Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, and educated in Egypt, Italy and France, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti began his literary career writing for Italian and French journals. In 1909 he published The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism in Le Figaro, inspiring painters such as Balla, Boccioni and Severini, who issued their own manifesto in 1910. He wrote Le Roi Bombance and Poupées électriques, later reworked as Elettricità sessuale, and published the novel Mafarka the Futurist. During a visit to England, his ideas influenced C. R. W. Nevinson and Wyndham Lewis, whose Vorticism drew on Futurism. Marinetti’s artistic vision was closely bound to politics: he advocated war as a form of renewal in War, the Only Hygiene of the World. He took part in the Italo-Turkish War and the First Balkan War, including the siege of Adrianople, experiences that informed his sound poem Zang Tumb Tuuum. A volunteer in the First World War, he later founded the Futurist Political Party, which joined the Fasci italiani di combattimento in 1919. His drive to challenge tradition also extended to food: in the Manifesto of Futurist Cooking and The Futurist Cookbook, he rejected conventional Italian cuisine and promoted experiments such as the Tactile Dinner. Although Marinetti maintained close ties with Mussolini’s regime and received official honours, Futurism was never fully adopted as the state’s official art. In 1942, aged 65, he volunteered for service on the Russian front. He died of a heart attack in Bellagio in 1944.

Gino Severini / Giacomo Balla / Umberto Boccioni