Futurism

Futurism was first announced to the world in February 1909 with the appearance in the French paper Le Figaro of its founding manifesto by the Italian poet and former symbolist Filippo Marinetti. At the time of its publication the membership of the Futurist movement essentially amounted to one man, Marinetti himself, but was soon to find its ranks bolstered by several Italian painters, including Umberto Buccioni, Luigi Russolo and Giacoma Balla, who were to publish their own manifesto in the following year.

Although scarcely without precedent – many of Marinetti's ideas could be traced back to the likes of Georges Sorel, Henri Bergson and, especially, Friedrich Nietzsche – the violent and absolutist manner in which