Manifesto of Futurism

A 1909 text by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti that launched Futurism by rejecting tradition and celebrating speed, technology, violence, and modern life.

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Futurism: An early twentieth-century avant-garde movement that sought to break with the past and express modernity. The manifesto announced the movement and gave its ideas a public program.
Futurist painting: A style of painting that sought to depict modern movement, energy, and simultaneity. Painters translated the manifesto’s celebration of speed into visual form.
Le Figaro: A French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It published the manifesto on its front page on February 20, 1909.
Futurist architecture: Architectural proposals associated with Futurism that imagined cities shaped by modern materials, machines, and movement. The manifesto’s cult of modernity inspired visions of a radically rebuilt city.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: An Italian poet and editor who founded Futurism and wrote its 1909 manifesto. He authored and promoted the text as Futurism’s founder.
Futurist poetry: Poetry associated with Futurism, marked by formal experimentation and a rejection of inherited literary conventions. Marinetti’s literary experiments gave the manifesto’s revolt a poetic method.
Italian Futurism: The Italian movement founded by Marinetti that promoted artistic rupture and modernity. The manifesto’s original program was specifically rooted in Italian cultural life.
Futurist sculpture: A sculptural practice associated with Futurism that sought to represent motion and the interaction of forms in space. Sculptors developed its demand that art express movement rather than static form.
Italian literature: Literature written in Italian, spanning works from medieval writing to contemporary fiction and poetry. The manifesto attacked Italy’s literary reverence for inherited classics.
Parole in libertà: A Futurist technique that loosened syntax and typography to make words appear dynamic on the page. This technique extended the manifesto’s attack on conventional literary form.