Meet the Futurists

Question: When did Futurism begin?

Answer: Futurism was first announced in a manifesto published in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909.

Question: Which literary genre did the Futurists invent?

Answer: Words-in-freedom (parole in libertà) is a type of poetry that rejects traditional syntax, grammar, and spelling.

Question: What did the Pall Mall Gazette call the first showing of Futurist paintings in London?

Answer: In the March 1, 1912, issue of the Pall Mall Gazette, the critic P.G. Konody savaged the exhibition under the title "The Italian Futurists: Nightmare Exhibition at the Sackville Gallery."

Question: In his manifesto on Futurist architecture, Antonio Sant’Elia argued that a house should last for how long?

Answer: Our houses will last less time than we do, Sant’Elia wrote in 1914 as he argued for an architecture of impermanence.

Question: Which instrument was central to Futurist music?

Answer: The noise intoner (intonarumori), developed by Luigi Russolo, sought to generate distinctly "modern" types of sounds, such as explosions.

Question: What food did F.T. Marinetti condemn as a "leaden ball" that needed to be abolished in Italy?

Answer: In his "The Manifesto of Futurist Cooking" (1930), Marinetti decried pasta as nutritionally inefficient and deplorably old-fashioned.

Question: What did Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero propose to reconstruct according to Futurist principles?

Answer: Balla and Depero published "The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe" as a leaflet in 1915. In it, they proposed to make the universe more "joyful."

Question: Futurism originated in Italy, but it had a particularly strong influence in what other country?

Answer: Russian Futurism was a more splintered movement than Italian Futurism, but both were equally fervent in their condemnation of the past.

Question: In 1919 Futurism’s leader, F.T. Marinetti, was a parliamentary candidate in Italy for what party?

Answer: From 1915 to 1919 Marinetti and Italy’s future fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, were in close orbit around each other.