Futurism

Born in Italy, the first avant-garde of the twentieth century - before Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism -, Futurism is a major landmark in the history of art and of modern thought. Rather than a school of painting or literature, it was a revolutionary movement whose aim was to create a new awareness and a new approach to the world in general and to art in particular. It embodied the determination to perpetually regenerate man confronted with the progress of technology (electricity, mechanization, telecommunication ...). The Futurists' challenge was to combine all the aspects of modernism within aesthetic creation, re-considering them both in a single dynamic sweep. Ranging from plastic arts to culinary arts, they gave birth to amazing works that would become references for the following avant-gardes, and today, a legacy claimed by many artists. In this reference summing-up, the author reviews the different aesthetic stages of the movement, from "plastic dynamism" in the 1910s to aeropainting in the 1930s, and examines the relationship, long the object of controversy, between the movement and the Italian Fascist government.