FUTURISM

Italy Early 20th century

Futurism, the context

Industrial revolution in Europe-early 1900s

Aeroplane-1905
Innovations- electricity, x-rays, radio waves,
automobiles and airplanes
Italy represented the past- Renaissance,
Baroque

Futurism, the movement

In the early 1900s, a group of young and rebellious
Italian writers and artists emerged determined to
celebrate industrialization. They were frustrated by
Italys declining status and believed that the Machine
Age would result in an entirelynew worldorder and even
a renewed consciousness.Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the
ringleader of this group, called the movement Futurism. Its
members sought to capture the idea of modernity, the
sensations and aesthetics of speed, movement, and
industrial development

Objectives of Futurist Painters

Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients,
pedantry and academic formalism.
Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
Bear bravely and proudly the smear of "madness" with which they try
to gag all innovators.
Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.

 Rebel against the tyranny of words: "Harmony" and "good taste" and
other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of
Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin.
Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which
have been used in the past.
Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to
be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.

Umberto Boccioni
"Let us fling open the
figure and let it
incorporate within itself
whatever may surround
it."

The city rises, 1912

The City Risesis often considered to be the first

Futurist painting. Here, Boccioni illustrates the
construction of a modern city. The chaos and
movement in the piece resemble a war scene as
indeed war was presented in theFuturist
Manifestoas the only means toward cultural
progress. The large horse races into the foreground
while several workers struggle to gain control,
indicating tension between human and animal. The
horse and figures are blurred, communicating rapid
movement while other elements, such as the
buildings in the background, are rendered more
realistically. At the same time, the perspective
teeters dramatically in different sections of the
painting. The work shows influences of Cubism,
Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism, revealed in

Development of a
bottle in space,
Umberto Boccioni

Dynamism of a
biker, Umberto
Boccioni

Elasticity
1912, oil on canvas
100.06 x 100.06 cm

Dynamism of the
human body
1911, oil on canvas
200 x 290.5 cm

"The gesture which we would

reproduce on canvas shall no longer
be a fixed moment in universal
dynamism. It shall simply be the
dynamic sensation itself

Giacomo Balla
Divisionism, painting with
divided
rather than mixed color and
breaking the painted surface
into a
field of stippled dots and
stripes.

Balla was fascinated by chrono-photography,

a vintage technique whereby movement is
demonstrated across several frames. This
encouraged Balla to find new ways of
representing movement in painting,
andDynamism of a Dog on a Leashis perhaps
his most famous experiment. The work shows
a woman walking a small black dog, the
movement collapsed into a single instant.
Displaying a close-up of the feet, Balla
articulates action in process by combining
opaque and semi-transparent shapes.

Speed of a Motorcycle
G. Balla

Sculptural Construction of
Noise and Speed, 1915, G.
Balla

This work exemplifies the Futurists'

insistence that the perceived world is in
constant motion. These paintings illustrate
light, speed and movement, which Balla
sought to break down to their simplest forms
while moving closer to total abstraction.

Carlo Carra
Anarchist Italian irredentist Fascist
Motion and feeling(futurist) Form and stillness(cubist)

Carr
soon
began
creatingstill
Life paintingsin a style he,
along
with Giorgiode Chirico, called
"metaphysical painting

Interventionist
Demonstration,
1914. Tempera and collage
on

Here, inspired by Cubist experiments in the same

vein, Carlo Carr introduces collage to the Futurist
repertoire technique. This piece blends Filippo
Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto with innovative
poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire, resulting in a
disorienting composition. Collage elements crack
the surface into various planes, creating new
perceptions of depth. The juxtaposition of phrases
and vivid planes of color read as a kind of Futurist
propaganda.

Carlo Carra,
1912,
Jolts in a cab

Carlo Carra, 1912,

Concurrency,
Woman on the

La Musa Metafisica
The metaphysical
muse

For us simultaneity is a lyrical exaltation,

a plastic manifestation of a new absolute
speed.

References

http://www.mfah.org/exhibition.asp
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/f/futurist/elastic.jpg
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~museum/armory/galleryI/duchamp.240.html
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/28
www.bridgemanartondemand.com

A presentation by:
Ananya Kango 12623
Prateek Bandhu 12627
Gaurav Chaudhary 12631
Rohit Patel 12632
Abhishek Negi 12638

Thanks.

Simultaneous visions
Umberto Boccioni