Futurism

From the motorcar to the radio, modern technology radically transformed urban life by the first decade of the twentieth century. This Very Short Introduction explores the ideas, works, key figures, and development of the Futurist movement in Italy and beyond, in the context of the turmoil and rapid change of the early 20th Century.

Ara H. Merjian is Professor of Italian Studies at New York University, where he is an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History. He has written and edited several books, including Fragments of Totality: Futurism, Fascism, and the Sculptural Avant-Garde (2024), Heretical Aesthetics: Pasolini on Painting (2023), Against the Avant-Garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Contemporary Art and Neocapitalism (2020), and Blueprints and Ruins: Giorgio de Chirico and the Architectural Imagination from the Avant-Garde to Postmodernism (forthcoming 2025). He has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and the San Quentin State Penitentiary College Education Program.