Futurism

Futurism was an avant-garde movement proclaimed in 1909 by the manifesto of Filippo Marinetti, which glorified speed, the machine, the energy of industrial civilization and a break with the museum past. Its aesthetic sought to convey the dynamism, movement and simultaneity of sensation of the modern city. Its formal means were the fragmentation of form into successive phases of motion, "lines of force" that traced trajectories, the interpenetration of objects and space, the rhythmic repetition of contours, sharp diagonals and machine-like imagery. The Italian Futurists Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and Carlo Carrà embodied the plasticity of movement and the vibration of light. The Ukrainian and East Slavic contribution was especially powerful: David Burliuk, the "father of Futurism" in the Empire, combined shock tactics with an uninhibited handling of surface; Oleksandr Bohomazov, in his treatise "Painting and Elements," developed a theory of dynamic form and created masterpieces of Cubo-Futurism such as "Lvivska Street in Kyiv" (1914); Aleksandra Exter synthesized Cubism and Futurism in explosive colour rhythms; the early Kazimir Malevich and Vadym Meller also gravitated to this circle. Cubo-Futurism became a distinctive East European version of the movement, closely tied to the poetic avant-garde. Futurism embraced painting, sculpture, graphic art, poetry, theatre and typography, proclaiming a cult of technological progress. Despite the political controversy of its Italian branch, the movement radically changed the depiction of time and motion and prepared the ground for Constructivism and kinetic art.