Futurismo y Surrealismo: Vanguardias (Parte II)

• These study notes summarize Futurism and Surrealism, from Vanguardias (Part II).

Futurismo

• Approximate dates are 1909-1920.
• Ideology includes technology, machine aesthetics, and violence.
• Formal characteristics include dynamism, technology-inspired forms, repetition, and breaking geometric limits.
• Was influenced by Cubism.
• Key figures include Filippo Marinetti, Fortunato Depero, Antonio St. Elia, and Giacomo Balla.
• Filippo Marinetti, an Italian writer and poet, founded Futurism in 1909.
• The movement distanced itself from the past, embracing technological progress.
• The first cultural movement to distance itself from nature to glorify the metropolis.
• Inspired by cities, speed, violence, machines, and communication systems.
• Futurist painters were influenced by Cubism but explored energy, movement, and cinematographic sequences, overthrowing bourgeois culture and acting as a destructive force.
• The first truly radical design movement, expressing the aggressive aesthetics of urban life in the machine age.
• In 1913, Marinetti advocated a typographic revolution against classical tradition, rejecting harmony as a design quality.
• Marinetti wanted words to be dynamic, conveying the speed of stars, clouds, airplanes, trains, and explosives.
• A new typographic design emerged, closely tied to painting, known as "free typography" and "words in freedom."
• Graphic design had typically followed a strict horizontal and vertical structure till this moment.
• Futurist poets broke free from this classical tradition, energizing pages with dynamic, non-linear compositions.
• Antonio Sant'Elia joined in 1914, displaying his "new city" designs in Milan.
• His architectural forms lacked ornamentation, featuring unfinished surfaces and intense colors.
• Elia manifesto influenced the De Stijl members, who adopted it in 1917, although he passed in 1916.

Surrealismo

• Approximate dates are 1925-1945.
• Influenced by Freud and Dadaism.
• The ideology of surrealism is rooted in psychoanalysis, aiming to unlock unconscious thought.
• Formal traits show figurative images taken out of their normal settings with transformations against logic and unconventional shape and symbol pairings.
• Prominent figures in Surrealism include Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Man Ray.
• A group of artists, led by André Bretón of the Dada movement, sought a new means of expression that used chance and highlighted the unconscious.
• Surrealism seeks to understand the human being in its totality by exploring the field of automatic associations, attempting to capture dreams and the unconscious.
• André Bretón declared "I believe in the future union of these two states, seemingly so contradictory, dream and reality, in a kind of absolute reality, surrealism”.
• Painters displayed certain coherence through metamorphosis, detaching anatomical pieces, fantasy machines, incongruous juxtapositions, open perspectives, and chaotic production.
• Eroticism was explored from a provoking perspective, often connecting to psychoanalytic roots.
• Surrealism popularized "ready-made" or "objet trouvé." The surrealists created art from pre-existing pieces, changing how items were used and making them imaginary, ironic, or emotive.
• The surrealist movement challenged the reality and usefulness of objects, and desired escape from traditional values.