A hundred years on from the publication of the Futurist Manifesto the originality and innovative power of the first great Italian avant-garde movement, founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, remains intact.

FUTURISMO1OO is an umbrella project within the ambit of the celebrations of the centenary of the Futurist Manifesto in 1909, organized under the patronage of the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Activities and presenting three major exhibitions over the course of the year.

FUTURISMO100 inaugurates its academic programme with the exhibition at the Mart in Rovereto Illuminations - Avant-gardes Compared. Italy, Germany, Russia (17 January - 7 June 2009), proceeds with Abstractions at the Museo Correr in Venice (5 June - 4 October 2009) and concludes with Simultaneity (15 October 2009 - 25 January 2010) at Palazzo Reale in Milan.

ILLUMINAZIONI
Avanguardie a confronto. Italia, Germania, Russia
ROVERETO, MART
dal 17 gennaio al 7 giugno 2009

ASTRAZIONI
VENEZIA, MUSEO CORRER
dal 5 giugno al 4 ottobre 2009

SIMULTANEITA'
MILANO, PALAZZO REALE
dal 15 ottobre 2009 al 25 gennaio 2010

The project is being curated by Ester Coen and constitutes the most eagerly awaited of the Italian contributions to the centenary celebrations in that it presents through the three exhibitions a brand-new interpretation of Futurism, an avant-garde art movement whose relationships with the most audacious European experimentation of the early 20th century are still relatively unexplored.
The complex weave of new visions, techniques and revolutionary idioms that developed through the first two decades of the last century swith virtually no geographical boundaries, will be presented through the dialogue between the exhibitions, deliberately located in cities with histories closely linked, both positively and negatively, with the Futurist movement: Rovereto, Venice and Milan.
.

Electa, the official publisher for FUTURISMO100, is to publish three catalogues that as well as the works shown in the individual exhibitions, feature a collection of posters, theoretical writings, letters and archive documents - in part previously unpublished - relating to the artists and the themes chosen for each exhibition.
The material collected in each publication rewrites the artistic development of the historic avant-garde movements from of the perspective of the protagonists of the period, creating an enthralling account of reciprocities and complex artistic relationships. A new form of catalogue, with profoundly academic roots, that constitutes a proposal for a rereading of the first twenty years of the 20th century through original sources and voices.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABSTRACTIONS
In concomitance with the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennale, the exhibition Abstractions will open at the Museo Correr in Venice (5 June - 4 October 2009). This represents an opportunity for a critical revision of the very concept of abstraction and the diverse meanings this term acquired during the course of the progressive detachment of the avant-garde movements from earlier artistic strands. Thanks to a comparison between the works of the maestro of Italian Futurism Giacomo Balla and those of the great contemporary European artists, the surpassing of the more "technical" abstractions already experimented in Cubism is highlighted.
Balla's works constitute the term of comparision with those of the other great contemporary artists: from the research of Piet Mondrian, focussing on the unveiling of the fundamental elements in the representation of nature (line and colour) to the ironic representations of Francis Picabia and his bizarre Dadaist machines, from the search for the essential of Robert Delauney and Frantisek Kupka, brough together by research into the correpsondence between sound and colour, through to the biting provocations of Marcel Duchamp who proves to have much in common with the poetic of the Futurist maestro.