­ists gained sup­port in Italy and recog­ni­tion abroad – es­pe­cial­ly in Rus­sia.
 

Talk­ing about their works, the Fu­tur­ist artists were aim­ing to de­pict the speed of the mo­ment, not­ing that the past (and its still­ness) was not worth be­ing glo­ri­fied. Every­thing is about the nü, out with the old; even pas­ta to the Fu­tur­ists was con­sid­ered ob­so­lete.
 

Some of the most fa­mous paint­ings show us ma­chines, ve­hi­cles and peo­ple in mo­tion, cre­at­ing a chaot­ic se­quence in one frame at once.
 

The brush­strokes are ag­gres­sive and fast, just like Marinetti’s squad of war–glorifying artists.
 

 

“We want to sing the love of dan­ger, the habit of en­er­gy and rash­ness!”
—Fon­dazione e man­i­festo del fu­tur­is­mo, 1909
 

 

Many see the roots of Fas­cism com­ing from the Fu­tur­ist move­ment, Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni (1883–1945) even tried to make it the of­fi­cial art-style of the Ital­ian state.

And I ab­solute­ly do NOT sup­port their ideals, and it makes me sad how such tal­ent­ed peo­ple would ded­i­cate their cre­ativ­i­ty and mas­ter­ful­ness to build­ing some­thing so evil and rot­ten.
 

In school, I used to read books with­out con­sid­er­ing when and by whom the works I was study­ing were cre­at­ed for the most part, but now it feels like one is com­plet­ing a puz­zle once you find de­tails be­low the sur­face.

No mat­ter what any­one says, art does have a big in­flu­ence, in the end.
 

What do you think once you know more about artists af­ter see­ing their works?

 

—pur­ples­finx

Flom­mist Veroni­ka Veziro­va, a.k.a. Pur­ples­finx, is an il­lus­tra­tor and graph­ic de­sign­er based in Barcelona. In­spired by cul­ture of all kinds, she writes on top­ics that in­clude art his­to­ry, cre­ativ­i­ty and folk­lore. Her oth­er works in­clude man­ga and psy­che­del­ic po­et­ry. Copy­right © 2022,23 Veroni­ka Veziro­va. Art pho­tographed at the State Mu­se­um of Fine Arts (Pushkin Mu­se­um of Fine Arts), Moscow, Jan­u­ary 2022.

PLEASE   SUPPORT   FLOMM
TIPS  +  DONATIONS  DISCREETLY  ACCEPTED

FLOMM
promotes learning  +  education worldwide
drawing attention to works by nü  +  upcoming artists,
designers, writers, musicians  +  MOR

OUR INVOLVEMENT
– however –
is mostly paid for out of pocket or in trade

IF YOU ENJOY
wat  FLOMM  is doing here, please consider


1.   LEAVE US A TIP  :
use our tip jar whenever the mood hits



2.   BUY OUR SWAG  :
our approach is semi-green —
                all our  FLOMMHAUS  merch is made to order



3.   HELP US OUT  :
use our hashtags  #flomm  #flommus  #whereisflomm  #nüflommart  #flommist
when posting on ur socials —
or drop us a note and offer to help in some way
everything we do is on a volunteer basis —
             when we say  YOU CAN BE A FLOMMIST TOO  this is wat we mean

THANK YOU
your support helps our continued efforts
to create content across numerous platforms

clic 「 HIER   」 to return to the DER TUNG front page