Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Artist and His Politics explores the politics of the leader of the Futurist art movement: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Emerging in Italy in 1909, Futurism sought to forcibly propel Italy into the world of modern industry, society, and culture, and is famously known for its outlandish claim to want to destroy museums and libraries in order to speed this transition to the future and end the dependence on Italy's past glories. Futurism, however, also had a much darker political side, desiring the growth of the Italian colonial empire through war, glorifying war as the solution to many of Italy's social and political ills, and ultimately finding itself closely tied to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. In this book Ialongo focuses on Marinetti as the chief determinant of the direction of Futurist politics and explores how a seemingly revolutionary art movement, at one point having some support among revolutionary left-wing movements in Italy, could eventually become so intimately tied to the repressive Fascist regime. Ialongo traces the roots and evolution of Marinetti's politics from before the foundation of Futurism, through the Great War, and then throughout the twenty-year Fascist dictatorship, using a wide range of published and unpublished sources to document this evolution. Futurist politics are presented within the wider context of developments in Italy and Europe, and Ialongo further highlights how Marinetti's political choices influenced the art his movement produced