The Red Horseman by Carlo Carra

In his manifesto, Marinetti stated his disdain for the static and irrelevant art of the past and instead had an eye for the automobile and current technology. His wild and angry rhetoric called for social change including the destruction of cultural institutions as museums and libraries.

Marinetti wrote in his manifesto, "Up to now, literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer's stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap. We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed …We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind; will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.

"Futurism is grounded in the complete renewal of human sensibility that has generated our pictorial dynamism, our anti-graceful music in its free, irregular rhythms, our noise-art and our words-in-freedom … By the imagination without strings I mean the absolute freedom of images or analogies, expressed with unhampered words and with no connecting strings of syntax and with no punctuation."

Futurism held forth the glories of war and violence including fascism and a celebration of the machine age plus the dynamics of man-made forms. Other painters and sculptures in the Futurism movement included Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, and Gino Severini.

For a time Futurism was thought erroneously to have its roots in Cubism. Others could see, however, that Futurism gained its momentum from the German abstract movement called Expressionism. The movement of Futurism would end around the beginning of the second World War.

The first major exhibition of Futurism paintings was held in Milan, Italy in April of 1911.