Futurism and the interwar years
The Futurists glorified speed, machines and violence, while the metaphysical painters sought enigmas in empty piazzas, and both had to live with Fascism.
In 1909 the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published the Futurist Manifesto. He wanted to break with Italy’s past, with its museums, ruins and tourists, and to celebrate the modern: cars, aeroplanes, big cities and speed. Painters such as Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà and Gino Severini tried to capture movement and energy on canvas. Futurism became one of the first avant-garde movements to spread through manifestos, performances and provocations, and it influenced artists in many countries. The movement also embraced poetry, music, theatre and architecture.
Several Futurists died in the First World War, among them Boccioni and the architect Antonio Sant’Elia. At the same time Giorgio de Chirico was creating an entirely different art: empty piazzas, long shadows, statues and mannequins in a still, dreamlike atmosphere. It was called metaphysical art and became a model for Surrealism. In Bologna Giorgio Morandi painted bottles and bowls over and over again, in a quiet art far removed from the Futurists’ clamour. His pictures have a calm that comes close to meditation.
After Mussolini seized power in 1922, art came under the influence of Fascism. The Novecento group sought a modern classicism, the Futurists accommodated themselves to the regime, and architects built both rigorously modernist and monumental buildings for the state. Some artists supported the regime, others kept their distance and a few went into exile. The racial laws of 1938 and the war brought persecution and destruction. When the war ended in 1945, both the country and its art needed a fresh start.