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Les mots en liberté futuristes

Artist: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Italian, 1876-1944)
Publisher: Edizioni Futuriste di "Poesia," Milan, 1919
Printer: Stab. Tipografica A. Taveggia, Milan
Author: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Italian, 1876-1944)
Date: 1919
Dimensions:
book: 7 9/16 x 5 x 1/4 in. (192 x 127 x 6mm)
page (untrimmed): 7 9/16 x 4 15/16 in. (192 x 126mm)
Medium: Reproductions: line block reproductions of hand-drawn lettering, plus letterpress prints (expressively set poetry and designs) Text: letterpress on buff laid paper
Classification: Books
Credit Line: Mrs. George W. Stevens Fund
Object number: 1987.185
Label Text:Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Les Mots en Liberté: Futuristes (Words in Liberty:
Futurists) (1919)

“We say that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty; the beauty of speed... Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.” (Marinetti, 1909)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti—poet, playwright, journalist, and novelist—was the founder and guiding spirit of the Italian Futurist movement. Beginning in 1909, he introduced ideas based on the visualization of speed and innovation in modern technology. His ideas had a profound impact not only on the visual arts, but also on literature and theater. Marinetti developed the concept of parole in libertà (free text), which carried the idea of free verse one step farther. It eliminated any rules regarding spelling, syntax, or typography.

Like many artists at that time, Marinetti developed a fascination with the concept of speed, sparked in part by advances in transportation and building construction. He was not interested in the social advances that technology would bring, but with the intoxicating and frightening experience of the power of machines. Using typography alone, Marinetti explodes the norms for book presentation, expressing modernity through a controlled chaos of words, shapes, and images.

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