Balla’s painting Dynamism of a Dog on a Lead, a light-hearted study of a whirry-Iegged mutt, was influenced by Bragaglia’s work. Futurists had been eager to design the city of tomorrow; Marinetti enrolled Antonio Sant’Elia (1888-1916) to be the movement’s official architect. Sant’Elia’s New City was full of soaring towers and straight, forceful lines – but it was never built, and remained a science fiction vision. Futurists thought that each generation should build its own environment, and that buildings should last no longer than a single lifetime.

War artists

Within the months before World War I, Futurists took up the interventionist cause. Their anarchic fieriness became a strident patriotism, as they urged Italy to rise up against the old enemies; Austria and Germany. Futurist Evenings had been now war rallies – Marinetti waved Italy’s flag and burned Austria’s. Carra’s Interventionist Manifesto is the key image of the era. The Futurists glorified war.

Most of them enlisted; for Boccioni, the fighting was ‘wonderful, marvellous, terrible, immense, life and death’ – and at the front, he proclaimed ‘I am happy.’ The war combined modern technology and old-fashioned violence, but weapons such as the machine gun offered no grand passion; just death on a huge, industrial scale. The movement lost its momentum; Boccioni and Sant’Elia had been killed, and the survivors went their separate ways.

Like an old soldier, Futurism didn’t die; when the fighting was over, bits and pieces of it had been picked up by other individuals. Many European artists fiddled with Futurist ideals, and some Italians pursued them into the 1930s. Immediately after the war, Marinetti took part in political campaigns alongside Benito Mussolini, who was to become Italy’s Fascist dictator.

Many individuals have condemned the Futurist movement for this flirtation with Mussolini’s repressive ideas, but the men seem to have had little in common politically; every may have been merely using the other’s notoriety to drum up publicity for his own schemes. Futurism was chaotic and impulsive; Fascism, to say the least, was not! Mussolini, the square-jawed Emperor of Earnestness, soon distanced himself from the Futurists and their embarrassing taste for riotous disruption.

Their main principle was universal dynamism. For the Futurists, everything moved and changed rapidly, and nothing remained static and isolated. Their globe was a constant flow of interaction – an object gained its identity only in relation to the things around it. Universal dynamism complemented their passion for city life, with all its speedy technology – trains, cars and, overhead, aeroplanes. They urged other artists to abandon conventional subjects, and to concentrate on the energetic whizz of urban existence.

Boccioni’s The City Rises conveys all the energy from the city and its workers. A swirl of movement rushes through the figures; it peaks in the centre, where a large rearing horse symbolizes the energy from the crowd. The Futurist enthusiasm for bold, shimmering colours adds further vibrancy towards the work.

In Russolo’s Music, colour expresses the sounds made by a pianist. Noises surge in a blue spiral, and also the melody coils around the rapt musician. Strong lines of colour dart into the pianist’s globe – notes, perhaps, charged with emotion. Futurist painters frequently utilized sharp, forceful lines to suggest thrusting movement, or pent-up tensions.

The Futurists had big ideas and chose odd subjects, but their techniques were not wholly original. Severini lived in Paris, and introduced the others towards the latest artistic breakthroughs. In Armoured Train, he utilized the same Cubist technique as Picasso, breaking up the surface of the scene. Boccioni frequently adopted an Impressionistic style with his brush strokes.

The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876- 1944) despised the major artists of the day. These sensitive Parisian types, with their paintings of fruit bowls and farmers – they were just hiding from the modern globe! Marinetti was the driving force behind a brand new artistic movement, which he called Futurism. He was so eager to wrestle with modernity that he took a back to front approach – he began by writing down the Futurist movement’s ideals, and challenged other individuals to find a way of expressing them in images.

In 1908, Marinetti published the first of his many manifestos, declaring these ideas and plans. Although he lived in Milan, he managed to have his grand claims printed on the front page of Le Figaro, the well-known French newspaper; he wanted to reach the whole globe, not just a few Italian intellectuals. This energetic man led Futurism like a frenzied political campaign; he was often known as ‘the caffeine of Europe’!

Marinetti enthused about the speed and energy of new technology – he had toyed using the idea of calling his movement Dynamism, or Electricity. As a firm patriot, he was frustrated by the stagnation in Italian culture – it seemed that the Futurists would have to destroy the establishment before a brand new art could emerge, and he tried to spur individuals into action by stirring up a mood of aggression and confrontation. He held Futurist Evenings (Serata Futurista) in European theatres, antagonizing audiences by hurling abuse at them. Riots frequently ensued using the police in attendance.