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    Marinetti  (Alexandria, Egito 1876 - Bellagio, Como, Itália 1944)
    Fillipo Tommaso Marinetti foi o escritor italiano que iniciou o movimento futurista na Itália. Foi o modelo para toda a Europa e serviu de "bandeira" a Almada Negreiros.
    Marinetti lançou vários manifestos. O mais conhecido foi publicado no "Le Figaro" em 20 de fevereiro de 1909, o primeiro manifesto deste movimento de vanguarda, que exalta a importância da técnica e especialmente da máquina.
    Em Milão, publicou, em 11 de Abril de 1910 o "Manifesto dos Pintores Futuristas". Escreveu a novela: Mafarka, el futurista (1910) e uma série de obras teatrais como: Rey Francachela (1905) ó Volcanes (1927), apostando num teatro sintético e dinâmico.
    A linguagem deste escritor exaltava "a vontade de domínio, o mecanismo, a velocidade, repudia o sentimentalismo e defendia a introdução na literatura do ruído, do peso e do cheiro; nada de pontuação, tipografia a cores,  variações expressivas do tipo, onomatopéias" (in "História Ilustrada das Grandes Literaturas - Literatura Portuguesa" VIII 2º Volume, Editorial Estúdios Cor, Lisboa, pp 687).
    Com ele, as artes plásticas tomaram uma nova perspectiva, aliando a sensação dinâmica à continuidade cinética. Almada Negreiros foi um dos intelectuais portugueses que reivindicou influências de Marinetti e do futurismo que, posteriormente, iria também influenciar algumas das idéias dos movimentos fascistas.

     Futurismo
     O Futurismo é uma das facetas do Modernismo,que se pode associar à
agressividade, ao escândalo e ao agitar da vida moderna que inspira dinamismo, paixão pelas máquinas,  pela tecnocracia das cidades industrializadas.
     Esta sub-corrente, inspirada no próprio Futurismo de Marinetti, exprime-se "pela enorme quantidade de frases exclamativas, de invectivas e de insultos, com o
intuito de desmistificar, demolir, acabar com os hábitos culturais esclerosados e
retrógados..." in "As Vanguardas na Poesia Portuguesa do Século XX", de E. Melo e Castro p. 201.

    Marinetti
    The Italian millionaire poet and writer,  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1876 the second son of a lawyer, Enrico Marinetti. He had a strict Jesuit education (in French) in Alexandria, although he was later expelled and finished his schooling in Paris. He then went to study law at the universities of Pavia and Genoa.
    While Marinetti perhaps had intentions of following a legal career, his passion was for literature and poetry. Early on he had published a literary magazine between 1892 and 1894, while still at the Jesuit college, and in 1898 he published his first work in the new 'free verse' style. By 1900 he had decided to devote himself entirely to Italian and French literature and poetry. He founded the international magazine Poesia (Poetry) in 1905 and published it in Milan from 1905 until 1909. Marinetti was on a personal crusade to liberate poetry and literature from the constraints of traditional punctuation and syntax and, from the very beginning, he used Poesia to launch the idea of verso libero (free verse).
    The publication of the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of Le Figaro on 20 February 1909 brought Marinetti instant notoriety. His vehement and polemic manifesto, based on the modern aesthetic principles of a fast, aggressive lifestyle, thrust Futurism onto an unsuspecting audience. The movement's theorist, he glorified danger, war and violence, the love of speed and the wonder of the machine age.
    On the downside, he denigrated women and, after the First World War, courted Mussolini and the Fascists in order to make Futurism the official art of Fascist Italy.
When the original manifesto was published in 1909, very few people actually realised that this new, fledgling movement consisted of just Marinetti himself! However, by 1910 he had been joined by the artists Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo as well as a small following of musicians and writers. This group are now sometimes known as the 'first wave' Futurists.
    An innovative and brilliant publicist, he used modern methods to publicise his new art movement - chiefly in the form of a flood of manifestos which promised much but were often difficult to produce in real terms. In most areas of Futurism the word invariably preceded the deed! Early manifestos were, for convenience, published in Poesia, but by 1913 Marinetti began publishing them in his new magazine Lacerba, produced in Florence.
    The range of Futurist manifestos was simply vast and covered every aspect of the arts - painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, music, photography, cinema, theatre, scenography, costume design, etc - as well as the everyday - love, war, women, and so on. Marinetti set the tone of the Futurist manifestos with his original Founding and Manifesto of Futurism - polemic, argumentative, decrying all that had gone before, before outlining his new ideas. This style of attack the old, established and passé and rebuild with the new Futurist ideal was adopted by most other Futurist manifesto writers. (Over seventy Futurist manifestos were published and nearly thirty English translations are reproduced here - by far the most on the internet!  I'm still looking for English translations of manifestos - click here for a list - and any help will be most gratefully received).
    The other 'modern' way the Futurists publicised themselves and their movement was the serata. These Futurist soirées, invariably organised and led by Marinetti, were the precursor of the 'Synthetic Theatre'. The first was held in Rome on 2nd March 1913 at the Teatro Costanzi and essentially set the tone for the following serata. It began with the writer Giovanni Papini giving a taunting speech against the city of Rome called 'Some advice for the Romans'. The shouts and complaints from the audience grew louder, egged on by taunts from the stage and ended with fighting between the Futurists and their audience. Performances usually included music or a performance of Russolo's intonorumori or noise machines, improvised speeches (usually by Marinetti), presentations of paintings, literary and poetic readings and short dramatic plays or syntheses.
    In 1917 Marinetti met Benedetta Cappa, twenty one years his junior and a student of Giacomo Balla. By 1919 -  the year he wrote his manifesto Against Marriage - they were living together and they married in 1923.
    Marinetti's early works of literature, such as his experimental novel Marfarka (1911), often got him into trouble - indeed he was arrested and charged with publishing pornography when Marfarka was released on an unsuspecting public. In literature, following on from his early experiments with 'free verse', he introduced the concept of 'free words', eschewing syntax and punctuation while revolutionising typography.
    Futurism came to an end with Italy's defeat in the war and Marinetti's death in 1944.
    Many Futurist manifestos have yet to be translated into English. The following is an incomplete list. If anyone has knowledge of an English translation of any of these please contact me here.
 
 

    Futurism
    Literary and poetic in origin, the Futurist movement burst violently onto the European cultural scene on 20 February 1909 when the French newspaper Le Figaro carried on its front page the aggressive and inflammatory Founding and Manifesto of Futurism. It was written by the polemical Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a highly inventive firebrand and a master of public relations. In fact, at this stage, Marinetti was the movement’s only member but soon gathered a literary and artistic coterie around him.
    Within a year the doyen of the group, Giacomo Balla, with  Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini co-signed The Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Indeed, Futurism was to be characterised by the huge number of wide-ranging manifestos issued in its name and used to promote it to a mass audience. In fact, the tenets of Futurism across the arts were invariably defined in words of manifestos long before they appeared in the arts themselves.
    Futurism was a far-reaching Italian movement that included poetry, literature, painting, graphics, typography, sculpture, product design, architecture, photography, cinema and the performing arts and focused on the dynamic, energetic and violent character of changing 20th century life, especially city life. It particularly emphasised the power, force and motion of machinery combined with the contemporary fascination with speed while at the same time denouncing the 'static' art of the past and the passéist or old-fashioned establishment. On the downside it also glorified war, apparently denigrated women, initially favoured Fascism and vilified artistic tradition wanting to "…destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind…".
    It is not widely realised today that much of the initial driving force behind Futurism was political. Italy, as a country, was only formed in 1861 and by the turn of the twentieth century was still socially, culturally and administratively backward compared with the rest of Europe. One of Marinetti's ideals was a somewhat altruistic desire to drag Italy, screaming and shouting if necessary, into the modern twentieth century. In the years leading up to the First World War, the whole of Europe was an unstable political melting pot and as early as 1909 Marinetti published the First Political Manifesto of Futurism to be followed in 1911 by the Second Political Manifesto of Futurism. Balla, Carrà and Russolo were all Anarchists and Boccioni was a Marxist-Anarchist. They were all politically active and, together with Marinetti and many other Futurists, took part in the irredentist demonstrations that urged Italy to enter the First World War. They were all repeatedly arrested. For further information on the political aspects of Futurism, including its alliance with, and subsequent split from, Fascism click here.
    Of all the art forms embracing Futurism it was possibly painting that made, and still makes, the greatest mark. The Futurists’ prime concern was the expression of their ideas on culture and contemporary events. Stylistically widespread and lacking a defined, cohesive visual style, Futurist painting owes some debts to Italian Divisionism and much Futurist painting is often dismissed as a Cubist derivative. Specifically, the hard geometric lines and planes that characterise much of the early Futurist work of, for example, Balla, Carrà, Boccioni, Ardengo Soffici and Severini is related closely to the contemporary Cubist movement. Conversely, Futurist representations, of speed and motion especially, had some reciprocal influence on Cubism and on the Russian Constructivists.
    Similarly, many Futurist pictorial experiments in capturing the path of movement – for example Balla’s Rhythms of a Bow (1912) – clearly owe much to work such as Marcel Duchamp’s famous Nude Descending a Staircase (1911). This, in turn, paid homage to Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 studies of movement using time-lapse photography.
    However, much Futurist work, especially in dynamically capturing the effects of movement, speed and light, is highly innovative. The first phase of Futurist art, during the early 1910's, was grounded in artistic experiment and was an "analytic" phase. During the latter half of the 1910's, Futurist art entered the "synthetic" stage - initially investigated and formulated by Balla with Depero and Prampolini. Often, while attempting to interpret through paint on canvas the tenets of their manifestos, these artists achieved truly astounding works that eventually demonstrated, through the invention and application of their new techniques, the validity of the Futurist hypotheses - a truly avant-garde art.
    The Futurist artists captured the modern machine age and city life with a range of approaches and techniques that, for the time, were revolutionary. The five major areas of experimentation were :-
    Abstract light and colour - for example Balla's experiments in trying to capture and analyse light itself on canvas such as Street Lamp (1909) and many of his later colour experiments.
    Movement and speed - the analysis of movement, for example Balla's Dog on a Leash (1912) and the pictorial representation of speed in his Abstract Speed (1913) or the thrusting of dynamic lines of forceful movement across the canvas in Russolo's Revolt (1911).
    The plastic dynamism of form and the investigation of form was a speciality of the main theorist of the painters, Umberto Boccioni. See, for example, Dynamism of a Man's Head (1914) or his sculpture masterpiece Unique Form of Continuity in Space (1913).
    The interpenetration of subjects - where different elements of a work merge into each other are well illustrated by Boccioni's The Street Enters The House (1911).
    The prismatic or shattering effect that the Futurists 'borrowed' from Cubism - for example Severini's The Boulevard (1910) or The Blue Dancer (1912).
    Futurism, or at least its first influential phase based chiefly in Florence, Milan and Rome, was short lived. Soffici and Carrà left the movement before the Great War that claimed Boccioni and the Futurist architect Antonio Sant’Elia in 1916. Russolo was badly wounded in the head. Severini remained in Paris, somewhat isolated from his native Italy. Artists such as Balla, his student Fortunato Depero and Gerardo Dottori continued working through the war and, in the 1920’s, a new influx of talent including Enrico Prampolini, Fillia and a host of others joined them, bringing new ideas.
    Immediately after the war, with the rise of Communism, Arditism and Fascism, Marinetti's purpose turned again to politics. He and the Futurists were present when d'Annunzio occupied Fiume and they were present at the Fascist's famous 'March on Rome'. This was a very politically active period that saw the growth of political alliances and the mushrooming of various Futurist groups - Ardito-Futurist, Communist-Futurist,  Futurist-Fascist and 'independent' Futurist factions vied with each other as politics once more came to the fore. Shortly after Mussolini came to power, he began to reject his former allies. Marinetti, initially hopeful that Futurism would become the 'official' art of Fascism was, at least, determined that Futurism should not be completely overshadowed by the favoured Novocento artists. Compromises made around 1925 allowed Futurism to survive the Fascist era, albeit in a marginalised capacity.
    It might be thought that Futurism was almost dragged through the next two and a half decades by Marinetti's will alone. While the numbers of "Futurists" increased dramatically during this period, it seems that many were mere copyists or just plain second rate. Certainly after the Great War the first phase of Futurism was over. It seemed, perhaps, after the war the inventive spark had all but gone from Futurism - after all, the times had changed and the Futurists, while still polemic, had lost that sharp cutting edge of the young avant-garde. Indeed, many of the new, young artists thought the original Futurists to be extremely old fashioned. The time of wonder for the speed of the automobile and the daring of the pilot had passed as the war had made these all too familiar. Futurist art was to change direction yet again.
    The so-called 'Second' Futurism of the 1920's and 30's was, in the main, a movement of apolitical artists. They were mostly anti-Fascist, in a cultural sense, and were for the greater part united in opposition to the inconsistent and crippling artistic policies of the Fascist regime. This, combined with the fact the original experimental development work had been accomplished for many of the precepts of Futurist art, meant that new avenues needed to be explored in the name of Futurism.
    Thus began the development, in the early 1920's, of Futurist 'mechanical art' by the new flush of talent in the Futurist ranks, yet still ably and forcefully publicised by Marinetti. Works by artists such as Prampolini and Depero, both of whom were also stage and set designers, typified this new style with such examples as Prampolini's Parallelepipedi (1921) or Depero's Radio Fire-Up (1926). This was also the decade that saw the integration of Futurist art and theatre with the rise of the Futurist Synthetic Theatre, the Futurist Pantomime Theatre, and the like. Rather than the polemic pre-War serata or Futurist 'evenings' of the early years, this was true avant-garde theatre which had a telling effect on the performing arts for much of the remainder of the century.
    By the late 1920's Futurist art found yet another direction - aeropittura or aeropainting - that was to last throughout the next decade and a half. Aeropainting was codified by Marinetti and Mino Somenzi in the 1929 Manifesto of Aeropittura which was also signed by Balla, Prampolini, Depero, Dottori, Fillia, Benedetta, Tato and Rosso. Initially aeropittura was an extension of mechanical art of the early 1920's - seen for example in the early work of Tullio Crali, Thayaht, etc. It also gradually branched towards the "cosmic idealism" of Prampolini - represented by his Cosmic Motherhood and Cloud Diver (both 1930) and Fillia's Aeropainting (1931) and Heavier than Air (1932-4). Another division, catagorised by a move towards a celebration of aerial fantasy, is exemplified by works such as Benedetta's Scorched Summits of Solitude (1936),  Dottori's Agriculture (1936) and Propellors Celebrating (1940) by Leandra Angelucci-Cominazzini. The final separation of aeropittura development was the dizzying celebration of flight and the machine perhaps best captured in a whirling realism by Crali in such works as Nose Dive on the City (1936) or Dogfight (1936-8).
    Futurism officially ended with the death of Marinetti and the fall of Italy in 1944. In 1950 Marinetti's widow, the artist Benedetta, called a reunion of surviving Futurists (Acquaviva, Andreoni, Benedetta, Buzzi, Crali, Masnata, Mazza and Munari) in Milan with a view to resurrecting the movement. While there was some agreement, the plans came to nothing although a few, such as Crali, continued to paint in Futurist style until well into the 1980's.
    Following the Second World War Futurism was heavily tainted, both at home and abroad, because of its close links with Fascism. In retrospect however, with the benefit of detachment that time gives us, it can be seen that the impact and legacy of Futurism across the arts was enormous. There is no doubt that Futurism was the first 'modern' attempt to reorganise art and society around technology and the machine ethic and, as a common ancestor of most 20th century art, there are intrinsic vestiges of Futurism to be found throughout avant-garde art during the whole of the twentieth century.

    www.futurism.org.uk/
 

    Marinetti
    Nel 1894 dopo un periodo trascorso a Parigi, si stabilisce in Italia. Grande conoscitore e diffusore della letteratura simbolista francese, con Sem Benelli e Vitaliano Ponti fonda la rivista “Poesia” nel 1904. Del 1909 è la pubblicazione del Manifesto del futurismo. Si moltiplicano i suoi interventi, le conferenze, le declamazioni nelle “serate futuriste”, mentre vengono stampati numerosi manifesti. Formula la teoria delle parole in libertà, distruggendo la sintassi e creando un linguaggio analogico che concretizzi rumori, pesi e odori degli oggetti.
    Nel 1914 dopo una lunga elaborazione, pubblica “Zang Tum Tumb”; insieme alla produzione letteraria, realizza negli anni successivi tavole parolibere e innovatori collages tipografici. Promuove varie manifestazioni interventiste: all’entrata in guerra dell’Italia partirà per il fronte.
    Conclusa una fase di intensa militanza politica, Marinetti lancia il manifesto del Tattilismo nel 1921.
    Nel 1924 si celebrano a Milano le ‘onoranze marinettiane’.
Nel corso del ventennio fascista Marinetti si prodiga perché il movimento da lui fondato mantenga una supremazia in campo artistico. Alla fine degli anni ‘30 prende le difese dell’arte moderna contro gli attacchi reazionari della destra.
    Bibliografia
    Giovanni Lista, Marinetti, Paris, Seghers, 1976
    Filippo Tommaso Marinetti futurista, scritti di F.T.Marinetti et al., Napoli, Guida, 1977
    A. Saccone, Marinetti e il futurismo, Napoli, Liguori, 1984
    Carla Salaris, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, interventi di M.Calvesi e L.Marinetti, La Nuova Italia, Firenze 1988
    Carla Salaris, Marinetti editore, Il Mulino, Bologna 1990
    G.Agnese, Marinetti. Una vita esplosiva, Camunia, Milano 1990
    Giovanni Lista, F.T.Marinetti. L’anarchiste du futurisme, biographie, Paris, Nouvelles Editions Séguier, 1995
     www.mart.tn.it/collezioni/artisti/marinetti.html

    Biographical Note
    Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, born in Alexandria in 1876, attended secondary school and university in France, where he began his literary career. After gaining some success as a poet, he founded and edited the journal Poesia (1905), a forum in which the theories of Futurism rather quickly evolved.
    With "Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo, " published in Le Figaro (1909), Marinetti launched what was arguably the first 20th c. avant-garde movement, anticipating many of the issues of Dada and Surrealism.
    Like other avant-garde movements, Futurism took the momentous developments in science and industry as signaling a new historical era, demanding correspondingly innovative art forms and language.
    Like other avant-garde movements, Futurism found a solution in collage, which Marinetti called "parole in libertà" when applied to literary forms. Between 1909 and 1920, the period known as Futurism's heroic phase, Marinetti energetically promoted his own work, and that of fellow Futurists, through numerous manifestos, speeches, essays, meetings, performances and publications.
    Following WWI, in which he served, Marinetti became an active member of the Fascist party; on April 15, 1919, he and Ferruccio Vecchi led the "battle" of piazza Mercanti against socialists, communists, and anarchists, which was Italian Fascism's first decisive victory. In 1929 he was elected to the Academy of Italy. Throughout the 1920s and 30s and until his death in 1944, Marinetti sought to reconcile the theories of Futurism with the ideology of state Fascism and to serve as impresario for both.
    In 1923, Marinetti married Benedetta Cappa. The author of three critically acclaimed Futurist novels, a sizable body of art work, and the mother (with Marinetti) of three girls, Benedetta wrote essays and gave speeches on women and art and women and Fascism, and was presented in the press during the 1930s as a role model for Italian women. After her husband's death, Benedetta continued to correspond with fellow Futurists and to promote Futurism by organizing exhibitions, selling the Marinetti art collection to prominent American collectors and museums, and writing catalog essays.
    www.getty.edu/research/tools/special_collections/marinett_m4.html

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