Biography
The Italian millionaire poet and writer, Emilio Angelo Carlo Marinetti (later called Filippo Tommaso), was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1876 the second son of a rich and successful lawyer, Enrico Marinetti. While Marinetti perhaps initially had intentions of following a legal career, his passion was for literature and poetry.
The publication of the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of Le Figaro on 20 February 1909 brought Marinetti instant notoriety. His vehement and polemic manifesto, based on the modern aesthetic principles of a fast, aggressive lifestyle, thrust Futurism onto an unsuspecting audience. The movement's theorist, he glorified danger, war and violence, the love of speed and the wonder of the machine age.
Biography
When the original manifesto was published in 1909, very few people actually realized that this new movement consisted of just Marinetti! However, by 1910 he had been joined by the artists Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo as well as a small following of musicians, poets and writers. This group is now sometimes known as the 'first wave' Futurists. An innovative and brilliant publicist, he used modern methods to publicize his new art movement - chiefly in the form of a flood of manifestos which promised much but were often difficult to produce in real terms. The range of Futurist manifestos was simply vast and covered every aspect of the arts - painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, music, photography, cinema, theatre, etc - as well as - love, war, women, and so on.
Biography
The other 'modern' way the Futurists publicized themselves and their movement was the serata. These Futurist soirées, invariably organized and led by Marinetti, were the precursor of the 'Synthetic Theatre'. Performances usually included music or a performance of Russolo's intonorumori or noise machines, improvised speeches, presentations of paintings, literary and poetic readings and short dramatic plays called sintesi or syntheses.
In 1917 Marinetti met Benedetta Cappa, twenty one years his junior and a student of Giacomo Balla. By 1919 - the year he wrote his manifesto Against Marriage - they were living together and they married in 1923. He died Dec. 2, 1944 in Bellagio, Italy.