The core principles of Italian Futurism: speed, movement, and technology 54q1u

Futurism: An Explosion of Modernity 586e68

Futurism was born in 1909 as a bold cry of rupture. Led by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the movement made its public debut on February 20, 1909, with the Futurist Manifesto, first published in La Gazzetta dell’Emilia and then reprinted on the front page of Le Figaro, ’s most widely read newspaper. It marked the beginning of an ideological and cultural campaign that would sweep across Italy—and beyond—symbolically destroying the past to glorify the future, speed, technology, and urban modernity.

Though born in Milan, Futurism quickly spread to Turin, Naples, and then abroad. It was based on an alliance between literature, visual arts, music, architecture, and even gastronomy. Marinetti was its tireless promoter, but the visual soul of the movement was Umberto Boccioni, alongside Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà, and Luigi Russolo. Together, they helped define a new, dynamic, fragmented form of art that responded to the frenetic pace of modern life.

Finally, it is important to highlight how the movement revolved around three core principles that strongly shaped its aesthetic and ideological identity: speed, movement, and technology. More than recurring themes, these concepts were concrete tools of artistic revolution for the Futurists—means through which art became a direct reflection of the energy, rhythm, and transformation of the modern world. Let us now examine in detail how each of these elements helped shape the Futurist vision.

Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910–11. Oil on canvas. MoMA, New York. k2p1p

1. Speed: Energy in Motion 2b3v2e

For the Futurists, speed was a secular religion—a symbol of the transformative power of modernity. Cars, trains, and airplanes were celebrated as new industrial deities. Marinetti even claimed that “a racing car… is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace,” overturning the classical idea of beauty in favor of the roar and power of the machine. In painting, this translated into rapid brushstrokes, diagonal lines, and compositions that seemed to burst off the canvas.

The glorification of progress was paired with an aggressive view of reality: war, described by Marinetti as “the world’s only hygiene,” was seen as a force for renewal. This attitude eventually aligned the group in part with nationalism and, later, Fascism—producing ambiguous consequences for the reception of the movement.

One striking example is Boccioni’s Il lavoro (later retitled The City Rises) from 1910. It marks the birth of Futurist painting: an urban scene engulfed in a storm of color and force, symbolizing the rise of a new era. The 1911 exhibition in Milan—organized in part to the unemployed—clearly reflected the link between art, social action, and modernity. Let’s now take a closer look at this painting...

Analysis of a Fast-Paced Work
At the pulsing heart of Futurism, Boccioni’s The City Rises is more than just a painting—it’s a visual explosion of strength, energy, and irrepressible speed. Created between 1910 and 1911, it captures the very essence of the Futurist ideal: a celebration of progress as unstoppable momentum toward the future, embodied in the physical power of men and the wild charge of animals. Boccioni doesn’t merely depict a scene—he transforms it into pure dynamic tension. The construction site in Milan, with its buildings and smokestacks in the background, becomes the symbolic setting for an urban and social revolution, while at the center a true clash unfolds between nature and modernity.

The red horse at the center, almost mythic in its charge, becomes the focal point of motion. It is no ordinary animal, but a symbol of raw energy that men struggle in vain to control. Their outstretched arms, straining muscles, and the slanting lines cutting through their bodies convey a nearly heroic effort. Yet, there is no tragedy in this struggle—only ion and willpower. For Boccioni, modern man is the creator of a new era, and physical exertion is exaltation, an act of conquest. Unlike other Futurist works, this one doesn’t glorify machines but instead human speed—alive, sculptural, dynamic.

Boccioni’s technique abandons all stillness. His filament-like brushstrokes, a legacy of Divisionism, bend to the laws of velocity. They don’t build mass but trace force lines. Everything is in motion—color, space, and form. Though perspective remains, it is overwhelmed by the push of figures surging toward the viewer, as if the painting itself wanted to leap from the canvas and pull us into its frenzy. There is no still point: the eye jumps from horse to worker, caught in a vortex of shapes and colors that scream modernity.

In this visual whirlwind, The City Rises becomes a love letter to Futurist speed. It doesn’t portray the present, but a prophetic vision: the world is changing, building, accelerating. The city—the ultimate symbol of modern civilization—is still under construction, still “rising,” propelled by a force that never looks back. And in that upward surge, men and horses are no longer ive figures, but mythical protagonists of a new age.

Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912. Oil on canvas, 89.8 × 109.8 cm. Albright–Knox Art Gallery, New York.

2. Movement: Dynamism as Language q3w41

Futurism made movement one of its founding principles. Unlike academic painters, the Futurists sought to capture gesture, rhythm, and transition. This gave rise to the concept of plastic dynamism—the simultaneous depiction of multiple phases of an action.

In the Manifesto of Futurist Painters (1910), Boccioni and his colleagues declared war on the worship of the past, calling for an art that would celebrate transformation and the chaos of the modern city. They adopted techniques inspired by Divisionism and Cubism but rendered them more turbulent and alive: broken images, overlapping forms, and vibrant, pure colors.

The idea of force lines—borrowed from Cubism—became a central visual tool. These lines gave the illusion that figures were shifting, turning the canvas into a living frame. The influence of motion photography (Muybridge, Marey) inspired the Bragaglia brothers to develop photodynamism, a photographic technique capturing gestures in blur and sequence, foreshadowing the development of experimental cinema.

Futurism also explored other moving art forms: Russolo invented new musical instruments and wrote The Art of Noises (1913), while Bragaglia created Thaïs (1916), the only surviving Futurist feature film, known for its abstract and kinetic sets.

Analysis of a Work in Motion
In 1912, Giacomo Balla painted Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, a work that fully embodies the celebration of movement—one of the core principles of Futurism. I chose this painting precisely because it visually and directly represents the dynamic energy that the Futurists aimed to bring into art, breaking away from the stillness of traditional painting. In this scene, a woman walks her dog along a city sidewalk. But Balla is not interested in narrative; he focuses on motion, speed, and the frenzied rhythm of modern life. The artist zooms in on the woman’s feet, the hem of her dress, the dog’s body, and the leash, multiplying and overlapping them in a sequence that conveys continuous movement.

This is not just a stylistic exercise. Balla enacts a true visual revolution: through transparent, rhythmic overlaps of paws, tails, and fabric in motion, he transforms the action into a fluid, uninterrupted stream. Influenced by Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotography, this technique allows Balla to depict time and movement on a static surface, making the canvas pulse with energy. The curved leash, repeated in wave-like arcs, symbolically links the dog and the woman, reinforcing their dynamic connection.

The work does not merely represent movement—it glorifies it and places it at the center of the visual experience. There is nothing static or meditative here. Every element participates in an explosion of vitality, and even the background, with its diagonal pavement lines, seems to move in the opposite direction, amplifying the sense of speed. In this way, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash is not just an example of Futurist art, but a manifesto: Futurism aims to liberate painting from immobility and turn it into a mirror of modern life—driven by motion, urgency, and transformation.

Alfredo Gauro Ambrosi, Aerial Portrait of Mussolini, 1930. Private Collection. 

3. Technology: Engine of Imagination 414736

From its earliest manifestos, technology played a central role in Futurist aesthetics—not merely as a subject to portray, but as a tool for creation and thought. The Futurists used the latest technologies in printing, communication, and transportation to spread their ideas across Europe, pushing their message beyond national borders. Exhibitions in Paris (1912), London, and Berlin turned Futurism into a truly international movement.

The influence of machines and industrial society was also clear in sculpture. In Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), Boccioni transformed the human figure into a mechanical organism, blending anatomy and engineering. Futurist architect Antonio Sant’Elia envisioned futuristic cities built on vertical infrastructures, multi-level traffic systems, and an aesthetic that anticipated Art Deco and science fiction.

Futurist art expanded into graphic design, advertising, furniture, and Aeropainting—a genre inspired by the elevated perspective of a pilot in flight. In the 1930s, the movement evolved further with photographic posters and experiments with multiple negatives, carried out by artists such as Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni).

Futurism was never an exclusively Italian phenomenon. In Russia, Cubo-Futurism developed similar ideas while maintaining autonomy from Marinetti. In Japan, artists like Gyō Fumon and Seiji Tōgō reinterpreted the Futurist language through an Eastern lens. In America, Joseph Stella created works like Battle of Lights, Coney Island (1913–14), where light and motion became a kind of industrial ballet.

Analysis of a Technological Work
Aeroritratto di Mussolini aviatore (Aerial Portrait of Mussolini) by Alfredo Gauro Ambrosi is a work of striking visual impact and ideological ambition. Created in the 1930s, during the height of the Fascist regime, the image should not be read today as political praise, but rather as a mirror of the historical and cultural context from which it emerged: a time when totalitarianism permeated every aspect of art, and propaganda was often intertwined with visual experimentation. The analysis of the painting, then, is not about moral judgment but about understanding a visual language that reflects the tensions, visions, and aspirations of Italy during that period.

Ambrosi, part of the second generation of Futurists, aligned with Aeropainting, one of the most captivating developments of Futurism in the 1930s. This movement, theorized in the 1929 manifesto Perspectives of Flight, celebrated flying as a perceptual revolution. Flight allowed artists to observe the world from a new, dynamic, dizzying angle—“an absolutely new reality,” as Marinetti, Depero, Prampolini, and other signatories described it. This fresh reality inspired compositions that fused technological vision with symbolic tension.

In this aeroportrait, Ambrosi merges an aerial map of Rome with the monumental profile of Benito Mussolini, who emerges from the city’s streets and buildings like a living sculpture. The Duce’s face is not merely superimposed onto the city—it is the city. The Colosseum, the downtown streets, and Roman monuments flow into his features, blending man and nation into one singular image. The propaganda message is clear: Mussolini is depicted as a direct embodiment of Italy, rooted in its millennial history and projected into a mechanized, modern future.

Beyond political rhetoric, what makes the work truly significant is the fusion of technology and artistic vision. The image is born from the sensation of flight, of the airplane as a device that radically changes how space and time are perceived. The artist adopts a bird’s-eye perspective, almost like that of an aerial periscope, which upends traditional ground-level viewpoints. The composition no longer follows classical rules of perspective: it is a dynamic, fragmented, fully Futurist experience. The result is a powerful synthesis of political symbolism, technological imagination, and perceptual transformation.

Take a look at our Futurism-inspired selection 

The Immortal Spirit of Futurism 2uo5a

Futurism, in its most intense phase (1909–1916), was a revolutionary spark that forever changed the way art was understood. With its exaltation of speed, movement, and technology, the movement built an entirely new visual and intellectual language, capable of influencing German Expressionism, Dadaism, Metaphysical art, English Vorticism, and even contemporary architecture and cinema.

After World War I and the deaths of Boccioni and Sant’Elia, Futurism did not disappear—it evolved. In the 1920s and ’30s, under Marinetti’s leadership, it adapted to a new era, though its association with Fascism partly obscured its legacy. Yet its spirit lives on—in graphic design, industrial design, cinema, and in every form of art that dares to imagine the future as a force that breaks through all boundaries.