Futurism

Futurism is a design movement that originated in Italy in 1909 by a man named Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Futurism was a huge trend in Italy but later expanded to European countries such as England and Russia, with other movements appearing elsewhere. The main themes of futurism emphasized the contemporary concepts of the future such as industrial artifacts, speed, technology, youth and violence and objects such as buildings and vehicles.

Futurism branched out into a substantial variation of arts including painting, graphics design and even architecture. A key figure of futurism architecture is a man named Antonio Sant’Elia who joined the futurism movement in 1912. His architectural designs featured skyscrapers and aerial walkways which embodied ideas of the future that people had never seen before.  The picture below is one of his more famous architectural designs, La Cittá Nuova created in 1914.

Futurism is now regarded as an extinct artistic movement said to have died out when the founder Marinetti passed away in 1944.  Although this may be true, from the influence of futurism came a number of other artistic movements such as Surrealism, art deco and vorticism.