2011

In the past 20 years, there has been a remarkable upsurge of interest in Futurism in most countries formerly situated east of the Iron Curtain. Although Russian Futurism was always well-known, the multifaceted extensions of Futurism in other Eastern countries were not much reported on in Italy and became nearly forgotten after 1945. However, since 1989 a wealth of original material has been rediscovered, both in the literary and the artistic field. In this volume, sixteen experts are presenting a wide spectrum of new findings on artists who operated within the shifting coordinates of the international avant-garde and contributed to the often osmotic relations between Futurism, Dada and Constructivism. The essays in this volume include a discussion of the multi-national character of Futurism in Central and Eastern Europe and the colonialist absorption of avant-garde practices in the Soviet Union; the Berlin directorate of the Futurist movement and its modes of operation in the international avant-garde scene of the 1920s; the infiltration of Futurism in the typographical practices of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland; the hitherto almost unexamined contacts between Latvian artists and Futurism; Polish Responses to Italian Futurism; the similarities and differences between Zenitism and Futurism; the artistic ambitions of the Ukrainian Pan-Futurists in the 1920s; the Futurist experience in Transcaucasian Georgia; the reception of Futurist ideas in the Activist circles of Hungary; the public presence of a mute Futurism in the Czech avant-garde; Marinetti's visits to Bucharest and Budapest in the 1930s; the hybrid identity of the Bulgarian artist Diulgheroff and his career as an architect and designer in Turin; the role of Italian Futurism in the Slovenian interwar avant-garde; the aesthetic affinities and political divergences between Italian and Romanian Futurism.