Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Known for “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the founder of the Futurist art movement. Feeling exhilarated after swerving to miss a cyclist in his automobile, Marinetti developed the manifesto’s origin story, pitting the old bicycle against the modern vehicle. Marinetti published the first Futurist Manifesto in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro in 1909, declaring a movement that praised speed, modernity, war, violence, and technology. Along with artists Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, and Giacomo Balla, he developed a visual style conveying speed and motion that became emblematic of Futurism. He created parole in libertà which was a form of writing that deconstructed and reconstructed words and sounds and turned them into collaged poems. His collaged poems like Le Soir, couchée dans son lit, elle relisait la lettre de son artilleur au front), published in Les Mots en liberté futuristes (1917) made up of splintered words and letters creates a visually dissonant conglomeration of movement that reflects the Futurists’ aims.