February 2009
Several exhibitions and artistic performances have just started to prove that Italian culture still has in mind that artistic movement that was born on February 20, 1909 with the publishing of the Futurist Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso, published in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro.
“We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed”, says the fourth point in that Manifesto that bets on the “courage, audacity, and revolt that will be essential elements of our poetry” that arises from artistic inspiration.
With all of these and other fundaments in mind- eleven in total included in the Futurist Manifesto- Italians vindicate today that, even though the founding of this movement was set up in Paris, it is still an artistic movement that has the Italian seal.
That is why, and after the city of Marinetti, Milan, started a few days ago the celebrations in honor of the movement, it is the capital city which has now become the center of the celebrations of the anniversary of Futurism. A party named "Futuroma".
One of the main exhibitions that Rome opened this week is an audiovisual composition by British musician Brian Eno, who has produced Coldplay and was a member of Roxy Music, which is now on view at Memmo Foundation, at the Ruspoli Palace, and is titled "Presentism, time and space in the long now".
"I call it 'Presentism' because in today’s history we cannot separate the future from the present. What we do today, what we destroy, determines our future. There is no longer a difference between present and future. What could once be called Futurism, today is Presentism", said Eno in a recent interview published in " La Repubblica ".
"A great part of what I do is linked more to painting, because my first instinct has always been to make music that could stand the test of time like paintings do", he added.
Masterpieces of Futurism at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents key paintings of the movement such as ‘Materia’ and ‘Dynamism of a Cyclist’ by Boccioni, ‘Mercury Passing Before the Sun’ by Balla, ‘The Galleria of Milan’ by Carrà, ‘Blue Dancer’ by Severini, three works from Peggy Guggenheim’s collection (Severini’s ‘Sea = Dancer,’ Balla’s ‘Abstract Speed + Sound,’ and Boccioni’s sculpture ‘Dynamism of a Speeding Horse + Houses’), as well as loans from private collections by Balla, Boccioni, Carrà and Sironi.
This will also be the debut of a recent gift to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Sironi’s early masterpiece ‘The Cyclist’ (1916). The exhibition includes three of Boccioni’s four extant sculptures: in addition to the mixed media ‘Dynamism of a Speeding Horse + Houses,’ bronze cast of his celebrated ‘Development of a Bottle in Space’ and ‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.’
An introductory section of paintings, sculptures and drawings contextualizes the Futurist movement with works of other historical avant-gardes, such as Divisionism, Cubism, Orphism and Vorticism. Jean Metzinger and Raymond Duchamp-Villon explored notions of movement and the mechanical dynamism of modern life, while the London Vorticist Edward Wadsworth, who was inspired by the rhetoric of Marinetti, is represented with two woodcuts, ‘Street Singers’ and ‘Top of the Town,’ each of them recent gifts to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and now on exhibition for the first time.
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