Futurism

Futurism was an art movement with political implications that started in 1909 and it was the most important Italian avant-garde art movement of the 20^th century.

The Futurists were fascinated by new visual technology, in particular chrono-photography, a predecessor of animation and cinema that allowed the movement of an object to be shown across a sequence of frames. This technology was an important influence on their approach to showing movement in painting, encouraging an abstract art with rhythmic, pulsating qualities.

Their enthusiasm for modernity and the machine ultimately led them to celebrate the arrival of the First World War. By its end the group was largely over as an important avant-garde, though it continued through the 1920s, during that time several of its members went on to embrace Facism, making futurism the only 20^th century avant-garde to have embraced far right politics.


Giacomo Balla (1871-1958)
Flight of the Swallows 1913

 

Balla has created the swallows’ speed and movement by placing them in precise sequence, one after another. He appears to have included the rigidity of the window shutters to contrast their motionlessness with the birds’ continuous movement.

I like the powerful suggestion of speed, movement and energy in this image as it makes it very life-like.


Gino Severini (1883-1966)
Armored Train 1915

In this image, five faceless figures crouch in a militarised train car, aiming their rifles in unison. Smoke from gun and canon fire shroud the natural landscape. Severini celebrated war, which the Futurists believed could generate a new Italian identity- one of military and cultural power.

I think this image looks pretty at first, but then looking closer you can see soldiers which look like they are in trenches. I also think that their squared faces and bodies make them look as mechanical as the train and guns around them.
 

Carlo Carra (1881-1966)
Interventionist Demonstration 1914

This image was inspired by Carra’s sighting of leaflets dropped from an airplane as they fluttered down over the Piazza del Duomo. He has used the Cubist style in this collage poem with the composition moving outward from the center in concentric circles and with a number of rays or lines of force moving out from the center giving an impression of an explosion.

The layered items create illusion of perspective. This idea was also used in synthetic cubism – using items from the real world in a painting. The visible overlaps also suggest a busy atmosphere.

While the colours vaguely suggest an explosion, I only saw the leaflets within the image.