A Brief History of Futurism

On the morning of February 5, 1909, the cultural elite of Italy was astounded by an article entitled “Il manifesto del futurismo” (Futurist Manifesto) published on the front page of the French daily Le Figaro. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian poet and art theorist, had announced the birth of a new movement - Futurism.

A 20th century Italian avant-garde art movement, Futurism sought to dismantle older forms of culture and celebrate the beauty of modernity that included the machine, speed, violence and change.

The movement included anarchist and Fascist elements. Marinetti would later become an active follower and supporter of Benito Mussolini, known as Il Duce (The Leader) and founder of Italian Fascism and prime minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943.

Some passages from Marinetti’s manifesto read:

We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.

We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.

Futurism was the complete rejection of the past and the celebration of the future. A notion that took Europe by storm and “contaminated” the world; Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople, Tbilisi and Yerevan were no exception.