THE INTERNATIONAL IMPACT OF FUTURISM :  

ABSORPTIONS, ASSIMILATIONS, ADAPTATIONS

Günter Berghaus

B etween 1909 and 1925, Futurism became a catchphrase for a broadly felt desire for
cultural renewal. The stream of manifestos published by F. T. Marinetti and his col-
laborators was quickly reaching other European countries and even continents much
further afield. The ideas professed by the Futurists were given a reception there that was
no less controversial than in Italy and usually oscillated between refutation, qualified ac-
ceptance and derision. Especially after the 1912 touring exhibition of Futurist paintings,
a lively and productive interchange with a variety of other avant-garde movements took
place.
Already in 1909, Marinetti intended to document the critical response that Futurism
received in other countries. However, the planned two-volume press review never saw the
light of day. But Marinetti observed with great interest how critics and avant-garde artists
absorbed the ideas emanating from Italy and devised a schema that presented Futurism as
the font and mother of all avant-garde movements (Fig. 1). This then served as the basis
for his Futurisme mondial manifesto, in which he again placed Futurism at the centre of
a genealogy of avant-garde art and co-opted a large number of artists under the rubrics
« futuristi senza saperlo o futuristi dichiarati ».
   

There is no doubt that the artists who marched under the banners of zenitismo, creazi-
onismo, simultaneismo, vorticismo, ultraismo, etc were quite well informed about Futurism
and that their concepts at one point or another were boosted by a tributary influx of ideas
coming from Italy. But this, of course, did not turn them into « futuristi senza saperlo ».    

In the course of the past decades, a number of Futurism scholars have directed their
attention to this ebb and flow of aesthetic concepts in the European and world-wide
network of the avant-garde. A handful of books were dedicated to comparative stud-
ies of Futurism (Europe, 1 Heistein, 2 Weisgerber, 3 Marcadé, 4 Berghaus). 5 But otherwise,
publications dealing with Futurist influences in a given national culture tended to be
monographic in style, which means : they focused either on individual artists or groups
 

of artists, or on a small geographical unit.Their comparative content was minimal or

non-existent.
The 2009 centenary would have been an appropriate occasion to present not only how
Futurism impacted on Italian culture but also how it affected the international avant-
garde. I brought this topic up at several conferences, and in our discussions scholars
agreed with me that, indeed, the time had come to address the complex interactions
between Marinetti and the various movements that operated in conjunction with or in
parallel to Futurism.

1  « Europe : Revue littéraire mensuelle », 53, p. 551 (March 1975) ; 53, p. 552 (April 1975). Special issue on Les Futurismes.
2  Futuryzm i jego warianty w literaturze europejskiej, ed. Heistein Józef, Wrocław, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego,
1977.
3  Les Avant-gardes littéraires au xx e siècle, ed, Jean Weisgerber, 2 vols., Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984.
4  Présence de F. T. Marinetti : Actes du colloque international tenu à l’unesco , 15-17 Juin 1976, ed. Jean-Claude Marcadé, Lausanne,
 

L’Âge d’Homme, 1982.

5  International Futurism in Arts and Literature, ed. Günter Berghaus, Berlin-New York, De Gruyter, 2000.
12 günter berghaus

Fig. 1.

In Italy, scholars had detected early on that Futurism was anything but a monolithic
movement. The ideas emanating from the HQ in Milan were substantially different from
the concepts professed by the Florentine group ; and in Rome, the circle of Giacomo Balla
 

pursued lines of research that would have been unthinkable in Naples.

Discussing the heterogeneous nature of Futurism is relatively easy when scholars are
able to communicate with each other in the same language – in this case : Italian. On the
 

international plane, however, the circulation of ideas has always been seriously hampered
by linguistic barriers.
I once made a random selection of 100 books on Futurism printed in Italy and compiled
from their bibliographies a list of studies written in a language other than Italian. The
impression I got from this was that hardly anybody outside Italy was engaged in research
into Futurism. Hundreds of books that were written outside Italy in the past decades
left next to no traces in the scholarship of the peninsula. For this reason, I suggested, in
2009, to set up a periodical that would foster international cooperation between Futurism
scholars across the world and act as a regular medium for communicating research that is
being carried out on the many national variants of Futurism.
 the international impact of futurism 13
The result is the International Year-
book of Futurism Studies that offers
opportunity for
1) Announcements of conferences,
exhibitions, publications
2) Essays related to world-wide
Futurism
3) Country surveys, that is : reports  

on how academics in a given country

have investigated indigenous or Ital-
ian or any other form of Futurism
4) Conference reports, reviews of
books, performances, concerts, exhi-
bitions
5) Bibliography of Futurism studies
with a world-wide coverage (Fig. 2)
So now, three years later, the first
two volumes of the yearbook have
gone into production. They contain
25 essays concerned with Futurism in
20 countries and on 3 continents. Al-
though one would expect very little
cohesion in this selection of cultures,
it is remarkable how many themes
and topics crop up again and again,
irrespective of what country one is
focussing on. When one compares
the indexes of the first two volumes, Fig. 2.
it becomes instantly apparent that
many of the ideas professed by Italian Futurism were also discussed by artists in other
parts of the world and entered their vocabulary. 1
This, in my view, shows that Futurism was not a coherent national style but an inter-
disciplinary laboratory. Its products bore close resemblance to what in chemistry is called
« elective affinities ». In its aesthetic test tubes bubbled a seething mixture of ingredients
   

– Symbolism, Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism. When these

came into touch with a given artist’s personal predisposition, they interacted in an unpre-
dictable manner and produced a diverse and highly original range of works of art.
Much of this could already be observed in 1909. When Marinetti decided to organ-
ize a major « launch » of his new literary school in France, the reactions in the press and
   

amongst writers of the period were lively, controversial and multifaceted. Generally
speaking, Futurism was not taken very seriously and Marinetti was chastised as an Italian
« windbag ». Alexandre Mercereau, for example, who in many ways was susceptible to
   

Futurist influences, 2 could not refrain from criticizing the Futurists’ « grande facilité à se  

laisser aller au ton oratoire, à la rhétorique plus fleurie que solide, aux idées plus brillantes

1  In order to make the indexes more user friendly and to a very useful reference tool, we are compiling accumulative
indexes for the volumes already published and make them available on the Yearbook’s website http ://www.degruyter.com/
 

cont/f b/km/kmMbwEn.cfm ?rc=128079.

 
2  « Je m’exalte au lyrisme futuriste », he wrote in La Littérature et les idées nouvelles, Paris, Figuière, 1912, p. 96.
   
14 günter berghaus
1
que profondes » ; André Rouveyre joked about the « gestes excentriques de ces bouffons
     

momentanés » ; 2 and Jacques Copeau judged that the « prose déclamatoire, incohérente et
     

bouffonne » of the manifesto attests to « une grande indigence de réflexion ou une grande
   

soif de réclame ». 3 Of course, there were positive voices, too. Some artists were momen-
 

tarily influenced by Futurism, and their statements were proudly presented by Marinetti
in his journal Poesia. In Felix Delmarle he even found an active supporter. An essay in the
next Yearbook will revisit the issue of Futurism in France by looking at the case of Henri-
Martin Barzun.
Another interesting case is Pierre Albert-Birot, who was inspired by Futurism to found
a movement focussed on contemporary realitities, which he called Nunisme (which can be
translated as Nowism, derived from Greek nū / nūn = now, or presently). In his journal
Sic he offered space to many Futurists and supported a brand of Futurism that he deemed
« serious », 4 although he stood firm against Folgore’s attempts to enlist him formally in the
   

Futurist battalions. 5
As I tried to demonstrate a few years ago in an investigation on the relations between
Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism, the circulation of artistic ideas across national borders
was a common practice in the years between the two World Wars. 6 However, despite the
existence of reciprocal influences it would be highly incorrect to speak about one imitat-
ing the other. This is particularly apparent in Central and Eastern Europe, which is the
geographical zone to which the first Yearbook is dedicated.

East-European Futurism
In this first volume, Przemysław Strożek analyses reactions to Futurism in the Polish
avant-garde, and his essay is complemented in vol. 2 by Beata Śniecikowska’s essay on
Polish poetry and Maria Elena Versari’s examination of Ruggero Vasari’s contacts with
Polish artists. News of Marinetti’s art movement reached Poland in October 1909, when
Ignacy Grabowski published an article, The Latest Current in European Literature : Futurism,  

and attached a translation of the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism. 7 The Polish public
had a chance to see Futurist works of art when the European travel exhibition moved
from Paris to Berlin and Walden supplemented his Sturm Gallery show with works of
various Expressionists and sent it to Lvov. Aleksander Kołtoński, who was a resident in
Italy, reported on Futurist music, and Futurist theatre activities became known when
Maria Sławińska described the Grande serata futurista at the Teatro Verdi on 12 December
1913. 8 Two young students from Krakow, Bruno Jasieński and Stanisław Młodożeniec,
who had studied in Russia, opened with Tytus Czyżewski a Futurist Club, where they
organized « poetry-concerts », along the lines of the Stray Dog cabaret in St. Petersburg
   

and the Italian serate. These activities led, in 1921, to the formation of a first group of
Polish Futurists.

1  Ibidem, p. 98.
2  Quoted in Romani : Dal simbolismo al futurismo, p. 269.
3  Jacques Copeau, ‘Poesia’ et le futurisme, « Nouvelle Revue française », August 1909, pp. 82-83.
4  See Nicole Le Dimna, ‘Sic’, rivista futurista ?, « Bérénice : Rivista quadrimestrale di studi comparati e ricerche sulle avan-
guardie », n.s., 16, 42 ( July 2009), pp. 135-145, here p. 143
 
5  Federica D’Ascenzo, Retrospettiva sul Marinetti francese e prefuturista, « Bérénice : Rivista quadrimestrale di studi compa-
   

rati e ricerche sulle avanguardie », n.s., 16, 42 ( July 2009), pp. 31-48, here p. 41
 
6  See Berghaus, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism : Some Cross-Fertilizations Among the Historical Avant-garde, in International
 

Futurism in Arts and Literature, ed. Günter Berghaus, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2000, pp. 271-304.
7  Grabowski, Najnowsze prądy w literaturze europejskiej. Futuryzm, « Świat », 4, 40 (2 October 1909), pp. 5-7 ; « Świat », 4, 41
         

(9 October 1909), pp. 2-5.

8  Sławińska, Kilka słów o futuryzmie, « Kłosy Ukraińskie », 1, 2 (12 April 1914), pp. 8-9 ; 1, 3-4 (12 May 1914), pp. 15-16.
     
 the international impact of futurism 15
Polish Futurism was a highly multi-faceted phenomenon that received its inspiration
both from Italian and Russian Futurism. However, these stimuli also merged with indig-
enous traditions of Symbolism, Romanticism and even folklore and, after 1924, with the
international Constructivist movement. So, Futurist ideas underwent a process of permu-
tation and the resulting works possess an intriguingly original character.
In neighbouring Czechoslovakia, the press responded to Futurism in a predominantly
sensationalist manner. Commentators distorted the Futurist programme and turned the
word ‘Futurism’ into a synonym for something absurd and bizarre yet entertaining. Se-
lective readings of Marinetti’s works, randomly picked sentences and distorting citations
reduced Futurism to a silly play with letters and fonts and presented Marinetti as a person
seeking notoriety and primarily interested in scandal mongering.
As a consequence, Czechoslovakia never saw the formation of a Futurist group. How-
ever, there was a native movement called Civilism, situated somewhere between Futur-
ism, Cubism and Surrealism. It sought to depict the technical and industrial achievements
of the modern age (machinery, factories, transportation, electricity, skyscrapers, etc.) as
well as the new lifestyles shaped by an industrialized civilization. Its key representative,
Stanislav Kostka Neumann, borrowed extensively from Marinetti’s programmatic writ-
ings and tried to adapt Futurism to Czech cultural realities. The main problem was that
the Czechs had only recently gained independence, and cultural institutions were only in
the process of being formed. So, Futurism’s iconoclastic impulse could hardly find a fol-
lowing in a country that did not possess an illustrious past that had to be destroyed.
The situation became even more complicated 1 after the First World War, when the
Devětsil group came into being. These artists learned about Futurism when Marinetti
was officially supporting Fascism, and as they had a strongly left-wing orientation, they
had to reject Marinetti’s stance. But otherwise Futurist aesthetics fitted quite well into
their artistic project. So, the group distanced itself from all Futurist paradigms, and in-
stead adhered to the programme of proletarian literature as developed by the Russian
Proletkult movement. However, by adopting many of the tenets of the Left Front of the
Arts, they also absorbed the slogans and stylistic features of Russian Futurism. As Ilona
Gwóźdź-Szewczenko shows in her penetrating analyses in Yearbook 1, the Devětsil group
officially rejected Futurism, yet, like a palimpsest, it carried a latent layer of the Italian
movement into their own heavily ideologized programme.
The term she uses for this is Epi-Futurism, and the Yearbook is full of such heterodox
forms of Futurism or Para-Futurism. The most creative Futurists, it seems, were those
who declared Futurism to be dead and buried and created something new, “off their own
bat”, they said, but really it was Futurism under a new guise geared towards new histori-
cal, social and political realities.
Several essays in the Yearbook demonstrate that the groups in Eastern Europe were
anything but satellites of Marinetti’s movement. They had their own notions of Futurism
and borrowed from the Italians what fitted into their local agendas. As they did not want
to be identified with Marinetti’s ideology they tended to avoid the label Futurism.
Another interesting case is Transcaucasian Georgia. Here, some ten young intellectu-
als created the association H2SO4 named after a sulphuric acid, also known as vitriol.
Its highly corrosive propensities made it a suitable metaphor for the Futurist desire to
destroy old-fashioned art. Georgian Futurism was a “cross-cultural phenomenon” 2 that

1  International Futurism in Arts and Literature, ed. Günter Berghaus, Berlin-New York, De Gruyter, 2000.
2  Harsha Ram, Modernism on the Periphery : Literary Life in Postrevolutionary Tbilisi, « Kritika : Explorations in Russian and
Eurasian History », 5, 2 (Spring 2004), pp. 367-382, here pp. 370 and 378.
 
16 günter berghaus
mixed Italian and Russian Futurism with the latest West-European avant-garde tenden-
cies. One of its most important representative, Ilya Zdanévich, in fact moved to Paris
where he carried on with his own Futurist organization called Le Degré Quarante et Un
that cooperated closely with the Dadaists.
By orientating Georgian art towards the cultural centres of Western Europe, the Geor-
gian Futurists could counteract the colonial influence of Russia, from which the country
had suffered for more than a hundred years. By adopting Italy and France rather than
Moscow or St Petersburg as their cultural reference points, the Georgian Futurists were
expressing their opposition to Russian cultural hegemony. Thus, they made a vital contri-
bution to the creation of a free and liberal atmosphere in Tbilisi and to an integration of
Georgia into the global cultural processes of the twentieth century. In this respect, Futur-
ism contributed to a cultural renaissance and was much more than just an artistic style.
In Ukraine, a group called ‘Panfuturists’ emerged in the early 1920s. They possessed a
similarly radical drive as the Italian Futurists, but with a Left-wing orientation, and saw
themselves as legitimate heirs to the Italian movement which, in their eyes, had discred-
ited itself through its alliance with Mussolini. Although the Panfuturists despised the
‘geriatric’ Marinetti, they still adopted many of his radical tenets. Semenko saw in Mari-
netti a ‘prophet’ who prepared the way for an art that was a creative process in both the
aesthetic and social sphere. His movement was a watershed in European cultural history,
as had given birth to a new art that no longer reflected or simply imitated life but had “in-
troduced the fist into the artistic battle” 1 and enabled “the violent entry of life into art”. 2
In a similar way, Mikhail Semenko called for the liquidation of art in its present forms :  

Destruction for us is the last stage of the development of art [i.e, Great Art], not merely one of its
bifurcations or deformations. That which is called art is for us an object [destined] for liquidation.
Art is a remnant of the past. A specter roams Europe – the specter of Futurism. The futurization
of art is the liquidation of art. Death to art ! Long live Panfuturism ! 3
   

The Ukrainian Panfuturists were predominantly oriented towards Western Europe and
entertained cordial links with the modernist circles in Berlin and Paris, with whom they
shared a similar degree of Leftist radicalism. One would have thought that this could have
forged a partnership with the Russian Futurists, who also wanted to bring about social
change as propagated by Marx. However, the Ukrainian Futurist repeatedly declared their
sovereignty from their Russian colleagues and saw themselves as a revolutionary alterna-
tive to the ‘bankrupt’ groups in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. 4 This did not prevent them
from incorporating many ideas from other movements, especially Dadaism and Con-
structivism, but despite these syncretic tendencies they remained fiercely independent :  

Panfuturism wants to abolish all ‘isms’ which is attained by neutralizing them. Panfuturism makes
every ‘ism’ harmless by regarding every single case as private problem of the polyproblematic or-
ganism of art. Owing to that, Panfuturism is a science having permanent problems of its own.
Panfuturism, as well as Marxism, is a revolutionary conception. It implies the elements of both
aim and tactics, and is in a functionally dependent upon the given period of the struggle of classes
in society.
Panfuturism is a proletarian system of art. It wants to discover a new way of looking at question

1  See Prime battaglie futuriste, in Guerra sola igiene del mondo, reprinted in Teoria e invenzione futurista, a cura di Luciano de
Maria, Milano, Mondadori, 19832, pp. 235-234, here p. 201.
2  Marinetti in an interview with Carlo Albertini, In tema del futurismo, « La diana » (Naples), 1 ( January 1915), pp. 27-29, here
   

p. 28.
3  « Semafor u Maibutnie », 1 (1922), pp. 1-2, quoted in Oleh Stepan Ilnytzkyj, Ukrainian Futurism, 1914-1930 : A Historical and
     

Critical Study, Cambridge/MA, Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 187.

4  On the relationship between Russian and Ukrainian Futurism see ibidem, pp. 341-345.
 the international impact of futurism 17
in art, following the same method as was followed by Marx when he was reconstructing political
economy.
Panfuturism changes the very substance of art and becomes an experimental science. 1

Northern Futurism
So far, very little research has been undertaken on Futurism in Northern countries. We
are planning a special issue on this topic for a later Yearbook, but three essays in Yearbook
1 and 2 indicate that some interesting phenomena can be observed there, too.
In Estonia, the first artists who showed an interest in Futurism were five or six young
men in the small town of Pärnu. In 1910 they began a correspondence with Marinetti and
received several Futurist publications from him. One of them was Johannes Semper, who
subsequently studied in St. Petersburg and attended the performances Marinetti gave dur-
ing his visit to Russia. When Semper returned to Estonia, he gave a lecture on Futurism
in Tartu and later published it, together with excerpts from Marinetti’s Foundation and
Manifesto of Futurism (1909), Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature (1912), Destruction of
Syntax – Untrammeled Imagination – Words-in-Freedom (1913), The Variety Theatre (1913), a
brief report on the poet’s life and career and a translation of Battaglia = peso + odore (Bat-
tle = Weight + Stench, 1912).
After this, several critical essays on Futurism appeared in Estonian newspapers and
journals. The author of the most important of these writings was the young poet Johan-
nes Barbarus, who introduced Russian Cubo-futurism to the Estonian public. Although
Italian Futurism played a role in Estonia, the influence from neighbouring Russia was
considerably stronger. In 1915, the Estonian public was given a first impression of Futur-
ist fine art, when an exhibition at the Tramway B in St. Petersburg was reported on in the
Estonian press. There may have been influences from Apollinaire as well, at least in the
poetry of Henrik Visnapuu, who mixed the techniques of the calligramme with Russian
zaum’ to arrive at an original brand of Futurism in Estonian literature. Towards the end
of the First World War, Visnapuu and Semper joined the group Siuru (1917-1919), whose
publications were illustrated by Ado Vabbe, the most important Estonian avant-garde art-
ist. Some of his best known works show urban themes, technology and modern city life,
which in the case of The River Seine (1924) seems to predate Futurist aeropainting.
After the War, Estonian avant-garde art was primarily represented by Expressionism,
Constructivism and Cubism. No Futurist group was ever formally constituted, but in
1919, two young writers, Erni Hiir and Albert Kivikas, began to promulgate ideas and
slogans that were related to Marinetti’s manifestos, but also the anarchist features of Rus-
sian Futurism. Both Hiir and Kivikas took from their sources whatever fitted in to their
conceptions of modern art and tended to ignore the cult of machines or war that was so
dear to Marinetti and his Italian followers.
In neighbouring Latvia, Futurism appeared rather late on the scene. Modernist art-
ists in Riga were on the whole francophone and sought to emancipate themselves from
the historical ties to Germany and Russia. They therefore favoured the cosmopolitan at-
mosphere of Paris over Moscow or Berlin and their works were large influenced by Cu-
bism. However, in the 1920s, several Latvian artists engaged in an active exchange with
second-wave Futurism. In Le Futurisme mondial, Marinetti, declared several of them to be
members of his movement, 2 but there is little evidence that these ‘recruits’ ever formally
1  Semienko, What Panfuturism Wants, « Semafor u maibutnie », 1 (1922). Reprinted in « International Yearbook of Futurism
     

Studies », 1 (2011), pp. 142-143. The text was originally published in (rather poor) English.
 
2  Le Futurisme mondial : Manifeste à Paris, « Le Futurisme : Revue synthetique illustré », 9 (11 January 1924), pp. 1-3. Reprinted
       

in « Noi », second series, 2, 6-9 (1924), pp. 1-2.

   
18 günter berghaus
joined Futurism. However, they did
develop close ties with Enrico Pram-
polini, Ruggero Vásari and Ivo Pan-
naggi and joined a small group of
artists known as “International Fu-
turists”. This circle was attached to
the Novembergruppe in Berlin and was
headed by the Cubo-Futurist, Ivan
Puni. Aija Brasliņa has shown in her
essay for the Yearbook how the group
cooperated with the Direktion der Fu-
turisten-Bewegung, the Berlin branch
of the Futurist movement, and the
Synthès Group that had formed at the
Düsseldorf Congress of the Interna-
tional Union of Progressive Artists
in May 1922. They published the art
magazine Laikmets (Epoch) (Fig. 3)
and cooperated with the Construc-
tivist journal, Veshch - Gegenstand -
Objet and Prampolini’s Noi. The last
number of Laikmets was dedicated
to Futurist art and literature, but un-
fortunately never appeared in print.
As far as the works of these Latvian
Fig. 3. artists are concerned, they contained
distinct traces of Futurist aesthetics, but these were amalgamated with other stylistic
tendencies of the time.
On the other side of the Baltic See, in Finland, the situation was very different again.
There were a number of artists and critics who regularly travelled to France, but they
seemed to have been unable to make any clear distinctions between Futurism and Cu-
bism. When works of art that were influenced by Futurism were exhibited in Helsinki,
they were often referred to as Cubist. On the other hand, works of art that had nothing
to do with Futurism (for example, by the Brücke painters) were considered to be Futurist.
The same confusion of terminology could be found in music : audiences and critics unac-
 

customed to hearing modernist compositions regularly referred to avant-garde works as

‘Futurist’. Nikolai Sadik Ogli reports in his essay for the Yearbook on the case of Elmer
Diktonius who was variously referred to as ‘Cubist’ or ‘Futurist’ or even called a « High
 

Priest of the Scandinavian Dadaists ». Sadik Ogli also provides some telling examples of
 

how several Swedish-language poets in Finland pursued unconventional creativity in-

spired by Futurism and pushed Finnish literature into distinctly modernist waters.
It is interesting to note that Finnish artists who had never seen an exhibition of Futur-
ist art could fall prey to Futurist ideas that were spreading across Europe in the form of
manifestos and illustrated essays in the popular and art press. Nikolai Sadik-Ogli points to
the fact that students from the Helsinki Ateneum Academy were in possession of books
that contained illustrations of some representative examples of Futurist œuvres, and the
exposure to such printed sources inspired them to experiment with new styles even be-
fore the artists had an opportunity to see the original works on their travels abroad.
 the international impact of futurism 19
Yet, in a subtle way it became assimilated into cultural life. Interestingly enough, the
Futurist devices and stylistic traits were rarely identified as stemming from the Italian
avant-garde. This was so because no Finnish artist formally joined Marinetti’s movement
and usually only adapted selected elements of its aesthetic programme. Nonetheless, the
emergence of the new genre of ‘machine romanticism’ (koneromantiikka) in poetry in-
dicated that Futurism could play a stimulating rôle in a country where the shocking and
violent aspects of the Italian avant-garde were deemed wholly unacceptable.

Latin American Futurism

When we move outside Europe, other factors determined the reception of Futurism.
In Mexico, for example, several poets adapted F. T. Marinetti’s ideas about poetry, but in
political terms their ideas were substantially different from those of the Italian Futurists.
The name of the Mexican movement, “Estridentismo”, derived from “strident” – a term
cherished by the Italian Futurists and appearing in a number of Marinetti’s poems and
manifestos. The Estridentistas, like Marinetti, fiercely denounced their literary predeces-
sors and embraced the modern development in bigger cities (Fig. 4). However, whereas
Marinetti’s politics leaned towards the Right, the Estridentistas gravitated towards the
Left and saw their literary project as an extension of the revolution that had shaken their
country from 1910 to 1920. For this reason, they felt great sympathy for the Russian Futur-
ists and rejected Marinetti’s belligerent politics. As Rubén Gallo demonstrates in his essay,
the Estridentistas channelled the spirit of rebellion and renewal that dominated post-Rev-
olutionary Mexico into the realm of literature and undertook a radical transformation of
poetic language that showed many Futurist traces, although their poems about machines
and new technological developments operated with a fairly traditional syntax and rarely
experimented with unusual typography.
A different type of revolutionary literature can be found in Venezuela, where the main
propagandist of the avant-garde, Arturo Uslar Pietri, eschewed labelling the new literary
movement a product of Futurism, yet, effectively, yielded to a Marinettian aesthetic in his
review, Indice : Quincenario de combate. Crítica y literatura. Uslar Pietri was an international-
 

ist who promoted a “new art” that expressed the spirit of the age and the creative poten-
tial of the Latin American people. His collaboration with the válvula group in 1928 would
mark the transition from his love of Futurist rhetoric to his demand for aesthetic and
social renewal. The Venezuelan journal válvula was a project that expressed the desire of
a small group of innovative and rebellious writers to promote a “new art” that expressed
the spirit of the age, and in particular the creative potential of the Latin American people.
In order to achieve this aim, they borrowed from devices and strategies developed by
Futurist and other vanguard movements.
These appropriations of the European avant-garde were not in the least imitative or
plagiaristic. Uslar Pietri and his válvula group were innovative and original writers in-
teracting with many like-minded artists around the globe. They possessed an interna-
tionalist outlook, yet at the same time they acted within the socio-historical context of
1920s Venezuela, developing a form of Futurism that was designed to break the chains
of caudillismo and to promote social reforms in urban centres. It is in this vein that Uslar
Pietri developed his literary craft that operated with the power of suggestion, the poetic
efficiency of metaphors, as well as with a conflation of the powers of word and image,
all used towards the ultimate aim of mobilizing the masses into becoming an agent of
artistic and social renewal.
But also aesthetically they took an anti-colonialist attitude and rejected the import
20 günter berghaus

Fig. 4.

of literary fashions from Europe. In this respect, they agreed with the Nicaraguan poet
Ruben Darío, who applauded Marinetti’s poetry, but ultimately regarded his Foundation
Manifesto as being inútil : « I don’t believe, » he wrote, « that his manifesto will do more than
       

encourage a good number of imitators to do ‘Futurism’ out-and-out, many surely with-

out having either the talent or the rhetoric of the initiator ». 1 Similarly, Uslar Pietri and his
 

comrades respected Marinetti as a capable writer and artist, but they judged many of his
political and aesthetic tenets as irreconcilable with the Latin American mentality.

US-American Futurism
An interesting, and in some ways curious, phenomenon can be observed further North, in
the USA. Futurist influences there were quite limited, due to Marinetti’s failure to secure
a Futurist participation at the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York,
commonly known as the Armory Show. Consequently, when news of Futurism reached
the USA, many artists could not quite understand what relevance this movement could
have for their own culture. For example, the photographer Paul Strand wrote : « We are not    

[…] particularly sympathetic to the somewhat hysterical attitude of the Futurists toward
the machine. We in America are not fighting, as it may be natural to do in Italy, away from
the tentacles of a medieval tradition towards a neurasthenic embrace of the new God ». 2  

This, indeed, may have been true in New York or Chicago, but the situation was quite
different for the Americans belonging to the so-called « Lost Generation », who had mi-
   

grated to Europe in order to escape the commercialism of US mass culture and the lack
of intellectual stimuli in American high culture. When they came into contact with Fu-
turism, they changed their outlook on their homeland and developed an awareness of the
aesthetic potential of machine culture.

1  « No creo que su manifiesto haga más que animar a un buen número de imitadores a hacer ‘futurismo’ a ultranza, mu-
 

chos seguramente sin tener el talento ni el verbo de iniciador ». Darío, Marinetti y el futurismo, « La Nación » (Buenos Aires),
     

5 April 1909, reprinted in Nelson Osorio Tejeda, El futurismo y la vanguardia literaria en América Latina, Caracas, Centro de
Estudios Latinoamericanos Rómulo Gallegos, 1982, pp. 45-48.
2  Paul Strand, Photography and the New God, « Broom », 3, 4 (November 1922), pp. 252-258, here p. 257.
   
 the international impact of futurism 21
The consequences of this development were described by the literary critic Edmund
Wilson in an article for Vanity Fair : “Young Americans going lately to Paris [...] discover
 

that the very things they have come abroad to get away from – the machines, the adver-
tisements, the elevators and the jazz – have begun to fascinate the French at the expense of
their own amenities”. 1 Harold A. Loeb, editor of the magazine Broom, confirmed this im-
pression when he wrote that “the curious attitude of admiration prevalent among French
artists” made him think that “America regarded from France is not the same America”
he left behind on the other side of the Atlantic. 2 In Milan, he interviewed Marinetti and
made another discovery :  

I told him how much Americans looked to Europe, to England, Russia, and France for literature, to
Germany for music, and to France and to Italy for the plastic arts. In return, he burst into rhetoric
extolling America. To his mind, nearly everything important in our day came out of the United
States. He cited our skyscrapers, movies, jazz, even machinery and comics. 3
So, ironically, the Futurist admiration of American machine culture – as in Prampolini’s
cover design for Broom magazine – became adapted by US-American intellectuals. Mari-
netti’s great admiration for America profoundly altered Loeb’s perspective on his home
country, I quote : “I had seen the American scene with refreshed eyes. By 1921 I was pre-
 

pared to accept certain products of American industry for their beauty as well as their
utility.”4

Summary
As the examples cited here indicate, the radiation of Futurist ideas from one culture to an-
other was a process that could be extraordinarily complex and contradictory. Of course,
there were some straightforward cases too, where an artist would become a correspond-
ing member of the Futurist movement, embrace its programme as outlined in the mani-
festos and adopt a gamut if stylistic devices taken from Italian models. However, these
artists were exceptions rather than the rule. Most essays in the yearbook describe proc-
esses of ‘influence’ that would better be described as absorption, assimilation, adaptation,
osmosis, or similar.
In most countries, Futurism was understood rather superficially at the time. News-
papers only offered scattered information about Futurist activities in Italy and abroad.
Marinetti’s method of shocking the public received excessive exposure and was reported
on in a sensationalist manner that would naturally attract a reader’s attention. Otherwise,
the commentators picked up in a rather random fashion certain elements of Futurism
and ignored others, thereby distorting its aesthetic agenda. Stripped of its theory, Futurist
works of art were greeted by many critics as something that could not be taken seriously.
Some made fun of them whilst others saw in them a sign of mental illness. Thus, Futur-
ism began a “second life”, largely created by critics for whom the label ‘Futurism’ was lad-
en with negative connotations. This new construct can only be called pseudo-Futurism and
certainly bore little relation to the original aims and visions of the movement’s founder.
Even when an artist or writer of modernist conviction gained access to some original
manifestos and developed a certain amount of sympathy towards Marinetti’s position, he

1  Edmund Wilson, The Aesthetic Upheaval in France, « Vanity Fair », February 1922, pp. 49-50.
2  Harold A. Loeb, Foreign Exchange, « Broom », 2, 2 (May 1922), pp. 176-181, here p. 178.
3  Harold Loeb, Broom : Beginning and Revival, « Connecticut Review », 4, 1 (1970), pp. 5-12 here p. 7.
4  Ibidem, p. 66. The quotes can be found in Fochessati’s essay : Broom and Futurist Aristocracy : When the Futurist Movement
Met the Machine Age, « International Yearbook of Futurism Studies », 2 (2012).
   
22 günter berghaus
still would have had problems with the group’s extravagant and clamorous activities that
gave the movement such a bad name in the popular press. But, nonetheless, in a number
of cases one can discover that underneath an attitude of rejection or detachment signifi-
cant aspects of Futurist art filtered through and influenced an artist or writer without him
or her ever admitting that they were adopting some of the movement’s aesthetic tenets.
As the essays in our Yearbook demonstrate, Futurism could act as a stimulant and
exert a fertilizing function in the life of many artists. They themselves saw in this “Fu-
turist” phase a brief yet important transitory period in their career. And this, I guess, is
exactly what Marinetti had in mind when he wrote that they as Futurists would only see
their task as having been fulfilled when “other, younger, and more courageous men” will
come, read our works and then “toss us into the trash can, like useless manuscripts. And
that’s what we want !” 1  

Quando avremo quarant’anni, altri uomini più giovani e più validi di noi, ci gettino pure nel ces-
tino, come manoscritti inutili. Noi lo desideriamo !  

1  La Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo, in Teoria e invenzione futurista, a cura di Luciano de Maria, cit., pp. 7-14. Here p.
13.