Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso (b Alexandria, 22 Dec. 1876; d Bellagio, 2 Dec. 1944). Italian writer and artistic entrepreneur, the founder of Futurism and the movement's chief theorist and promoter. He was the son of a wealthy lawyer, and family money later allowed him the freedom to pursue his artistic interests. He spent much of his early life in Paris (up to 1912 his poetry was written in French) and it was there that he launched Futurism in 1909 with a famous manifesto published on the front page of Le Figaro. Over the next few years, up to the beginning of the First World War, he was extremely vigorous in promoting Futurist ideas, travelling widely around Europe, organizing exhibitions, giving lectures, holding press conferences, and so on. Wherever he went, he attracted attention because of his outspoken and provocative behaviour. The First World War had a disastrous effect on the Futurist movement, but Marinetti continued promoting it afterwards and throughout his life he kept up a stream of writing, often in an experimental vein; he also occasionally tried his hand in the visual arts, making collages, for example. Although he is not regarded as a major writer or artist himself, he had an enormous influence as a provocateur—so much so that he is described by Robert Hughes as ‘one of the key figures of twentieth-century culture. He was the prototype of avant-garde promoters. For how do you create interest in something as utterly marginal to the public as new art? By turning it into fresh copy. The Futurists…realized that the newspapers wanted to run sensational stories about weirdos, not virtuously tolerant reviews of the avant-garde. Marinetti brilliantly used this appetite by trumpeting an art movement as a broad “revolution” in living that aims to change life itself, embracing everything from architecture to athletics, politics and sex.’