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Futurism was invented by the poet and man of letters Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) who, born in Alexandria, Egypt, lived for a long time both in Italy and France.Publishing the Futurist Manifesto in 1909 in "Le Figaro", Marinetti and the young artists who gathered around him proclaimed "the radiant splendor of the future" througha new aesthetics based on the myths of the modern age: automobiles, speed and progress.On the basis of these premises, Balla, Boccioni, Carra, Russolo, and Severini, who joined the movement with two manifestos published in 1910 (Manifesto of Futurist Paintersand Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting), arrived at a radical transformation of the artistic language through new tools of dynamism and simultaneity of vision.In violent disagreement with bourgeois cultural traditionalism, and animated by a vitalistic conception which made reference to Bergson and also to Nietzsche, the Futuristsmade a clean sweep of nineteenth-century pictorial tradition. Recurring themes and subjects of their paintings derived mainly from the industrial city with its teeming crowds,roaring shipyards and trams on the move, with sounds, lights, noise and speed, accurately representing the hectic pace of modern life.

The new Futurist aesthetics sought to place the viewer in the centre of the picture, or in the centre of a representation where, thanks to the simultaneity of space and time,one could perceive the new realities of the modern age showing themselves not as an ordered, sequential ensemble of objects but rather as a piecemeal assemblage offorms, lights and colours governed by the dynamism of line-forces, extraordinary multipliers of shadows and lights, of solids and voids, of pauses and noises.

After the tragic death in 1916 of Umberto Boccioni, the greatest interpreter of Futurism, the movement found new life in the manifesto The Futurist Reconstruction of theUniverse published in 1915 by "abstract Futurists" Giacomo Balla and Fortunato Depero. As attested by a certificate signed by Boccioni, Marinetti, Russolo and Carra, theyoung artist from Rovereto was officially accepted in the Futurist group in 1915. From that moment onwards he was to play a key role in the development of the movement,partly due to his extensive experience in the field of applied arts. In fact, the manifesto laid the theoretical basis for the extension of Futurist aesthetics to every aspect of life."We Futurists, Balla and Depero," wrote the two artists, "seek to realize this total fusion in order to reconstruct the universe, making it more joyful, that is to say, completelyre-creating it. We will give flesh and bones to the invisible, the impalpable, the imponderable and the imperceptible. We will find abstract equivalents for every form andelement in the universe, and then we will combine them according to the whims of our inspiration, creating plastic complexes which we will set in motion."With these wordsBalla and Depero indicated a new frontier for their experimentation: the painting of abstract equivalents consisting of abstract shapes translated onto the canvas, but alsointo the three-dimensional structures of the new sculpture they called "plastic complexes", forms existing in nature that modern painting could no longer represent unlessby resorting to analogy. In addition to abstract analogies, the Manifesto formulated the first modern theory of the art / life dichotomy which, even if it had remarkableprecedents especially in the Central European culture of the "Gesamtkunstwerk" and in the guidelines of the Wiener Werkstätte, was entirely new in the context ofcontemporary Italian culture.

The Casa d'Arte Futurista [Depero's Futurist House], a laboratory specializing in applied arts founded by Depero in Rovereto in 1919, was one of the most importantimplementations of the idea of a radical transformation-from architecture to design, from advertising to fashion-of the human environment. Through its articles, Depero'sworkshop offered a radical renewal of the objects and environments of everyday life. Toys were not to be "stupid caricatures of domestic objects" but designed to train thechild to be imaginative and also suitable for adults, keeping them "young, agile, jubilant, spontaneous, ready for anything." Furniture was created to establish newrelationships between form and environment, characterized by essential structure and dynamic lines.

Works in the technique of inset applique-the first creations made in the artisan workshop under the direction of Depero and his wife Rosetta-stand out from among theobjects produced in the laboratory. These compositions in textiles derived from the collage technique Depero tested when he designed costumes and sets for his MagicTheater. Articles of small size were intended as cushion covers, while the larger compositions became tapestries to cover entire walls.

His long experience in the field of applied arts, especially his work for the stage (in 1917 he was commissioned by Diaghilev to design costumes and scenery for Le Chantdu Rossignol), also profoundly affected Depero's work as a painter, in the full affirmation of a global Futurist aesthetics abolishing all hierarchy between artistic languages.Thus in works such as Meccanica di ballerini (Ballerinas' Mechanism) there is the influence of his experience of Balli Plastici [Plastic Ballets], a puppet show staged in 1918at the Teatro dei Piccoli in Rome, where Depero worked in close collaboration with the Swiss poet Gilbert Clavel. Depero invented a fantastic, playful language where theCubist-Futurist syntax became an instrument to stage magic spaces populated by automatons,mechanical figures constructed from the simplified forms of geometric shapes.This "magical-mechanical" style also characterized Depero's experimentation in the field of advertising, where the artist from Rovereto showed great originality and anextraordinary innovative force, paving the way for modern developments in the language of mass communication.