Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (Born December 22, 1876 in Alexandria, Egypt. Died December 2, 1944 in Bellagio, Italy) was an Italian ideologue, poet, editor and main founder of the Futurist movement of the early 20th century.
In early 1918 he founded the Partito Politica Futurista or Futurist Political Party, which only a year later was absorbed into Benito Mussolini's Fasci di combattimento, making Marinetti one of the first supporters and members of the Italian Fascist party. He opposed Fascism's later canonical exultion of existing institutions, calling them "reactionary." He however stayed a notable force in developing the party thought throughout the regime. For example, at the end of the Congress of Fascist Culture that was held in Bologna on the 30th of March 1925, Giovanni Gentile addressed Sergio Panunzio on the need to more purposefully define Fascism by way of Marinetti's opinion, stating;
"Great spiritual movements make recourse to precision when their primitive inspirations - what F. T. Marinetti identified this morning as artistic, that is to say, the creative and truly innovative ideas, from which the movement derived its first and most potent impulse - have lost their force. We today find ourselves at the very beginning of a new life and we experience with joy this obscure need that fills our hearts - this need that is our inspiration, the genius that governs us and carries us with it"
Thus Futurism continued to influence Fascist thinkers outside of the Futurist school of thought on the furthering of Fascism.
Marinetti is most noted for his contribution of the Futurist Manifesto first published in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro, and the sound poem Zang Tumb Tumb . Marinetti believed violence should be something sought out as a goal for society, making an esthetical value inherent for it regardless of context.
In 1938 when Adolf Hitler included creations of Futurism in an exhibition, deriding what Nazi pogroms typified as "degenerate art," Marinetti persuaded Mussolini to not allow the exhibition entrance into Italy.
He published works in both French and Italian, among them are Le Roi Bombance (1905) and Mafarka il futurista (1910).
Fellow futurists include Luigi Russolo.
Other revolutionary minded Italians of the inter-war period
Last updated: 02-11-2005 01:02:52
Last updated: 05-03-2005 17:50:55
