Introduction to Italian Futurism

In the early 20th century, a group of Italian artists sought to embrace modernity in all its glorious messiness and contradictions. The result was Futurism, not a style but a way of looking at life. Its adherents called for abrupt change and the replacement of reason and order with vitality and force of will.

Because of its strong reliance on drama, spectacle, and propaganda, Futurism was well-known by the outbreak of World War I. But in avant-garde circles, which were bohemian but hardly populist, Futurism was viewed as a kind of circus. Nonetheless, its impact on artists committed to the idea of cultural and social revolution was unmistakable.

Art historian Mary Ann Calo examines Futurism as an idea and a development in the visual arts. She considers the uniqueness of this movement in terms of its inflammatory rhetoric and charts the emergence of Futurist art. She also discusses why this modern artistic platform was launched in Italy, a country seen by many at the time as a static culture unable to recognize that its fixation on the past rendered it unable to enter the present.

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