International Yearbook of Futurism Studies 2015 PDF

International Yearbook of Futurism Studies
International Yearbook
of Futurism Studies
Edited by
Günter Berghaus
Editorial Board
Matteo D’Ambrosio · Marjorie Perloff · Irina Subotić ·
Jorge Schwartz
Contributing Editors
Emilia David · Matteo Fochessati · Rubén Gallo ·
Roger Griffin · Benedikt Hjartarson · Chris Michaelides ·
Przemysław Strożek · Pierantonio Zanotti
International Yearbook
of Futurism Studies
Volume 5
2015
Special Issue
Women Artists and Futurism
Edited by
Günter Berghaus
With the assistance of Mariana Aguirre, Selena Daly,

Sze Wah Lee, Renée M. Silverman
ISBN 978-3-11-040850-8
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042281-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042292-4
ISSN 2192-0281
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliografic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at
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© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Typesetting: Johanna Boy, Brennberg
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∞ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
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Contents
Editorial IX
Section 1: Women Artists and Futurism
Paul-André Jaccard
Alice Bailly, Ambassador of Futurism in Switzerland 3
Katy Deepwell
Narratives of Women Artists in/out of Vorticism 21
Miranda Hickman
Beyond the Frame: Reassessing Jessie Dismorr and Helen Saunders 44
Selena Daly
Mary Swanzy (1882–1978): A Futurist Painter from Ireland 70
Silvia Contarini
Valentine de Saint-Point: A Futurist Woman? 87
Eamon McCarthy
Flirting with Futurism: Norah Borges and the Avant-garde 111
Alena Pomajzlová
Růžena Zátková: An Unorthodox Female Futurist 136
Natalia Budanova
Penetrating Men’s Territory: Russian Avant-garde Women, Futurism
and the First World War 168
Christina Lodder
Olga Rozanova: A True Futurist 199
Bela Tsipuria
Tatiana Vechorka: A Futurist Poetess in Tbilisi, Baku and Moscow 226
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0001
VI Contents
Jordan Tobin
Alexandra Exter 1908–1914: Futurist Influences from Russia
and the West 252
Isabel Wünsche
Elena Guro: On the Crossroads between Symbolism, Organicism
and Cubo-Futurism 266
Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj
Nina Henke-Meller and Ukrainian Futurism 292
Donatella Di Leo
Eva Amendola Kühn (Magamal): A Futurist of Lithuanian Extraction 297
Irina Subotić
Magamal in Fiction: A Novel by Mira Otašević 327
Lisa Hanstein
Edyth von Haynau: A Viennese Aristocrat in the Futurist Circles
of the 1910s 333
Allison E. Carey
“The Pleasure of Being at the Wheel”: The Mechanical Aesthetics of Gertrude
Stein and F.T. Marinetti 366
Tim Klähn
Rea Nikonova and the Legacy of Russian Futurism 395
Section 2: Caricatures and Satires of Futurism in the

Contemporary Press
Matteo D’Ambrosio
Matilde Serao’s Battle with the Futurists in Naples 427
Andrey Rossomakhin
The Ego-Kubo-Rayo-Donkey-Tail-Futurists: About a Russian Cartoon
of 1913 431
Contents VII
Rosa Sarabia
Gecé’s Angelic Depiction of Norah Borges 435
Marta Sironi
Art and Anarchy: Futurists and Suffragettes in London, 1910–1915 439
Section 3: Reports
Denis Beznosov
The International Academy of Zaum 445
Barbara Meazzi
Women Futurists in Italy: A Research Report 450
Section 4: Obituary
Willem G. Weststeijn
Serge Segay (1947–2014): An Obituary 467
Section 5: Reviews
Ekaterina Lazareva
Futurism and War: A Conference in Zagreb (28–29 June 2014) 477
Günter Berghaus
Futurist Utopias 486
Natalia Budanova and Helen Higgins

The Jack of Diamonds Disputes at the Courtauld Institute, London (24 October
and 7 November 2014) 495
Adriana Baranello
(Re)Constructing the Futurist Universe: Toward a More Careful and Complete
Historiography 502
Rosalind McKever
Gerardo Dottori at the Estorick Collection 516
VIII Contents
Irene Chytraeus-Auerbach and Lisa Hanstein

The Russian Avant-garde and Its Eastern Roots 523
Ulrike Mühlschlegel
Futurism in Latin America: An Exhibition at the Ibero-American Institute in
Berlin 531
Manfred Hinz
A New Analysis of Futurist Manifestos 537
Günter Berghaus
The Dramaturgy of Sound in Futurist Theatre 541
Toshiharu Omuka
Futurism in the Far East 550
Section 6: Bibliography
Günter Berghaus
A Bibliography of Publications on Futurism, 2012–2014 561
Section 7: Back Matter
List of Illustrations and Provenance Descriptions 591

Notes on Contributors 596
Name Index 605
Subject Index 635
Geographical Index 661
Günter Berghaus
Editorial
It is the aim of the International Yearbook of Futurism Studies to publish origi-
nal research on the global ramifications of Futurism, on the intercultural flow
of avant-garde ideas across national borders, on artistic movements inspired by
Futurism across continents, and on artists operating in the international sphere
with close contacts to Marinetti or other Futurists. It is particularly interested in
heterodox forms of Futurism and in artists who were merely periodically involved
with Futurism or were inspired only by certain aspects of the movement.
In this volume, the artists concerned are all women. They had a more or
less fleeting engagement with Futurist ideas and aesthetic concepts; they never
became orthodox Futurist; and their artistic legacy shows traces and influences
also of other art movements.
Many artists or writers of modernist conviction had a rather superficial
understanding of Futurism. They had to rely on the scattered information that
newspapers provided on the movement, either in the form of reviews or, more
often, as more or less denigrating, satirical or scandal-mongering articles. As
critics and commentators usually picked up in a rather random fashion certain
aspects of Futurism while ignoring others, they were distorting its aesthetic
agenda and created an image of Futurism that did much to turn it into a prototype
of ‘Modernism gone mad’. Of course, some artists managed to gain access to some
original manifestos and thus developed a certain understanding of the aims and
objectives pursued by the Futurists; and if they ignored the movement’s extrava-
gant and clamorous activities that gave it such a bad name in the popular press,
they could develop an attitude that mixed rejection or detachment with a certain
sympathy for Marinetti’s and his fellow Futurists’ positions. Consequently, signif-
icant aspects of Futurism filtered through a rather biased flow of information and
exercise an influence on artists and writers without them necessarily admitting
that they were adopting some of the movement’s aesthetic tenets.
These general features of the rather complex and often contradictory recep-
tion of Futurism can be observed, in this special issue of the International Year-
book of Futurism Studies, in a number of women artists and writers. Some of them
actively supported Futurism (e.g. Valentine de Saint-Point, Růžena Zátková,
Edyth von Haynau, Eva Kühn), while others only had a tenuous and short-lived
involvement with the movement (e.g. Alice Bailly, Aleksandra Ekster, Elena Guro,
Olga Rozanova, Tatiana Vechorka, Mary Swanzy). The reader will therefore find
in this volume many cases where Futurism would not necessarily be seen as the
first and most significant aspect of an artist’s œuvre. Several of the women por-
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0002
X Günter Berghaus
trayed here operated only on the margins of a Futurist inspired aesthetics; they
never became ‘amazzoni del futurismo’, but felt attracted to Futurism because of
the innovatory rôle it played in the social and intellectual spheres and the relative
support it offered to women artists, especially in the early phases of their career.
Any person who has found occasion to study the biography and œuvre of a
dozen leading women Futurists cannot help but be astonished to find that few
of their names feature in any of the standard histories of twentieth-century art
and that they are only insufficiently covered in the chronicles of the Futurist
movement. To some extent, this may be due to the fact that male art historians
and literary critics have not taken much interest in female authors per se. But it
also appears that the more recent generation of feminist scholars largely kept
clear of a thorough examination of the Futurist movement because of Marinetti’s
‘anti-feminist’ rhetorics. It is therefore still very common to read that Futurism
had little or nothing to offer to female artists and writers and that they stayed
clear of any contact with Marinetti’s organization.1 Furthermore, I fear, feminist
scholars have repeated the mistakes made by their male colleagues with regard
to a different question: the contradictory and complex relationship between the
Futurists and the Fascist régime.
In the past decade, research into women artists active within avant-garde
circles has flourished within the disciplines of art history, literary studies and
gender studies. However, in contrast to, for example, the growing scholarship on
women Expressionists,2 their Futurist colleagues, which were probably superior
1 Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry, for example, write, “Vorticism was the only avant-garde
grouping in Western Europe before 1914 to include women among its members.” Beckett and
Cherry: “Modern Women, Modern Spaces: Women, Metropolitan Culture and Vorticism”, p. 36.
These ‘experts’ patently ignore the fact that Futurism had Valentine de Saint-Point as official
member of the directorate.
2 My bibliographic files, which are certainly far from complete in this field, document new re-
search on Lou Albert-Lasard, Olga Bontjes von Beek, Bess Brenck-Kalischer, Marianne Britze,
Erma Bossi, Marianne Brandt, Dora Bromberger, Helen Dahm, Marthe Donas, Elisabeth Epstein,
Katharina Fischeder, Gela Forster, Hilde Goldschmidt, Claire Goll, Lea Grundig, Henriette Harden-
berg, Ilse Heller-Lazard, Emmy Hennings, Sigrid Hjertén, Hannah Höch, Stephanie Hollenstein,
Marie Howet, Annemarie Jacob, Elisabeth Janstein, Ida Kerkovius, Emmy Klinker, Dora Koch-Stet-
ter, Käthe Kollwitz, Fifi Kreutzer, Margarete Kubicka, Else Lasker-Schüler, Käte Lassen, Lotte
Lesehr-Schneider, Mechtilde Lichnowsky, Marie Lindner, Else Lohmann, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler,
Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Dorothea Maetzel-Johannsen, Lore Masius, Maria Marc, Elfriede Mayer,
Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter, Olga Oppenheimer, Gret Palucca, Alexandra Ramm,
Emma Ritter, Emy Roeder, Recha Rothschild, Paula Sedana Schiff-Magnussen, Lavinia Schulz,
Ruth Schütte, Martel Schwichtenberg, Else Sehrig-Vehling, Renée Sintenis, Milly Steger, Thea
Sternheim, Maria Uhden, Jacoba van Heemskerck, Sophie van Leer, Therese von der Vring, Maria
Editorial XI
in number,3 have not benefited in the same manner from this resurging inter-
est. Nonetheless, even though research into women Futurists is lagging behind
the investigations into parallel developments in other avant-garde movements,
advances have been made. Several anthologies of writings by women Futurists
have been published, a number of major exhibitions of female artists active in, or
attached to, Marinetti’s movement were held, and a substantial amount of books
and essays have been dedicated to the amazzoni futuriste. I have asked Barbara
Meazzi to give us an overview on recent publications concerning women Futurists
in Italy (see pp. 450–464), and I am planning a complementary report concerned
with their Russian counterparts for a future volume of the Yearbook.
A first attempt at overcoming the one-sided view on Futurist attitudes towards
the women’s question was undertaken by Lea Vergine in the exhibition, L’altra
metà dell’avanguardia, 1910–1940 (The Other Half of the Avant-garde, 1910–1940,
1980), where she presented the works of half a dozen hitherto practically unknown
women Futurists.4 I can still remember vividly my surprise when I visited the exhi-
bition and discovered that Futurism had not been an exclusively male domain and
that the prevalent image of the movement as a misogynist precursor of Fascism
was conveying a rather skewed picture that needed to be critically scrutinized.
My interest in the phenomenon of women Futurists was given further stimulus
two years later, when Claudia Salaris edited an anthology, Le futuriste: Donne e
letteratura d’avanguardia in Italia, 1909–1944 (The Female Futurists: Women and
Avant-garde Literature in Italy, 1909–1944, 1982), which contained poetry and
short stories written by some fifty female Futurists. These two scholars, for the
first time, brought to light a rich and colourful expression of female creativity in a
period that seemed to be dominated by male radicals and geniuses.
Inspired by their findings, I used the opportunity of my research into Futurist
theatre to take note of the full range of artistic activities undertaken by female
Futurists whenever I happened to come across these little-known manifesta-
tions.5 Over the years, I have found hundreds of Futurist books, brochures and
von Heider-Schweinitz, Marie von Malachowski-Nauen, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Gustava

von Veith, Marianne von Werefkin, Maria Uhden and Mary Wigman.
3 In my current estimation, some 80 to 90 women associated themselves with Italian Futurism
by participating in Futurist projects, showing their work in Futurist exhibitions or publishing
their writings under a Futurist imprint.
4 Pages 75–130 of the catalogue, L’altra metà dell’avanguardia, 1910–1940, also edited by L.
Vergine, were dedicated to the female Futurists.
5 The volume Italian Futurist Theatre, 1909–1944, published in 1998, contains a great deal of
information on actresses, women dramatists and designers, and was complemented by other
essays on female dancers and performers. See bibliography.
XII Günter Berghaus
essays dealing with the topic of women’s social and sexual emancipation. These
publications range from short newspaper articles via small pamphlets to full-
length novels. Together with the wealth of photographs, designs, illustrations,
paintings, collages, sculptures and other kinds of artwork produced at that time,
they give testimony to a lively involvement of women artists with the Futurist
movement.
My research was given great encouragement by Mirella Bentivoglio,6 who was
working at the time on several exhibitions, editions and, together with Franca
Zoccoli, on a study which, initially, could only be published in the USA.7 In fact,
it was in the United States that the research into the œuvre of some leading
women Futurists received a major stimulus. A new generation of literary and art
historians who had grown up in a feminist environment and who possessed a
solid grounding in gender studies discovered a rich tapestry of female creativity
in Italy in the early part of the twentieth century. They greatly expanded the
preparatory studies that had been undertaken by Rita Guerricchio, Anna Nozzoli
and Giovannella Desideri. However, given the scarcity of material available at
that time, and given that a feminist search for historical rôle models could not
find any acceptable predecessors within the Futurist movement, the significance
of the female presence within the Futurist movement was underestimated for
quite some time. It is therefore not astonishing that Anna Nozzoli ventured the
claim that “the lack of women within the Futurist group, and the small number
of results produced by them, explain the limited significance of Ginanni, Rosà
and Benedetta’s œuvre within the narrow confines of a ‘literary curiosity’.”8
Even more damning was Rita Guerricchio, who deprecated “the severe under-
representation of women” within the Futurist group, which in her view was
one “which, among the movements of the avant-garde, was notoriously the
least feminist, and actually misogynist par excellence.”9 The view that female
Futurists accepted Marinetti’s misogyny and passively followed his reactionary
6 Bentivoglio (*1922) was not only a competent historian, but also a first-rate artist whose career
path shared many similarities with the experiencess that women Futurists had to make in the
1920s and 30s. Therefore, she possessed a profound understanding and appreciation of their
achievements. A great deal of her research was undertaken with the support of the National
Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington/ DC.
7 See Bentivoglio and Zoccoli: Women Artists of Italian Futurism and Le futuriste e le arti visive.
8 “La scarsa presenza femminile all’interno del gruppo futurista, l’esiguità anche numerica del
risultati prodotti, sono infatti altrettante ragioni che limitano l’opera della Ginanni, della Rosà,
di Benedetta, nei confini angusti della ‘curiosità letteraria.” Nozzoli: “‘Le donne del posdomani’:
Scrittrici e avanguardia”, p. 41.
9 “[…] la scarsissima presenza feminile rintracciabile nel gruppo […] futurismo […] che tra i
Editorial XIII
course into Mussolini’s régime remained dominant well into the 1990s. Not all
saw in the donna futurista a donna fascista, as Giovannella Desideri did,10 but few
had the fortitude to investigate with unblinkered eyes a wide range of Futurist
art works from different periods, as Ida Mitrano did in her four part series of
essays published in 1988–89 by Giorgio Di Genova, who was himself engaged in
reconstructing the history of Futurism in the first six volumes of his mammoth
compendium, Storia dell’arte italiana del ‘900.
Fig. 1. Left: One of several portfolios with visual poetry by women Futurists edited by Mirella
Bentivoglio, Da pagina a spazio: Futuriste italiane tra linguaggio e immagine. Bassano del
Grappa: Edizioni Galleria Dieda, 1997. Right: Feminine Futures: Performance, War, Politics and
Eroticism. Valentine de Saint Point. Catalogue of an exhibition in New York: Italian Cultural
Institute, 3 November 2009–7 January 2010.
movimenti d’avanguardia fu notoriamente il meno femminista, anzi il misogino per eccellenza.”

Guerricchio: “Il modello di donna futurista”, p. 35.
10 “L’iniziale anima anarco-libertaria del futurismo si trasforma gradatamente fino a politiciz-
zarsi in senso apertamente fascista. […] Benedetta sancisce il definitivo rappel à l’ordre per la
donna futurista [nel] tentativo di sistematizzazione del ruolo della donna futurista-fascista.” De-
sideri: “Alcuni modelli femminili futuristi,” pp. 59–60.
XIV Günter Berghaus
As Barbara Meazzi shows in their report on pp. 450–464, research into Italian
women Futurists has been steadily expanding since the 1990s. Yet, there are, still,
many books and essays in which Marinetti’s attitudes are assessed exclusively on
the basis of his provocative statements made to express his “scorn for women”.11
But what type of women was he referring to? What kind of feminism did he reject?
Marinetti’s polemical pronouncements in his foundation manifesto offer only
one side of the coin. To arrive at a deeper understanding of his thinking one has
to place them alongside other statements, as for example:
[The feminist] movement is triumphant in the France of today, thanks to a magnificent elite
of intellectual women who daily demonstrate their admirable talents and their irresistible
charm. However, feminism is harmful and even ridiculous in Italy and everywhere else,
where it is limited to being merely an outlet for petty ambitions and oratorical aspirations.12
or
Our hatred, to be precise, for the tyranny of love, we summed up in the laconic expression
“scorn for women.” We scorn woman when conceived as the only ideal, the divine recepta-
cle of love, woman as poison, woman as the tragic plaything, fragile woman, haunting and
irresistible, whose voice, weighed down with destiny, and whose dreamlike mane of hair
extend into the forest and are continued there in the foliage bathed in moonlight.13
In 1909, Jane Catulle-Mendès asked in the French journal Femina about Mari-
netti’s mépris de la femme and how this squared with the enormous support he
was giving to woman poets in his journal Poesia: “May I express a certain doubt
about M. Marinetti’s scorn for women? It appears that his pen is more brutal than
his thinking.”14 There is good reason to believe that Marinetti’s assertions about
11 For example, § 9 of the “Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”, Critical Writings, p. 14, or
the passage in Let’s Kill Off the Moonlight where he compares women with the “stay-at-homes,
the cripples, the sick, and all the cautionmongers”. Critical Writings, p. 23.
12 Marinetti: “Interview sur le futurisme” in Poupées électriques, pp. 32–33, translated as “Futur-
ism: An Interview with Mr. Marinetti in Comœdia”, Critical Writings, p. 20
13 Marinetti: “Against Sentimentalized Love and Parliamentarianism”, Critical Writings, p. 55.
14 “M. Marinetti n’est-il point l’admirateur de la grande Ada Negri, et dans sa revue Poesia ne
fait il point aux femmes une très large place? N’y avons-nous point lu des vers et de proses de la
Comtesse de Noailles, de cette sauvage Rachilde, aux clairvoyances divinatrices et spirituelles,
d’Hélène Vacaresco, d’Hélène Picard, de cette fine Aurel qui semble avoir ajouté une corde au vi-
olon qu’est l’âme féminine et qui ne joue jamais que sur cette chanterelle exquise et suraiguë, de
tant d’autres. Si bien que j’en suis à douter un peu de la certitude que peut avoir M. Marinetti, de
son mépris de la femme. Sa plume fut, probablement, plus brutale que sa pensée.” This review
of Roi Bombance, The Foundation Manifesto of Futurism and the journal Poesia was reprinted in
Poesia, vol. 5, nos. 3–6 (April–July 1909), p. 49.
Editorial XV
women in 1909 were designed to have the same provocative effect as his exhorta-
tion to set fire to museums and academies, which at a later date he also admitted
to having been written to stir up an animated discussion:
– You also teach that museums and libraries should be burned down.
– “Well, that is just a violent image of our desire to get right away from enchantment with
the past, from the despotism of pedantic academies, which stifles intellectual initiative and
the creative power of the young.”15
As Silvia Contari explains on p. 98, Marinetti appears to have had second thoughts
in the end about how useful these provocations were. He realized very quickly
that female friends and esteemed colleagues judged his assertions to be counter-
productive, and he tended not to repeat them in subsequent years. In a letter to
Armando Meoni from late 1909 he sought to explain:
As for the famous, or rather infamous scorn for woman, it is nothing but a formula, perhaps
too laconic, to sum up our intention to rid literature and life from the influence of 1) the
obsession with the ideal woman in the works of fiction, especially poetry; 2) the ominous
presence of the love that tyrannizes and weakens the Latin peoples; 3) the monotonous
glorification of adultery and erotic adventure in the novel, just like in the brains of still
malleable and impressionable young people.16
Clearly, there were some women who appreciated the meaning behind Marinetti’s
slogans and who interpreted them as he had intended them to be understood.
Young, and sometimes very young women, sent him enthusiastic letters from all
over Italy, agreeing with his disdain for the traditional rôle of women in Italian
society and for the conventional life model of “kitchen, children, angel of the
hearth”. They tried to convince him that there existed a dormant potential in the
female population that was waiting to be freed and activated. They supported
Marinetti’s fight against the traditional woman, who was represented in his early
manifestos as allegories of soppy emotions (“LOOOOVE”, moonshine, tears pro-
voked by mandolin music, etc.) or as a pillar of an antiquated way of thinking and
15 Marinetti: “Interview sur le futurisme”, Poupées électriques, pp. 32–33, translated as “Futur-

ism: An Interview with Mr. Marinetti in Comœdia”, Critical Writings, p. 19
16 “In quanto al famoso, o, meglio famigerato disprezzo della donna, non si tratta che di una
formula, forse troppo laconica, per riassumere il nostro proposito di sbarazzare la letteratura e
la vita, che da essa è influenzata, 1) dall’ossessione della donna ideale nelle opere d’immagina-
zione e specialmente in quelle di poesia; 2) dalla prepotenza dell’amore che tiranneggia e infiac-
chisce i popoli latini; 3) dalla monotona glorificazione dell’adulterio e dell’avventura erotica nel
romanzo, come nel cervello ancora plasmabile ed influenzabile dei giovani.” Meoni: “Gli albori
del futurismo”, p. 400.
XVI Günter Berghaus
living (virginal until marriage, docile to the husband, open to religious indoctri-
nation, etc).
A typical example of a woman who felt herself to be different from passéist
rôle models was Adele Gloria. From an early age onwards, she had written poetry
of astonishing quality and originality. Because Sicilian society did not allow
a woman to pursue a career outside the realm of casa e chiesa, her family did
everything to discourage her artistic ambitions. No journal or newspaper dared
to publish the literary works of this teenager. When Adele Gloria read Marinetti’s
manifestos and met him personally, on 8 June 1933, at a lecture at the Lyceum
Club of Catania, her environment appeared to her more suffocating and repres-
sive than ever. To her, the name of Marinetti took on a mystical dimension. He
represented liberation per se, he became a symbol of transgression, rebellion,
creativity. Young Adele sent off some of her poems to her new hero, to find them
soon after printed in Il futurismo. The impact this had on her life was immense.
Here, for the first time, she had the feeling that somebody was taking her seri-
ously as a woman and as an artist. She left her hometown, was introduced by
Marinetti to some of the leading artists of the period, and without much reflection
she joined the vanguard of artistic creation and experimentation. Suddenly, and
without much preparation, she found herself propelled into the frontline of the
Futurist battle against tradition. For a woman to enter the Futurist movement was
regarded as a declaration of disdain for traditional values and morals. It was an
act of transgression that led, automatically, to their exclusion from ‘good society’.
It is therefore not astonishing that the contact with the Futurist movement com-
pletely transformed Adele Gloria’s life. From now on, she dedicated her whole
existence to this demanding, yet at the same time exhilarating life of free-wheel-
ing creativity.17
Many letters and memoirs confirm Marinetti’s autobiographical account in
La grande Milano, according to which he spent much of his time in the company
of emancipated women of letters. He was known to be entertaining cordial rela-
tionships with liberated, intellectually challenging ladies. And it may have been
due to their influence that the provocative slogan of disprezzo della donna was
removed from later manifestos. Nonetheless, in 1909, Marinetti had a valid point
to make, namely that women whose life was determined by a combination of
soppy sentimentalism and Catholic conservatism could not play a positive rôle in
Futurism or, in fact, in a freer and more creative world of tomorrow.
17 On Adele Gloria see Correnti: Il futurismo in Sicilia e la poetessa catanese Adele Gloria, and
Ruta: “Adele Gloria: La futurista di Sicilia.”
Editorial XVII
Silvia Contarini offers a very useful contextualization of the Futurist attitude

towards women in her study, La Femme futuriste (The Futurist Woman, 2006).
Her historical survey makes it patently clear that the Futurists were born in the
‘Dark Ages’ of the nineteenth century, when women’s rights and female educa-
tion existed only at a bare minimum level in Italy. The Futurist movement, like
all literary groups and cultural associations at the time, was dominated by men
who had been raised in a patriarchal value system. That being said, despite the
overwhelmingly misogynist culture of early twentieth century Italy, the women’s
movement left an immediate mark on the country and was seismographically
responded to by Marinetti and his entourage. However, they never developed a
consistent position towards the women’s question and failed to forge a coher-
ent programme that accorded women an emancipated rôle in their vision of the
future.
There is no doubt that Marinetti had quite a few personal hang-ups and
obsessions that made him issue statements that were considered eccentric even
by inveterate chauvinists of the period. His attitude towards women was therefore
not always shared by other members of the movement. Within the Futurist groups
and circles, there always existed a plethora of viewpoints on women’s issues. This
heterogeneity of viewpoints corresponded to the diversity of opinions prevailing
in society at large.
In the 1910s, a handful of exceptionally gifted and resilient women with great
intellectual acumen emerged in the midst of the Futurist movement. They often
joined the Futurist movement for pragmatic reasons, because at this point in time,
it was the most progressive, unorthodox and liberal-minded organization on the
Italian scene. Like Marinetti, they felt disdain for most of the female population
in their country. They wanted to become culturally literate like the pre-eminent
male artists of the period. They were for the most part individualists and elitists
who had little sympathy for the passéist majority of the country, be they men or
women. They played a significant rôle in Futurist debates, especially in the pages
of L’Italia futurista (1916–18) and Roma futurista (1918–20). They introduced a
number of feminist demands into the Futurist agenda, but their influence within
the movement at large was rather limited, and their image of the donna futurista
was never adopted as a model for the “futuristically re-fashioned universe”.
The Futurist Political Programme contained a number of demands that had
been promoted by some sectors of the women’s movement,18 but it cannot be over-
18 “Equal and direct universal suffrage for all citizens, both men and women [...] Abolition of
marital permission. Easy divorce.” Marinetti: “Manifesto of the Futurist Political Party”, Critical
Writings, p. 272.
XVIII Günter Berghaus
looked that the creative and theoretical writings of the Futurist leaders expressed
viewpoints that were at variance with the great social and mental changes insti-
gated by the feminist movement, which in Italy tended to be rather cautious and
conservative, as well as highly segmented. Divorce, for example, was generally
not supported by feminists in Italy, many of whom were Catholic. Even female
suffrage, and certainly the ‘free love’ proposed by some Futurists were highly
controversial among women’s groups. Undoubtedly, the male Futurists showed
a general willingness to collaborate with women, and many female artists and
writers would not have had a voice without the support given to them by Mari-
netti and his colleagues. But the more progressive feminist positions taken up and
promoted by women Futurists such as Edyth von Haynau (Rosa Rosà) were often
ignored by their male colleagues, who were unwilling or unable to extract them-
selves from their misogynist surroundings. With the general rappel à l’ordre in the
1920s, many women Futurists also took the women’s question off their agenda.
None of the Futurist journals and magazines after 1920 continued the lively and
controversial debate on women’s issues that had characterized the 1910s. The pat-
tuglia rosa19 immersed itself, as Maria Ginanni confessed, in “profondità spirit-
uali”,20 just like their male colleagues, who moved into the direction of a Futurist
arte sacra and metaphysical vita aerea. However, in the field of the applied arts,
there was a new explosion of female creativity. Futurist ideas were taken up and
developed further by Leandra Angelucci Cominazzini, Luce Balla, Maria Cara-
musa, Rosetta Depero, Alma Fidora, Evelina Gaddi, Vittoria Lo Iacono, Rosita Lo
Jacono, Angela Lombardini Andreoni, Ida Nasini Campanella, Bruna Somenzi,
Fides Stagni Testi, Gigia Zamparo Corona, to name but a few. No less significant
were the contributions made in other areas of Futurist creativity, such as dance
(Giannina Censi, Wy Magito, Zdenka Podhájska, Ileana Leonidoff), Music (Stella
Mix, Maria Napoletano, Adelaide Cavara), photography (Wanda Wulz, Barbara),
stage and costume design (Marisa Mori, Emma Calderini, Regina).
It seems that quite a number of women joined the Futurist movement because
it represented to them a path out of a conformist life-style in an antiquated and
patriarchal society. This is not to say that the Futurists were in every respect pro-
19 Simona Cigliana used the term in her foreword to Benedetta: Le forze umane; Viaggio di Ga-
rarà; Astra e il sottomarino, p. 13 and again, more recently, in a lecture, “La pattuglia rosa: Artiste
e scrittrici del Futurismo italiano”, given on 29 March 2012 at the Kelly Library, University of
Toronto. It was also employed by Valentina Mosco in Donna e futurismo, fra virilismo e riscatto,
p. 28 to characterize the female equivalent to the “pattuglia azzurra” formed around L’Italia fu-
turista. See Boatto: “Tavola rotonda su Primo Conti e la ‘Pattuglia azzurra’”, and Verdone: “La
‘Pattuglia azzurra’.”
20 Ginanni: Il poema dello spazio, p. 8.
Editorial XIX
gressive and had shed all traces of misogyny and sexual stereotyping. But they
did support woman artists and offered them a platform on which they could
develop their creativity. Futurism opened up opportunities for artistic creation in
all fields of the arts. In the 1920s and 30s, women Futurists could be found exper-
imenting with every medium or genre, developing new modes of expression and
pushing the boundaries of form and content beyond traditional expectations.
They were equally active in the political field (see the essay on Eva Kiun/Kühn
in this volume), and many joined the Futurist groups set up in opposition to the
hegemonical tendency of the official Movimento Futurista centred on Marinetti’s
headquarters in Milan and Rome. Women played a very active rôle in the forma-
tion of the Futuristi Indipendenti, Futuristi di Iniziativa, Nuovo Futurismo, Futuristi
Primordiali, etc.21
More research will still need to be carried out on these ‘unofficial’ Futurist
groups, their activities and publications. The material that I have had the chance
to examine has certainly given me the impression that Futurism was far more
diverse than the image in the standard works on the movement would have us
believe. The more than one thousand artists and writers acting under the umbrella
of Marinetti’s organization spanned a wide spectrum of political beliefs and aes-
thetic positions. The same can be said about the women who made a substantial
contribution to the forty years of Futurist innovation and experimentation. In the
past decade, the picture has become clearer thanks to the research into important
Futurist figures such as Benedetta, Enif Robert, Rosa Rosà, Irma Valeria, Regina,
Wanda Wulz, Leandra Angelucci Cominazzini, Maria Ferrero Gussago, Marisa
Mori, Maria Goretti or Laura Serra, but there still remains a wealth of unknown or
little studied source material waiting to be investigated by historians who wish to
go beyond the facile equation of Futurism = Anti-Feminism, just as other schol-
ars in the last decade have dismantled the equally distorting view of Futurism as
Fascist or para-Fascist Art.
As this is an International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, it is important that
it addresses the topic “Women Futurists and Women Artists Influenced by Futur-
ism” in manner that extends beyond the Italian borders. Natalia Budanova points
out in her essay on p. 172 that in Russia the position of women in artistic circles
was considerably different from Italy. Not only were the Russian artists highly
critical of Marinetti and his scorn for women; they also felt that in their artis-
tic environment, where a spirit of gender egalitarianism reigned, women did not
have the same obstacles to fight against as their Italian colleagues. They could
21 The work of these heterodox women Futurists has been discussed in Salaris: “Donne nel
futurismo dal 1920 al 1944”, pp. 198–199.
XX Günter Berghaus
work side by side with their male colleagues, develop their talents and make use
of their creative potential in an atmosphere of comradeship and shared avant-
garde experimentation. Eamon McCarthy’s discussion of the life and work of
Norah Borges, or Selena Daly’s portrait of the Irish painter Mary Swanzy point
clearly to the fact that artistic opportunities for women artists could be very dif-
ferent from country to country
As the reader will quickly discover, the artists covered in Yearbook 2015 are far
from straightforward cases, but exactly because of this they can offer genuinely
new insights into a still largely under-researched domain of twentieth-century art
and literature. It is important to emphasize that this volume of the Yearbook is
not concerned with women artists in general, nor with the rôle of women in the
historical avant-garde. The main focus is always on Futurism and how it featured
in the life and œuvre of the artists and writers selected here. Guiding questions
for our investigations were: How did these women come into contact with Futur-
ist ideas? Was it first-hand knowledge (poems, paintings, manifestos etc) or sec-
ond-hand knowledge (usually newspaper reports or personal conversions with
artists who had been in contact with Futurism)? How did the women respond to
the (positive or negative) reports? How did this show up in their œuvre? How did
it influence their subsequent, often non-Futurist, career?
Not all of these questions are necessarily addressed in each and every essay
contained in this volume, and not all artists I had attempted to see covered could
in the end be included. In some cases, the abstracts or drafts that reached me
suggested that an artist’s involvement with or interest in Futurism was not suf-
ficiently strong to have left a significant mark on her œuvre. In other cases, the
authors did not find enough evidence that certain features, such as dynamism
and simultaneity, or urban themes were truly rooted in a knowledge of Futurism.
After all, such Modernist themes had not been exclusively cultivated by the Futur-
ists, and care must be taken to speak of ‘Futurist influences’ when in actual fact
no concrete evidence can be found for a direct line of inspiration.
Unfortunately, there were also a number of cases where I had agreed with
a scholar an essay on a women artist well-worth exploring in this context, but
in the end the contributions did not arrive by the agreed deadline. Although I
wish I had been able to gather all this stimulating research between two covers,
it can also be argued that 600 pages of exciting new studies are ample sufficiency
for one yearbook. Especially, if there is the prospect that further essays on other
women will appear in future issues.
Editorial XXI
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Manchester University Press, 1998. 36–54.
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sottomarino. Prefazione di Simona Cigliana. Roma: Edizioni dell’Altana, 1998.
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—: Le futuriste e le arti visive. Roma: De Luca, 2008.
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Desideri, Giovannella: “Alcuni modelli femminili futuristi.” Es: Rivista quadrimestrale 5:7
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1976): 35–37.
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Marinetti: Critical Writings, 55–59.
—: “Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism.” F.T. Marinetti: Critical Writings, 11–17.
—: “Interview sur le futurisme.” Comoedia, 26 March 1909. Reprinted in F.T. Marinetti:
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—: “Second Futurist Proclamation: Let’s Kill off the Moonlight.” F.T. Marinetti: Critical
Writings, 22–31.
—: Critical Writings. Ed. by Günter Berghaus. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
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Mondadori, 1969.
—: Teoria e invenzione futurista. A cura di Luciano de Maria. 2nd edn Milano: Mondadori, 1983.
XXII Günter Berghaus
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French edn L’ autre moitié de l’Avant-Garde 1910–1940: Femmes peintres et femmes
sculpteurs dans les mouvements d’avant-garde historiques. Paris: Des Femmes, 1982.
Section 1: Women Artists and Futurism
Paul-André Jaccard
Alice Bailly, Ambassador of Futurism
in Switzerland
Abstract: Born in Geneva in 1872, Alice Bailly emancipated herself socially and
artistically from her hometown by pursuing a career in Paris from 1904 to the
First World War. During these years, she first followed with interest the artistic
developments in Fauvism and then, from 1911 onwards, in Cubism. In February
1912, she immersed herself in Futurist aesthetics and, following the Section d’Or
salon of October 1912, wholeheartedly embraced the avant-garde. In Paris, her
works were exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne in 1913
and 1914 and found an admirer in Guillaume Apollinaire, whereas back home, in
Geneva, they were criticized for being humbug, or worse, cerebral divagations
provoking ocular disease and headaches. She nevertheless exhibited regularly
in major Swiss cities and became an ambassador of Futurism in her homeland.
During the First World War, she lived an isolated existence in Switzerland. For
a while she participated in Dada activities in Zurich, before developing a rather
decorative style of Futurism. In this essay I shall discuss Bailly’s initially hesitant
adherence to Futurism and Cubism, her rejection of any aesthetic orthodoxy, and
her hybrid assimilation of certain features of these two artistic movements. Seen
from this point of view, the concept of ‘influence’ – usually signifying a passive
reception of an artistic model – does not do justice to Bailly’s artistic career, as
she absorbed in a highly selective manner those artistic elements that she found
useful for her own expressive language. In the case of Bailly, the Futurist focus
on movement merged with her exuberant character and capricious imagination.
Keywords: Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, Parisian Futurism, hybridization, selective

assimilation
In October 1913, the painter Alexandre Cingria reviewed Alice Bailly’s solo exhi-
bition at the Musée Rath in Geneva. In his judgment, “The characteristic which
defines the work of Alice Bailly is modernity [...] Alice Bailly displays a spirit which
animates contemporary art in a way that is as advanced and alive as it gets. She is
the first in Switzerland who dared; indeed, she is the only one to do so.”1 Cingria
1 “Le caractère de l’œuvre d’Alice Bailly est la modernité […] Alice Bailly nous révèle l’esprit qui
anime l’art actuel dans ce qu’il a de plus avancé et de plus vivant. Elle est la première en Suisse
qui a osé ; elle est aussi la seule.” Cingria: “Exposition Alice Bailly.”
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0003
4 Paul-André Jaccard
based his argument both on modernity and contemporaneity (“as advanced as it

gets”), which he specified as “ce que l’on appelle aujourd’hui le cubisme” (what
we call Cubism, nowadays).
Cingria’s praise was an isolated voice, drowned out in a chorus of criticism,
which regarded negatively both Bailly’s exhibition of 1913 and her work at the
Exposition de cubistes français et indépendants (Exhibition of French Cubist and
Independent Artists), held in April/May of the same year in the Salon Bieder-
mann in Lausanne and in June 1913 at the Musée Rath in Geneva. This exhibition,
organized by the writer Paul Budry, had Bailly’s cooperation, who requested to
have some of her Parisian friends included. The term ‘Cubism’ was commonly
understood at the time in Geneva to represent the most modern of art. However,
Cingria may also have been using the term to refer to Futurism. The most recent
works, displayed in the Musée Rath by Bailly, had already begun to reflect this
evolution from Cubism to Futurism, which came to define her art during the end
of 1912. It was therefore “Futurism”, and no longer “Cubism”, which the writer
Albert Rheinwald had in mind when he classified Bailly’s art in his monograph
devoted to the artist, L’Art d’Alice Bailly (1918).2
Unfortunately, Alice Bailly left no written account of her life that would
enable us to understand the distinction that she herself may have made between
Cubism and Futurism. Consequently, it is her work alone that bears witness to
the dominance of Futurism rather than Cubism. Furthermore, noting the simi-
larity of Bailly and Félix Del Marle (1889–1952) in their representations of certain
themes, one is tempted, a hundred years later, to ask if a link had been estab-
lished between Bailly, this Swiss female artist living in Paris, and ‘Parisian Futur-
ism’, of which Del Marle would have been the only recognized master.3 In 1913,
after visiting a Breton Memorial Chapel, he painted Morts en mer (Deaths at Sea),
which is oddly similar to Dans la chapelle (In the Chapel) by Bailly which, one
presumes, Del Marle would have seen at the Salon des Indépendants in March
1913 and was, therefore, perhaps inspired by it. It was between March and April
1913 that he approached Gino Severini and began exploring Futurism. On 13 July
1913, he published his divisive Manifeste futuriste contre Montmartre (Futurist
Manifesto against Montmartre) to coincide with an exhibition of his works at the
Clovis Sagot Gallery. Conversely, Del Marle’s Concert (1913) could have caught
2 Rheinwald: L’art d’Alice Bailly, pp. 24–25, 31, 35–39. On Alice Bailly, see also Peillex: Alice Bailly,
and Jaccard: Alice Bailly.
3 Félix Del Marle was the only French artist to have been officially declared a Futurist. See Mari-
netti’s “Open Letter to the Futurist Mac Delmarle” in Lacerba of 15 August 1913, translated in
Critical Writings, pp. 104–106. On Del Marle, see Belbachir: Félix Del Marle.
Bailly’s attention and inspired her Joie autour de l’arbre (Joy around the Tree) from
1913–14. However, Bailly was absent from Paris in mid-June to the end of Novem-
ber 1913, and currently it is not possible to know more about any contact that may
have existed between these two artists. So, rather than speculating about mutual
influences between Del Marle and Bailly, one can say with certainty that each
artist was influenced and inspired by the latest trends in the cosmopolitan Paris-
ian art scene. Most importantly, one major difference distinguished Bailly from
Del Marle: while he undertook a sudden conversion to Futurism, she assimilated
aspects of the Futurist aesthetic in a highly personal and progressive manner,
thus arriving at a hybridization of the two movements.
Bailly’s Fauvist beginnings and move towards Cubism (1907–10)
Alice Bailly was born in Geneva in 1872, spent her formative years in her home-
town’s School of Fine Arts, and then devote herself to teaching as well as paint-
ing, of which virtually nothing is known until 1902. In 1904, she was thirty-two
years old and her career was struggling. She sought to free herself from the local
art scene, which was then dominated by the Swiss national painter, Ferdinand
Hodler (1853–1918), and after a brief stay in the canton of Valais she moved to
Paris. In 1906, she settled permanently in Montparnasse, on the Rue Boissonade,
the heartland of a small colony of Swiss artists and writers, but she also brought
with her from Switzerland some woodcuts called Scènes valaisannes.
Bailly did not socialize only with her compatriots in Paris. Her desire for
independence encouraged her to expand her circle of acquaintances and friends.
She immersed herself in the artistic circles of Paris and became an avid visitor
of the city’s art galleries. She was a regular guest at the Closerie des Lilas, the
Salon d’Automne and Salon des Indépendants. In 1907, she visited Brittany for the
first time. Her Scènes de Bretagne (Brittany Scenes) and other paintings display a
daring chromaticism and bear witness to her new interest in Fauvism. Similar in
style were some scenes from the countryside around Berne, where she stayed for
a while with the Swiss colourist painter, Cuno Amiet, and painted several land-
scapes characterized by the application of large brush strokes and the use of a
broad and strident colour palette.
In 1910, she obtained a federal scholarship and organized a small solo exhi-
bition in her Paris studio. It was visited by Alexandre Mercereau (1884–1945), a
prominent member of the Abbaye de Créteil group and a supporter of Gleizes,
Le Fauconnier, Léger, Metzinger and Delaunay. It was thanks to him that, in the
spring of 1911, Bailly stayed for free at the Villa Médicis-Libre in Villepreux (Seine-
et-Oise). There, she met Raoul Dufy, Jean Marchand and André Lhote, who were
all passionate advocates of a new school called ‘Cubism’. Now liberated from the
focus on colour, Bailly devoted herself to form and introduced in her landscapes
simplified structures, such as dome-shaped trees and curved horizons.
In April 1911, Bailly visited the Salon des Indépendants with the famous Salle
41, where Jean Metzinger had gathered together his fellow Cubists. Bailly did not
join Metzinger’s group because, as she admitted in a letter to Cuno Amiet, she
was greatly perplexed by those “ardent supporters of formulae”.4 However, a year
later, in the 1912 Salon des Indépendants, she exhibited in the same “Room 18” as
Jean Lhote and Jean Marchand, next to “Room 20”, where Gleizes, Metzinger, Le
Fauconnier, Léger and Mondrian displayed their works and which André Salmon
called the “Kingdom of Cubists”.5 La Fresnaye was placed in “Room 19”, Delau-
nay in “Room 21”, and in “Room 17” there was a new arrival, Juan Gris, who made
his first and last appearance at the Salon with his Homage to Picasso.
Thus, from spring 1912 onwards, Bailly became co-opted into Cubism, but
one needs to ask the question: what kind of Cubism? It certainly was not the
‘orthodox’ Cubism of Braque and Picasso, who exhibited paintings of violins and
guitars in the entrenched camp of the Galerie Kahnweiler, but instead the more
colourful and narrative vein of Montparnasse, open for everyone to discover in
the Parisian Salons. When, in autumn 1912, the Cubists exhibited in the Section
d’Or, Apollinaire recognized the heterogeneous nature of the ‘school’, and in his
lecture L’Écartèlement du cubisme (The Quartering of Cubism) proposed a more
flexible definition of Cubism: “scientific”, “physical” and “instinctive”.6 He also
created the term ‘Orphism’ to describe the recent evolution of Robert Delaunay.
These categories were further defined and developed in Les Peintres cubistes (The
Cubist Painters), published in 1913.
Finally, in 1912, Cubism faced the onslaught of Italian Futurism. Braque,
Picasso and Gris continued undauntedly in their solitary manner by accentuating
the static dimension of their œuvre with the transition to collage. The others,
however, remained far from aloof when confronted with the Futurist proposals,
as can be seen in the evolution of their work from Salon to Salon. While they
were generally opposed to the Italian demolitionist rhetoric (“We wish to destroy
museums, libraries, academies of any sort”7), they adhered more readily to new
4 Alice Bailly to Cuno Amiet, 24 April 1911. Oschwand, Nachlass Cuno Amiet.
5 Salmon: “Le Salon des Indépendants.”
6 Apollinaire: “L’Écartèlement du cubisme”, unpublished lecture at the Section d’Or salon,
Galerie La Boétie, 11 October 1912, partly incorporated into Les Peintres cubistes, chap. VII,
pp. 14–15.
7 Marinetti: “Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”, p. 14.
concepts like simultaneity and universal dynamism. Thus, after the Futurist
exhibition at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery (5–24 February 1912), the lines became
blurred. Proponents of Simultaneism, Synchromism, Orphism and Futurism
accused each other of plagiarism. In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Apol-
linaire admitted defeat, or at least gave up on the business of classification:
There are so many artistic schools today that they have no importance as particular schools
any more [...]. Also the denominations of Cubist, Orphist, Futurist, Simultaneist, etc. should
no longer be taken so literally. For a long while now they have come to mean absolutely
nothing. Today, there are only modern painters who, having liberated their art, have created
for themselves a profession that is just as new, in order to create works that are materially
just as innovative as the aesthetic according to which they were conceived.8
While Bailly harboured doubt regarding the type of Cubism she saw at the Salon
des Indépendants of 1911, she continued to explore Cubism as a means to develop
her art. The companionship of André Lhote and Jean Marchand, during her stay
at the Villa Médicis-Libre, spurred her on in her nuanced adherence to Cubism. A
series of still lifes and paintings of flowers allowed her both to keep up her taste
for bright colours and to explore further the interpenetration of flat and facet-
ted surfaces. In her landscape painting, Village étagé (Terraced Village, 1911–12),
she used these techniques to crush the pictorial space with the interweaving of
façades and roofs. In portraiture, she experimented within the Cubist discipline
by reducing her palette to a range of muted browns, green ash, yellow ochre and
pink. These colours were applied in a patchwork manner and ultimately aimed
at achieving a certain homogenization of figure and background. She did not
present any of these works at the Salon d’Automne in Paris (perhaps, she felt she
was not ready yet?). However, in May 1912, at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, she exhib-
ited twenty works that were praised because of their “energetic modernity”.9
She continued to paint in this manner and carefully assimilated elements of
Cubism throughout 1912. This phase was punctuated by a new stay in Seine-et-
Oise, followed by another one in Brittany. These visits estranged her from Paris
and prompted a fear of being forgotten as a result. She did not participate in the
8 “Il y a tellement d’écoles artistiques aujourd’hui, qu’elles n’ont plus d’importance en tant
qu’écoles particulières […] Aussi ne faut-il plus prendre à la lettre les dénominations de cub-
istes, orphistes, futuristes, simultanéistes etc. Il y a longtemps déjà qu’elles ne signifient plus
rien. Il n’y a plus que des peintres modernes qui, après avoir libéré leur art, se créent un métier
aussi nouveau pour achever des œuvres aussi nouvelles matériellement que l’esthétique selon
laquelle elles ont été conçues.” Apollinaire: “Écoles”, p. 772.
9 Hans Trog called her works “energisch modern” in his “Kunstkronik”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung,
12 May 1912.
Section d’Or salon at La Boëtie (10–30 October 1912), despite the fact she enter-
tained friendly relations with most artists of the group. However, it was precisely
after visiting this Salon, the first real group exhibition of the Cubists, that she
gave up all resistance and embraced the aesthetics of the movement. This rich
and varied exhibition encouraged her to give it her all and to throw herself body
and soul into the avant-garde melée, out of which a year later her Futurist style
emerged.
The assimilation of Futurism
Bailly most likely discovered Futurism at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, during the
exhibition Les Peintres futuristes italiens in February 1912. She kept a small cata-
logue and highlighted some passages of the preface-manifesto, “Les Exposants au
public” (The Exhibitors to the Public), signed by Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla
and Severini. While still experimenting with the problems of form and space in
Cubism, it would seem that she did not know what to make of Futurism, and thus
showed the same caution regarding Futurism as she had shown a year earlier
with Cubism. Crucially, Bailly was not yet sufficiently advanced in her approach
towards Cubism to engage in Parisian debates about aesthetics or, for that matter,
politics. Being neither French nor Italian, she had nothing to defend; from her
point of view, the theories were less important than their practice. At this stage
of her evolution as an artist, she could see that the two ‘schools’ were not so con-
tradictory; in a way, both shared a common interest in fusing the figure with its
surroundings through the interpenetration of surface and volume. It would take
several more months for her to understand and finally fully assimilate this new
requirement of Futurism, where, in particular, the use of ‘force-lines’ developed
the representation of movement and rendered ‘universal dynamism’ percepti-
ble.10 Other aspects of Futurism, such as the rhetoric of passéism and techno-
philia, Bailly treated with indifference.
10 In “The Exhibitors to the Public”, they wrote: “It is these force-lines that we must draw in
order to lead back the work of art to true painting. We interpret nature by rendering these objects
upon the canvas as the beginnings or the prolongations of the rhythms impressed upon our
sensibility by these very objects.” Boccioni, et al.: “The Exhibitors to the Public, February 1912,”
p. 107. On ‘universal dynamism’ they wrote: “Indeed, all things move, all things run, all things
are rapidly changing. A profile is never motionless before our eyes, but constantly appears and
disappears. On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina, moving objects constantly
multiply themselves, change shape, succeeding one another, like rapid vibrations, in the space
By the end of 1912, possibly due to some mediation of artists from the Section
d’Or group, Bailly let her initial reserve towards Futurism drop. After the exhibi-
tion at the Bernheim-Jeune and before the Section d’Or, she took a series of water-
colours painted during her stay in Brittany in the late summer of 1912 and turned
them into paintings, either in her new studio in Rue Campagne-Première, or in
Geneva where she stayed from December 1912 to February 1913. It would appear
that she used Futurism very freely, in line with her quest for developing her per-
sonal style, but nonetheless conveying what the Futurists called “the emotional
ambience of a picture, the synthesis of the various abstract rhythms of very object,
from which there springs a fount of pictorial lyricism hitherto unknown.”11
The first indication of this striking change can be detected in Dans la chapelle
(In the Chapel 1912). The theme of a church interior signalled Bailly’s interest in
Robert Delaunay, who had painted, in 1909–10, the small Gothic church Saint-
Séverin in a series of paintings that also explored the interaction of light, colour
and space. Bailly’s work drew the attention of Apollinaire when it was exhibited
at the 1913 Salon des Indépendants: “Miss Alice Bailly has reinvented herself. Her
nuanced Cubism is one of the more interesting novelties at this exhibition.”12 He
wrote again the same day in L’Intransigeant: “The most notable paintings without
doubt will be those about which I have spoken; the works displayed by Miss Alice
Bailly, Mondrian’s trees and the landscapes near Céret”.13 According to John
Golding, Bailly was then associated with Orphism, but one can also detect the
new influence of Futurism in her painting of the Breton Chapel,14 especially in
the jerky rhythm of the architectural elements and the staccato of white shapes
that signal the bobbing headdresses of the women forming a semicircle around
the pulpit. The entire ensemble is patterned with rays of light falling through the
window on the right-hand side.
which they traverse. Thus a running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements
are triangular.” Boccioni, et al.: “Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto, 11 April 1910”, p. 64.
11 Boccioni, et al.: “The Exhibitors to the Public”, p. 109.
12 “Mlle Alice Bailly s’est entièrement renouvelée. Son cubisme nuancé est une des nouveautés
intéressantes de ce salon.” Apollinaire: “À travers le Salon des Indépendants”, p. 539.
13 “Les toiles les plus remarquées seront sans doute avec celles dont j’ai parlé: l’envoi de
Mlle Alice Bailly, les arbres de Mondrian, les paysages de Céret”. Apollinaire: “Le Salon des
Indépendants”, p. 542. Mondrian discovered Cubism in Paris in 1912 and created a series of
semi-abstract tree paintings in the new style. Juan Gris lived in Céret, which was considered a
‘new Barbizon’ by the Cubists.
14 Some of the overlaps between Futurism and Orphism have been discussed in Blake: “Tam-
Tam in the Urban Jungle: Orphism, Unanimism, Futurism”, and Schädler: “Russian and Parisian
Avant-garde, Futurism, Orphism.”
Fig. 1. Alice Bailly: Fantaisie équestre de la Dame rose (Equestrian Fantasy of the Pink Lady, 1913).
It was through this assimilation, this hybridization of Cubism and Futurism, that
Bailly developed her highly personal style of painting. During the summer of 1913,
she detached herself again from her Parisian circles and lived in the small village
of Mézières, near Lausanne. Her wholehearted adherence to the avant-garde was
evident in her next major work, the Fantaisie équestre de la Dame rose (Equestrian
Fantasy of the Pink Lady; see Fig. 1), which she exhibited in the Salon d’Automne of
1913. The composition of the work is dominated by a luminous central space, around
which several horses gravitate in an elliptical rhythm. The excitement caused by
the arrival of the Pink Lady, dominant and regally sitting on her steed, is conveyed
by a dense interplay of curves formed by the riders: the back of the female jockeys,
the rump and neck of each horse, the undulating ground and the domed shape of
the trees. The whole composition is governed by these swirling rhythms and curves,
which express the ‘universal dynamism’ so esteemed by the Futurists.15 The same
15 The concept of ‘universal dynamism’ was outlined in the manifestos, Futurist Painting:
interest regarding the evocation of movement can be seen in these staccato

shapes, representing a pack of dogs in the lower left hand side of the painting.
This was not a deliberate reference to chronophotographic analysis of movement
Giacomo Balla had undertaken in his Ragazza che corre sul balcone (Little Girl
Running on the Balcony), exhibited at the Futurist show at the Bernheim-Jeune
Gallery in 1912. Nor did it follow the vigorous dynamism of the horse rider in
Umberto Boccioni’s Elasticità, also part of the exhibition in 1912. Bailly’s Fantai-
sie équestre presented its own, fully coherent narrative, composed in a sparkling
burst of shapes and colours.
Bailly applied her new style, which finally seemed to correspond perfectly
with her exuberant and imaginative character, to all genres: still lifes, portraits,
landscapes, etc. In the portrait, Femme à l’éventail (Women with Fan, 1913), this
style is conveyed through the depiction of the movement of the fan, which the
subject, her sister Louisa, holds in her right hand. The air, pushed back and forth
by the fan, is represented by means of soft and curly waves, which contrast strik-
ingly with the angular edges of the fan. In Le Thé (Tea Party, 1913–14; see Fig. 2),
two women (there are four in another version) are shown in close-up lifting their
teacups. A simultaneous representation of several phases of the movements of
fluttering hands are combined with a counterpoint of warm and cool tones, in
an expression of abundant vitality which humorously evokes the lively chatter
between the women depicted. Le Thé was presented at the Salon des Indépendants
of 1914, along with two other Futurist works: Joie autour de l’arbre (Joy Around the
Tree, 1913–14) and Patinage au bois de Boulogne (Skating in the Bois de Boulogne,
1914). With these three paintings, Bailly’s work once again caught Apollinaire’s
attention: “Miss Bailly’s expression, in this modern technique, exhibits a par-
ticularly fresh feeling.”16
On the eve of the First World War, Bailly had reached a climax in her artistic
career. She was now an esteemed member of the Parisian art world: she regularly
attended the Monday meetings of the review Montjoie!, coordinated by Ricciotto
Canudo, and frequented Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Soirées de Paris circle. She
was a welcome visitor at the residence of Robert and Sonia Delaunay at Quai des
Augustins (a photograph shows her wearing one of Sonia Delaunay’s ‘simultane-
ous dresses’) and at the masked balls given by Kees van Dongen. She dined at La
Closerie des Lilas, danced at the Bal Bullier. Her name appeared on the invitation
Technical Manifesto (1910) and Severini’s Plastic Analogies of Dynamism (1913), and in extended
form in Boccioni’s treatise, Futurist Painting and Sculpture: Dynamism in Space (1914).
16 “Mlle Alice Bailly exprime, dans une technique moderne, beaucoup de fraîcheur de senti-
ment.” Apollinaire: “Le 30e Salon des Indépendants”, p. 653.
lists of Paris high society, in the same breath as Mr. and Mrs. Picasso, Mr. and
Mrs. Picabia, Mr. and Mrs. De Chirico, Archipenko, Apollinaire, Mercereau, Mr.
and Mrs. Raynal and others; she was also a guest at the semi-private recital of the
avant-garde pianist Alberto Savinio.17
Fig. 2. Alice Bailly: Le Thé (Tea Party, 1913–14).
From an objective standpoint, Alice Bailly’s integration into cosmopolitan avant-

garde circles, enriched with a variety of foreign influences, was a success in its
own right. It was as a result of this ‘notoriety’ that she was called upon to par-
ticipate in an international exhibition in Prague (45th Exhibition of the Manes
Fine Arts Association, February–March 191418) before having exhibited at the
Vildrac Gallery in Paris. Around the same time, she was commissioned to exhibit
in Brussels (Galerie Georges Giroux), Stockholm (Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet)
17 See Cérusse: “Chronique mensuelle.”

18 See the catalogue, Moderní umění: 45. výstava S.V.U. Manes v Praze, únor-březen 1914. Soubor
sestaven A. Mercereauem v Paříži. Praha: S.V.U. Manes, 1914.
and Vienna (Salon Gustav Pisko). To meet the popular demand for her paintings,
Bailly produced replicas of her works that were deemed to be her most Futurist:
Le Thé, La Joie autour de l’arbre, Le Patinage au bois de Boulogne and La Fantaisie
équestre.
The War Years
Alice Bailly returned to Switzerland in July 1914. She intended to devote herself
entirely to preparing for the Salon d’Automne which, in 1914, was all the more
important since she was named a member of the jury and, therefore, could freely
choose from the six paintings to be submitted what she wanted to display.19 On 2
August, the bells of Mézières announced the general mobilization in Switzerland,
thus shattering her Parisian dream. ‘Her’ Salon would not take place and she had
to leave her most important works in the French capital. Luckily, she had brought
back with her a few sketches and some works in progress, among them Marval
au bal Van Dongen (Marval at the Van Dongen Ball, 1914). Bailly had taken part
in this masked ball, held March 1914 in Kees Van Dongen’s studio on Rue Den-
fert-Rochereau.20 Jacqueline Marval had appeared there dressed ostentatiously
in a generous decolletage and heavy make-up. Inspired by the eccentricity of her
friend, Bailly represented her in the painting as ethereal, swirling. She used the
blue feather of her hat to initiate a large elliptical movement that encompasses
the entire scene of dancing couples, reconstructed from memory. Marval au bal
Van Dongen is both a portrait and a synaesthetic vision of the ball, summing up
the frenetic life style that she enjoyed in Paris.
19 Alice Bailly to Gertrud Müller, 27 June 1914. Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Dübi-Müller-Stiftung,

Akten Alice Bailly.
20 Cornelis Theodorus Maria van Dongen (1877–1968) was a Dutch painter who joined the
Fauves in 1905, lived amongst the Cubists in the Bateau-Lavoir, and in 1912 instituted his famous
masked balls in his studio in Rue Denfert-Rochereau, the most celebrated taking place in 1914.
Jacqueline Marval was the pseudonym of Marie Josephine Vallet (1866–1932), a French painter,
graphic artist and sculptor. She was close friends with both van Dongen and Alice Bailly and had
her studio next to Bailly’s in Rue Campagne-Première.
Fig. 3. Alice Bailly: Vol de mouettes sur la rade de Genève (Flying Seagulls over Geneva Harbour,
1915).
Confined to Switzerland and isolated from the Parisian avant-garde, she was
nonetheless assured in her rôle as an artist. With her confidence strengthened
by her recent achievements, she would continue for a few years to paint in the
Futurist manner. In 1915, she ‘rediscovered’ her native city and offered a per-
sonal representation in Vol de mouettes sur la rade de Genève (Flying Seagulls
over Geneva Harbour; see Fig. 3). A comparison with the Fantaisie équestre de
la Dame rose reveals that there was no break with her pre-war style. There is the
same compositional arc displayed. Around a clear central area, an elliptical circle
of seagulls order the landscape in a burst of white and blue, and includes, in
a single vortex, the harbour, the billowing smoke of a steamer, a cloud behind
Saint Peter’s Cathedral, sails and swans. The real subject of the painting is not the
kinetic demonstration of flying birds (cf. Volo di rondini by Giacomo Balla, 1913),
but the Futurist expression of the vitality and energetic movement of the seagulls.
In 1915, with the war dragging on, Bailly became aware that her forced exile
in Geneva could become permanent. As a result, she surrounded herself with
a circle of like-minded friends and organized parties in her studio. To support
herself, she painted many portraits, for example of Ferdinand Hodler’s wife
(1918). Bailly presented Berthe Hodler in an elegant town outfit, walking along
the quays of Lake Geneva. Three interconnected body movements are presented
simultaneously on the canvas. Mrs. Hodler moves towards us in front view, in
profile, and seen from the back. As she walks towards the lake, she intersects
with a child on his tricycle. This goes to show that, during the four years of war,
Bailly remained faithful to Futurism and the dynamic representation of move-
ment in one system of interpenetrating forms. Everything merges into a single
vision: a parasol, a winged headdress, trees in a park, the wall of the Quai du
Mont-Blanc, the lake and the mountains in the distance. However, six years had
passed since Bailly’s discovery of Futurism, and her style had matured since the
paintings of 1913/14. A new momentum had set in within the restrictive portrait
genre, and a sense of stylization can be seen in the elongation of Berthe Hodler’s
body, enhanced by the smallness of her head, the finesse of her legs and the inor-
dinate length of her arms that end in tiny hands holding a small bag.
Cooperation with Dada
“Here in Geneva, I feel isolated and I cannot expect anything from an audience
that is hostile to my art,” wrote Bailly in the summer of 1915.21 Her most ardent
collectors lived mostly in German-speaking Switzerland. This became reason
enough to organize regular holidays and exhibitions in both Winterthur and
Zurich, both to be closer to an appreciative audience and to find the artistic stim-
ulation she needed.
In the summer of 1918, she was invited to exhibit with the group, Das Neue
Leben (The New Life).22 Based in Basle, this association aimed at uniting Swit-
zerland’s artistic forces in a stylistically pluralist movement that incorporated
Expressionist, Cubist, Futurist and abstract tendencies. It exhibited twenty-two
Swiss artists, mostly from Basle, but also Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber, who
were closely linked with the Dada circle in Zurich. Bailly sent eighteen pieces
and encouraged the organizers to invite Francis Picabia.23 At the beginning of
the year, Picabia retreated to francophone Switzerland in order to alleviate his
21 “Ici à Genève, je me sens bien isolée et je n’ai rien à attendre d’un public hostile à mon art.”
Alice Bailly to Gertrud Müller, 31 July 1915. Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Dübi-Müller-Stiftung, Ak-
ten Alice Bailly.
22 See Heller and Windhöfel: “Das Neue Leben.”
23 Alice Bailly to Fritz Baumann, 16 October 1918. Basel, Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, PA 888 Archiv
des Basler Kunstvereins.
depression. As a result of Bailly’s intervention, Picabia bounced back from his

illness, met with Tristan Tzara and the Zurich Dadaists,24 contributed to Dada 3
of December 1918 and finally published the eighth issue of his own journal, 391.
Bailly contributed an ideogram, presented as an homage to Picabia (Fig. 4), to the
February 1919 issue of 391.
Fig. 4. Alice Bailly: Bel esprit Francis Picabia: Dessin-idéogramme (The Witty Spirit Francis
Picabia: Ideographic Drawing, 1919).
24 See Bolliger, et al.: Dada in Zürich.

Bel esprit Francis Picabia: Dessin-idéogramme (The Witty Spirit Francis Picabia:
Ideographic Drawing, 1919) incorporated fragments of the artist’s name (“FAN
R CIS CIP CAB ia”) and represented him as what in childish language is called a
‘dada’ (rocking horse) which, as Sanouillet suggests, “would buck against con-
temporary painting”.25 Picabia is characterized as an amusing character who
is very “In ventive tif tif”. He is greeted here by two women, in an obvious ref-
erence to the iconographic motif of the Fantaisie équestre de la Dame rose. The
casual tone of the message was coded entirely in a Dada spirit, thus conveying
her friendship with Picabia and his wife Gabrielle Buffet. With this drawing, she
came to present herself as a Dada artist. However, she did not really understand
the stakes that were in play. In the same way in which she rejected Futurist tech-
nophilia, she could not support Dadaist nihilism. Tzara made fun of this in a
letter to Picabia: “Miss Alice Bailly was here on Saturday, very lively and full of
hope; she believes in a kind of victory of modern painting, but nonetheless, she
is very nice.”26
Bailly also participated in the second exhibition of Das Neue Leben, held at
the Zurich Kunsthaus in January 1919. It included works by several Dadaists, and
Tzara held a lecture there. He reported briefly in Dada 4–5 (also known as Dada
Anthologie) on the exhibition and quoted several artists who, in his eyes, were the
most important, among them Bailly. Finally, Bailly participated in the eighth and
final Dada soirée held at the Kaufleuten Hall on 9 April 1919. The event, which
came to be seen by the public and the participants as the culmination of Zurich
Dada, was particularly stormy. The whistling began with the twenty-voice reci-
tation of a simultaneous poem by Tzara and became even louder when Walter
Serner, who had come over from Geneva, read, with his back to the audience,
excerpts from his anarchist manifesto, Letzte Lockerung (Final Dissolution). It
was at this point that Bailly took action. As Tzara recalled in Dada 4–5 (Dada
Anthology): “The most courageous act was by Augusto Giacometti and Alice
Bailly, who presented to Tzara after the simultaneous poem with twenty voices,
an homage, seven metres in length, declaring ‘VIVE DADA’.”27
25 According to Sanouillet, “Vlan les photographes morts-nés” (which can be translated as

“Bumm! Goes the still-born photographers”) condemns all non-Dadaist artists, associated with
vulgar photographers, or designated as such. “‘Bel esprit’, ‘gentil’, ‘inventif’, Picabia peint sous
les traits d’un ‘dada’ (‘Mon amour de petit cheval’) faisait feu des quatre fers contre la peinture
contemporaine.” See Sanouillet: 391. Vol. 2, p. 90.
26 “Mlle Alice Bailly était ici, samedi, très vivante et pleine d’espoir, croit à une sorte de victoire
de la peinture moderne, mais elle est très sympathique.” Tristan Tzara to Francis Picabia, 17
February 1919, quoted in Sanouillet: Dada à Paris, p. 479.
27 “D’autant plus courageux l’acte de Augusto Giacometti et Alice Bailly qui apportèrent à Tzara
This event happened three days before Bailly opened her solo exhibition with
fifty-seven works at the Kunsthaus Zurich. For her, art was something serious.
How would her collector friends react to these fracases and the enigmatic report
Tzara wrote on the exhibition in Dada 4–5? Juggling between the establishment,
the Kunsthaus and the anti-establishment Dadaists, Bailly risked compromis-
ing her integrity and was ultimately caught in a storm that she could no longer
control. In Dada 4–5, Walter Serner announced the publication of his manifesto,
Das Hirngeschwür (The Cerebral Abscess), written in collaboration with several
Dadaists, including Bailly. She was very upset about this and wanted to restore
her collectors’ confidence in her. Later, in November 1921, Bailly was still associ-
ated with Dada in the journal 391, for in issue 16 (published in Paris in June 1921),
Picabia drew Une nuit d’échecs gras (One Night of Fatty Failures) which sought to
advertise previous issues of the magazine, and declared: “Art is dead – Picabia,
Gabrielle Buffet, Arp, Tzara, Alice Bailly, Pharamousse and the mystical vagina
of Zurich”.28
The feeling of being incorporated, if only for a few months, into a group of
artists advocating subversive and anti-artistic values plunged Bailly into disarray.
In July 1919, she admitted that she was going through a deep depression. Her
return to Paris, in April 1920, was a disappointment. She was unable to find her
pre-war points of reference, and gradually returned to a more conventional style
of painting.
Conclusion
If the nihilism of Dada ‘broke’ Bailly, Futurism, by contrast, met her expec-
tations, extended her range of expression and inspired her from 1912 to 1919.
Without doubt, she rejected the Futurists’ rhetoric of war and their eulogies of
the machine, but, in a pragmatic way, she chose a style that corresponded best to
her optimistic vision of art, her desire to represent movement and to animate pic-
torial space, her detachment from the objective world and from self-expression.
Futurism represented the main outlet and inspiration for her artistic and social
emancipation, and contributed decisively to the release of her creative expres-
après un poème simultané à 20 voix, un hommage de 7 mètres de longueur ‘Vive Dada’.” Tzara:
“Chronique zurichoise”, p. 561.
28 “L’art est mort – Picabia, Gabrielle Buffet, Arp, Tzara, Alice Bailly, Pharamousse et le Vagin
mystique de Zurich.” ‘Pharamousse’ was one of Picabia’s pseudonyms. He had published a
mechanistic image, entitled “Vagin brillant”, in 391, no. 8 (February 1919), p. 6.
sion. Through Futurism, she could employ her playful spirit and exuberance and,
as a result of this assimilation, managed to give shape to a profound need for the
ethereal and fantasy that defined her true artistic persona. Through her regular
exhibitions in Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, Basle, Zurich and Winterthur, Alice
Bailly became the most famous ambassador of Futurism in Switzerland.
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—: “Open Letter to the Futurist Mac Delmarle.” F.T. Marinetti: Critical Writings. Ed. by Günter
Berghaus. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 104–106.
Moderní umění: 45. výstava S.V.U. Manes v Praze, únor-březen 1914. Exhibition catalogue.
Soubor sestaven A. Mercereauem v Paříži. Praha: S.V.U. Manes, 1914.
Peillex, Georges: Alice Bailly. Geneva: Cailler, 1968.
Rheinwald, Albert: L’Art d’Alice Bailly. Avec un poème de Henry Spiess. Genève: Galerie Moos,
1918.
Salmon, André: “Le Salon des Indépendants.” Paris-Journal, 20 March 1912.
Sanouillet, Michel: Dada à Paris. Paris: Pauvert, 1965; revised and expanded edn Paris:
Flammarion, 1993.
Sanouillet, Michel, ed.: 391: Revue publiée de 1917 à 1924 par Francis Picabia. Vol. 1–2. Paris:
Le Terrain Vague, 1960.
Schädler, Linda: “Russian and Parisian Avant-garde, Futurism, Orphism.” Tobia Bezzola, and
Linda Schädler, eds.: Feast of Color: The Merzbacher-Mayer Collection. Köln: DuMont,
2006. 209–250.
Tzara, Tristan: “Chronique zurichoise.” T. Tzara: Œuvres complètes. Vol. 1. Paris: Flammarion,
1975. 561–568.
Katy Deepwell
Narratives of Women Artists in/
out of Vorticism
Abstract: This essay examines some of the narratives in the critical literature
on Vorticism. Based on a feminist art historical critique of the marginalization
of women artists in Modernism, it considers the fate of four Vorticist women
artists – Kate Lechmere, Jessica Dismorr, Helen Saunders and Dorothy Shake-
spear – and how their lives and works appear in accounts of the movement. The
essay highlights the dearth of documentary evidence and the lack of surviving
works by these women. In an attempt to look afresh at their lives, the question
of art and politics is raised in relation to the suffragettes. I am also giving here a
broader picture of these four women’s professional lives, in and out of Vorticism,
and discuss the links between their visual art and their poetry. Thus, Vorticism
emerges as a phase in the lives of these women that needs to be seen in a broader
context of Modernist art, from Fauvism to abstraction.
Keywords: Vorticism, women in avant-garde art, Futurism and Feminism
Introduction
This essay addresses the image of women artists in Vorticism Studies. Were they
as marginal within the group as some accounts imply, or even only “lapdogs”,
as Kate Latchmere once suggested?1 Was Vorticism a movement defined only
by Wyndham Lewis, or a collection of individuals who came together for a few
specific exhibitions and publications?2 The image of the four women artists dis-
cussed in relation to Vorticism presents them as the silent and tacit supporters
of male ideals. Are the few women involved only to be considered because they
were girlfriends and lovers circling around Wyndham Lewis as the centre of the
Vortex? How do we develop a more realistic impression of them as independent
artists? Does their work even offer models of femininity that were different from
1 Kate Lechmere used the term in an interview with Della Denman: “Recollections of Vorticism”,
p. 52. This statement is often repeated, for example by Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art in the
Machine Age, p. 150, and Meyers: “Kate Lechmere’s ‘Wyndham Lewis’ from 1912”.
2 This conflict over what defines Vorticism is well summed by William Wees in the introduction
to his book, Vorticism and the English Avantgarde, p. 3: “One man’s doings, group designation,
personal requirements, period label, nonsense, slogan, enigma”.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0004
22 Katy Deepwell
the masculinity the movement seemingly espoused? Or are we constantly falling

back into gendered stereotypes and unspoken assumptions about the alleged
superiority of male over female artists?
These are some of the questions I am trying to answer in this essay. Although
Vorticism is in question here, the issues addressed arise from nearly forty years of
feminist art history rewriting and critiquing Modernism, because the four women
artists discussed here are treated in the literature like many other women artists
in Modernist art movements.3 In art history, a highly gendered narrative on Mod-
ernism persists to this day and continues to marginalize and discriminate against
the production and presence of women artists. How do we change this biased
account? How do we move the image of the women associated with Vorticism
out of the footnotes of history and see more of them than the half-shadows or
glimpses available in many current books and catalogues? How can we change
the very incomplete picture that we currently have of them?
There are many practical difficulties in undertaking this task, including the
loss of a great deal of their works, the very incomplete picture of their lifes and
œuvres in the critical literature of the time as well as in the publications by
modern scholars working on Vorticism. The small scale of surviving works by
Jessica Dismorr, Helen Saunders and Dorothy Shakespear, compared to those
by male artists from the same period, is undoubtedly a reinforcing factor in
their marginalization, where the production of male artists is ‘major’ because it
is large and those of women artists is small and therefore ‘insignificant’. Hope-
fully, the time for these kinds of simplistic explanation is coming to an end,
but in the present scholarship on Vorticism such distinctions continue to be
constructed.
A cursory glance at the bibliography of Vorticism shows that there is a large
asymmetry in scholarship on the artists’ work. On the one hand, there are scores
of publications dedicated to Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
or Edward Wadsworth, but not one full-length biography has been dedicated to
any of the woman Vorticists. Apart from a few essays, there are five small exhi-
bition catalogues and one PhD published on Dismorr, one MA thesis and one
catalogue on Saunders, and one MA thesis and two catalogues on Shakespear.
The exhibition, The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–18,
at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham/NC (30 September 2010 – 2 January
2011), renamed The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World when shown in
London at the Tate Britain (14 June – 18 September 2011), displayed more work
by the women artists associated with the Vorticist movement than is typical
3 See Felski: The Gender of Modernity, or Deepwell: Women and Modernism.

or usual in Vorticism shows. Three works by Helen Saunders, presumed lost

since John Quinn’s death in 1927 and recently recovered by Mark Antliff in
Chicago, were on display, as were some rarely shown works by Dorothy Shake-
spear. However, of the nine essays in the catalogue, none was devoted to the
women Vorticists, instead a special essay was written on the Vortographs of
Alvin Langdon Coburn.
Brigid Peppin, who is a descendant of Helen Saunders, wrote an article for the
Tate Magazine in 2011, which focussed on the work of Helen Saunders, Dorothy
Shakespear, Kate Lechmere and Jessica Dismorr. 4 She pointed out that the artists’
immediate family had not undertaken any effort to preserve the Vorticist works
by Saunders or Dismorr, during their lifetime or after, and offers this as a con-
tributing factor to the loss of works or lack of interest in their œuvre. Another
British art historian, Frances Morris, also drew attention to the work of women
Vorticists in a BBC Radio 4 interview about the exhibition. It is interesting to me
that the British media highlighted the women artists in this exhibition, especially
that it showed work by Dorothy Shakespear for the first time, as in the exhibition
catalogue the work of these women was reproduced but barely discussed. Kate
Lechmere remained outside the focus of the exhibition, because the work of the
Rebel Art Centre, which she had funded and helped to create, was represented
only by photographs.
Consistently, since the 1970s, the Vorticist movement has been presented as a
vitriolic battle amongst a few key male players jostling for power and recognition,
with one or two women playing a secondary rôle in their group. The same scanty
facts about these women and a few anecdotes are repeated over and over again,
and this is often taken as a reason for downgrading their contribution and grant-
ing them only a limited position in the pantheon of English Modernist art. In this
story, women are either seen as ‘blessed’ for funding the movement, or character-
ized as acolytes and/or girlfriends whose closeness or distance from Wyndham
Lewis is the sole reason for any discussion about them.
Most European avant-garde movements of the twentieth century have
described women artists ‘only’ as wives, girlfriends, followers and minor figures.
Women artists in Modernism routinely appear as ex-centric individuals isolated
from each other. They are discussed only in relation to key men and rarely as full
members of the groups in which they participated. A very similar ‘gendering’ can
be found in the constructions / reconstructions of Vorticism. Feminist scholar-
ship on women artists has sought to redress this imbalance by focussing on those
4 Peppin: “Women that a Movement Forgot.”

24 Katy Deepwell
wives, girlfriends and lovers, and by recovering the œuvres of women who were
often, but not always, the peers, partners and colleagues of male artists.5
A gendered dynamic within Modernist art history privileges male artists and
renders women invisible inside and outside the Modernist movement, except as
instances of a ‘feminine Other’. An example of this can be found in Cork’s deliber-
ately provocative questioning of the rôle of women artists in his ‘canonical’ study,
Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age: “Could it be that the feminine
temperament was congenitally incapable of sustaining the amount of aggression
needed to create a convincing Vorticist work of art?” 6 However, even Cork’s posi
tive preference for Helen Saunder’s work over Jessica Dismorr’s is marred by his
repeated and pointed use of adjectives such as ‘naïve’ and ‘indebted’ to describ-
ing their works.7 If we want to see women outside these habitual models, we need
to address these questions differently and challenge the idea that there existed
any ‘feminine temperament’ in either an historical moment or as an ‘eternal prin-
ciple’.
In the twentieth century, sex is not a determinant for either women or men
in their ability to make art, unless critics conform to social prejudices against
women. Economics, social opportunity (including study and social connections),
rôles or values do determine whether or not women continue to make art after
art school, because they were often routinely devalued or marginalized. What
if we stop looking for reinforcement of male genius and start thinking about the
concrete situation of men and women in particular historical moments during the
twentieth century?
We are now beginning to gain a sense of women artists’ friendships with other
women, their links to women’s art organizations, the female-only exhibitions
they organized. This is primarily because of feminist scholarship about women
artists. Women were the majority of art students in art schools in Britain since the
1890s but very few became Modernist artists, even though women artists’ pres-
ence in numbers was increasing in the art world.8
5 See, for example, Greer: The Obstacle Race; Chadwick, Helen and de Courtivron: Significant
Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership; Nunn: From Victorian to Modern; Baron: Ethel Sands
and Her Circle; Deepwell: Women Artists Between the Wars.
6 Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age, p. 416
7 These points are made in much more detail in Heathcock: Jessica Dismorr, pp. 49–52.
8 Deepwell: Women Artists Between the Wars.
William Roberts’ representation of Vorticism
Reference is often made to William Roberts’ painting, The Vorticists at the Restau-
rant de la Tour Eiffel: Spring 1915, in which Helen Saunders and Jessica Dismorr
are represented as latecomers to the gathering of an all-male group. Roberts’
picture has an ideological charge because it seemingly signals the presence of
women artists in the group. It was, however, painted in 1962, and its depiction of
a meeting in 1915 is often read as the ‘truth’ of the situation and not as a recollec-
tion or a calculated reconstruction of his conception of the movement’s impor-
tance. Here, a comparison with Johann Zoffany’s The Academicians of the Royal
Academy (1771–72) is worth making, because both works have the ideological
effect of marginalizing the position of women artists. In Zoffany’s work, the two
founder members of the Royal Academy, Mary Moser and Angelika Kauffman, are
depicted as portraits on the wall set apart from the gathering of the Royal Acade-
micians: an exclusively male enclave discussing art and surrounded by casts and
studio paraphernalia.9 In Roberts’ work, the women enter the room, Saunders
carrying her own copy of their newly published journal Blast (1914) and Dismorr
holding a purse (even this insignificant detail is used to confirm a certain story).
They stand by the door because there are no vacant seats at the table for them:
there are, however, two empty glasses of champagne on the waiter’s tray waiting
to be poured (so this detail does indicate they were expected).
It is worth considering why Roberts painted this work nearly fifty years after
the event. From 1956–1958, Roberts published several vitriolic and Vorticist pam-
phlets,10 in which he attacked Wyndham Lewis’ egotism when, at the Tate exhi-
bition of 1956, he presented himself as the sole representative of Vorticism and
everyone around him as lesser associates. This marginalization of women artists
associated with Vorticism might be construed as an afterthought in this picture,
but Robert’s recollection and reason was to mount a critique of Wyndham
Lewis’ 1956 statement: “Vorticism was, in fact, what I, personally, did and said
at a certain period.”11 His pamphlet, published in July/August 1956, deliberately
9 Parker and Pollock: Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology, pp. 87–90.
10 Roberts: Vortex Pamphlets, 1956–1958, s.p. The publication is a collected edition of 5 unpag-
inated pamphlets. Roberts states in a letter to The Listener: “I do prefer my history served with a
proper helping of veracity.” See also his letter to the Times, “Vorticism Was not WyndhamLewi-
sism”. Both letters can be found in the Vortex pamphlet no 1, The Resurrection of Vorticism and
the Apotheosis of Wyndham Lewis at the Tate.
11 Lewis: Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, p. 3. Also, ibid. op.cit. p. 6. Repeated as the object of
Roberts’ criticisms in Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde, p. 3 (opening line of the book)
and Peppin: “Women that a Movement Forgot.”
26 Katy Deepwell
echoed the pink colour, or “puce”, as Lewis described it,12 of the front cover of
Vorticism’s first manifesto journal, Blast. In a captioned drawing in Robert’s
pamphlet, Lewis repeats this statement to Rothenstein and Ayrton, Director and
curator at the Tate respectively, who express their wish that the exhibition show
his ‘impact’ on his contemporaries. Robert’s strongest objection to the “Art Sooth-
sayers on the banks of the Thames”, described as a now sluggish Vortex, is how
the “‘colleague’ of 1914…[is]…mistaken for the ‘Disciple’ of 1956”.13 This comment
applied to all the other artists included in the 1956 Tate show, Wyndham Lewis
and Vorticism, which included Jessica Dismorr.
I want to contrast this ‘normalized’ picture of a central male figure, some
male associates and a few marginal women with the presentation of names in
the two catalogues at the Doré Gallery and later at the Penguin Club. For Roberts,
the Doré Gallery exhibition of the Vorticist Group in London in June 1915 was a
key event that determined who was a Vorticist. For him, the group consisted of
Gaudier-Brzeska, Wadsworth, Etchells, Dismorr, Saunders, Roberts and Lewis;
together with Pound, these are the people represented in his picture. At the Doré
Gallery exhibition, eight works by Dismorr and Saunders were shown (16% of the
total) alongside 42 works from the men. The numbers of works tip in Wyndham
Lewis’ favour because of six additional woodcuts shown alongside the four works
allocated to each artist (although only two works were shown by Roberts and
Saunders) and five sculptures plus three ‘small objects’ by Gaudier-Brzeska. The
group also invited and exhibited a further 20 works from ‘guests’, whom they
had invited to show alongside them: Bernard Adeney, Lawrence Atkinson, David
Bomberg, Duncan Grant, Jacob Kramer and C.R.W. Nevinson (who is named as a
Futurist in the pamphlet catalogue for the exhibition).
Similarly, at the Vorticists’ Penguin Club exhibition in New York in 1917, Lewis
provided the majority of work. The same artists as in 1915 were included: two
women showed 8 works (10.6%) compared to 67 works from six men. Set these
figures against the Tate’s show of 2011, which included three women with 12
12 Roberts: Vortex Pamphlets, 1956–1958, vol. 2: Cometism and Vorticism: A Tate Gallery Cata-
logue Revised (July–Aug 1956), s.p.
13 Roberts: Vortex Pamphlets, 1956–1958, vol. 2: Cometism and Vorticism: A Tate Gallery Cata-
logue Revised (July–Aug 1956), s.p. Although disdainful of Lewis’ egotism, and critical of the Tate
in organizing a failed retrospective as opposed to a group exhibition, Roberts was ambivalent in
his own inclusion / exclusion in relation to this exhibition and the movement: criticizing those
who wanted to include him and proudly announcing that he chose not to respond to invitations
to do so, precisely because the only method of including him would be as a minor associate of
Lewis. Roberts insisted instead that it was Ezra Pound who officiated at the birth of Vorticism,
and Lewis had no part in its reformation post-war as Group X.
works (13%) and ten men showing 80 works, and you can see the larger numbers
of artists, and the slight increase in the proportion of works shown by women
(2–3%) but still less than the proportion of works in the 1915 Doré Gallery group
show.
If we stick with Robert’s version of events, only Dismorr and Saunders should
be considered Vorticists, since they featured in the Doré Gallery and Penguin
Club shows and were also signatories to the Blast manifesto. Lechmere’s rôle in
the Rebel Art Centre would disappear from view and Dorothy Shakespear, who
married Ezra Pound in 1914, might never be considered. If we take Lewis’ view
that he was the Vorticist leader and that all those associated with him should be
considered members of his circle, a greater temporary emphasis is put on Lech-
mere as his former lover, and Shakespear has a place as the book designer of her
husband’s poetry editions. Shakespear had attended some events at the short-
lived Rebel Art Centre but received only negative comments from Lewis, when
he briefly saw her work. Despite 50 years of creative work, she is often only posi-
tioned as that of “happy amateur”.14
Homosociality in the Edwardian art world
These boundaries around who were the artists in the Vorticist group, defined
either by their exhibitions or by associated activities in the Rebel Art Centre or
in Group X (1920), are at the heart of many disputes about ‘Vorticism’ during its
short-lived moment in Britain during the First World War and immediately after.
The centrality of Lewis (self-declared, or reinforced by subsequent art histori-
cal literature), William Roberts, John Quinn as collector, Jacob Epstein or Henri
Gaudier-Brzeska, Ezra Pound and T.E. Hulme nevertheless repeat a model, struc-
tured by gender, as well as significance, which can only be defined as the result
of the intense homosociality of English society.
Edwardian society, even as it dissolved in the course of the Great War, con-
tinued to uphold the ideology of separate spheres for men and women that had
been central to Victorian mores. This dominant ideology continued in the years
between 1910 and 1920 and perpetuated the idea of separate and rigid models
of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour(s) for men and women of different
14 Peppin: “Women that a Movement Forgot”, p. 35. While Shakespear’s work was included in
the Tate exhibition, The Vorticists (2011) (largely as evidence of Pound’s poetry), her work is not
discussed at all in the catalogue, only Pound’s contribution to the movement as a writer, art critic
and organizer of the Penguin Club show.
28 Katy Deepwell
classes and ranks. It was against these Victorian/Edwardian ideas of separate

spheres that the feminism of the 1920s was formed, promoting partnership forms
of marriage, women’s economic independence, liberation from drudgery and
toil at home and work place, leisure opportunities, but also abolishing ‘enforced
idleness’ for upper and middle-class women and their exclusion from useful or
productive work. This version of feminism also fought the ideas upheld by male
artists reared in an unequal Edwardian society and a culture that tended to force
middle-class women into supportive rôles while it celebrated men as ‘free’ and
creative thinkers.
Virginia Woolf reacted to the changing world after 1910 with her statement:
And now I will hazard a second assertion, which is more disputable perhaps, to the effect
that on or about December 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went
out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had
laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nev-
ertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910.15
Woolf showed in her well known and influential essay, A Room of One’s Own,16
that the Victorian vision of the ‘Angel in the House’ and the rôles allocated to
women in Edwardian England had come to an end. The suffrage movement and
the militant suffragettes campaigning against the liberal government of the day
did not only raise their demand for the vote but also for a rich and productive life.
Middle-class women, in particular, strove to obtain financial independence and
the autonomy to create, to be oneself and to be alone with one’s thoughts.
Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry have tracked the emergence of the ‘Modern
Woman’ (another figure visible as a ‘type’, during and after the Edwardian era)
identifying her as a flâneuse17 (a deliberate feminization of Baudelaire’s figure
of the flâneur, free to wander in the modern city18) and have offered a detailed
reading of Dismorr’s and Saunder’s imagery in their poems, based in their identi-
fications with modernity, with a new consciousness and a new vision within the
15 Woolf: “‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown (1923)”, p. 320. This statement is about characters in
modern novels after the death of Edward VII, which rang in the end of the Edwardian era.
16 In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf pointed towards the weight of tradition that rested
upon women, intellectually and spiritually, and she celebrates the importance of £500 a year
and a lock on the door to a room with in which women can work, without being interrupted by
domestic duties.
17 Deepwell: Women Artists and Modernism, pp. 36–54.
18 See Le Peintre de la vie moderne, esp. the chapter “L’artiste, homme du monde, homme des
foules et enfant.” Œuvre completes. Vol. 2. pp. 687–694.
city and its architecture and spaces.19 This vision of their activities is in line with
Dismorr’s and Saunder’s rejection of Edwardian and Victorian mores, and Beck-
ett’s and Cherry’s reading of their work foregrounds an image of a cosmopolitan
woman, active in the city, in politics and in fashioning her own destiny, tracing
her emotional life with reference to the city around her and not to men alone.
Yet, homosociality – a term developed by Eve Sedgwick in her work on nine-
teenth-century fiction – is deeply embedded in English culture even today, and its
Victorian implications persist. In Between Men, Sedgwick defines the homosocial
as the “social bonds between persons of the same sex” and she defines this desire
as “the affective or social force, the glue […] that shapes an important relation-
ship”.20 I’m not going to pursue here Sedgwick’s psychoanalytic exploration of
the force of these relationships; rather, I wish to draw attention to this as an unex-
plored feature in how we discuss Vorticism. Homosociality in English culture
reinforced the links between men to such an extent that in the accounts on the
Vorticist movement it is only the conversation between male figures that have
been reported. This renders men’s relations with women (except within sexual
relationships, where it is given the briefest of consideration as a motive for men’s
actions) insignificant, and women’s relations to other women as irrelevant. The
totalizing effect of this form of homosociality and male claims for ownership and
authority is to render any converzation between women – other than in the most
debased and trivial of terms – invisible. Their relation to men as lovers has pri-
ority over the words they spoke or wrote, except where it appears as ‘gossip’ and
as a measure of their approval and disapproval of certain people for company.
Men hold the ‘artistic’ agenda, determine what is significant and meaningful,
women’s voices are ignored, marginalized or silenced.
Lewis’ brawl with Hulme over Kate Lechmere is an oft-repeated example of
this kind of homosocial bias at work. No one discusses the reasons for Kate Lech-
mere’s decision to end her relationship with Lewis and start her relationship with
Hulme, even though several stories circulate about Lewis’s belittling behaviour
towards her and that he did not repay any of the money owed to her; in the narra-
tive versions given, it is primarily the fight between the two men that counts. The
numerous love triangles discussed in this period follow the same pattern, always
prioritizing male perspectives – because in homosociality it is the competition
among men for a woman which matters, not the woman’s desire or her perspec-
tive on them.
19 Deepwell: Women Artists and Modernism, and Beckett and Cherry: “Sorties: Ways Out From
Behind the Veil of Representation.”
20 Sedgwick: Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, pp. 1–2.
30 Katy Deepwell
Another example is the scant attention given to Nevinson’s mother, a suffra-

gist,21 member of the Lyceum Club, who invited and hosted Marinetti’s first Futur-
ist speech in England in 1910. She reported on the event in The Vote in December
1910:
Signor Marinetti still found time to extol the Suffragette! (Had he an idea that among his
Lyceum audience were more than one or two women who would answer proudly to that
title?) But although it was not the Suffragette’s desire for liberty that aroused the Signor’s
admiration, but merely her method of enforcing her demands; yet the Suffragettes and
Signor Marinetti are at one in deploring the existence of the serpent-of-old-Nile type of
woman. But while the Futurists hold women responsible for what they consider a degen-
erate type of man, the Suffragette maintains that the erotic woman is a product of man’s
absolutism – a product that is declining rapidly along with man’s unlimited control of the
things that matter.22
Margaret Wynne Jones Nevinson’s characterization of Marinetti reveals her

suffragist perspective, writing in the paper of the Women’s Freedom League, which
had just split from the suffragettes of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Marinetti applauded the suffragettes’ militant tactics, not their goal – unlike Mrs
Nevinson – but she did not support either his general “scorn for women” or the
suffragettes’ analysis of the decline of this form of femininity. This articulation
of their positions hold both suffragette and Futurist at a distance as ‘extreme’
from Mrs Nevinson’s own more moderate position, and it explains also why the
report appeared in The Vote at all. Nevertheless, her early intervention in bringing
Futurism to London was overlooked because the events surrounding Marinetti’s
collaboration with her son C.W.R. Nevinson in the course of 1914 (culminating in
the joint manifesto, “Vital English Art”, and a performance with Marinetti at the
Doré galleries) overshadowed her contribution to the ‘history’ of Vorticism.
21 Suffragists believed in peaceful political lobbying to secure women the vote and were sup-
porters of the ‘liberal/reformist’ National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), led by
Dame Milicent Garett Fawcett: the “suffragettes”, as they were popularly called in the newspa-
pers, by contrast took to militant and civil disobedience (with the slogan ‘Deeds, not Words’) to
make their claims for the vote and were affiliated to Pankhurst’s ‘militant’ Women’s Social and
Political Union (WSPU). See: Strachey: The Cause, pp. 307–320.
22 Nevinson: “Futurism and Women”. The Vote was published by the Women’s Freedom League
who had split from the WSPU in 1909 because they did not support WSPU tactics and advocated
democratic reform. Marinetti’s advocacy of the suffragettes (WSPU) was an expression of extrem-
ism for this audience at the Lyceum Club, and Mrs Nevinson’s remarks make her distance from
the Futurist position clear, even though she was prepared to entertain it.
The publication of Vital English Art, a manifesto signed by Marinetti and

C.W.R. Nevinson’s23 and published in The Observer on 7 June 1914, created an
opportunity for Lewis to distance himself from Futurism while proclaiming a new
alliance of ‘the vital forces of English art’ in an Open Letter circulated in New
Weekly of 13 June 1914, The Observer of 14 June 1914 and The Egoist of 15 June 1914:
There are certain artists in England who do not belong to the Royal Academy nor to any of
the passéist groups, and who do not on that account agree with the futurism of Sig. Mari-
netti. An assumption of such agreement either by Sig. Marinetti or by his followers is an
impertinence. We, the undersigned, whose ideals were mentioned or implied, or who might
by the opinion of others be implicated, beg to dissociate ourselves from the ‘futurist’ mani-
festo which appeared in the pages of the ‘Observer’ of Sunday, June 7th.24
The protest letter was signed by Richard Aldington, David Bomberg, Frederick
Etchells, Edward Wadsworth, Ezra Pound, Lawrence Atkinson, Henri Gaudier
Brzeska, Cuthbert Hamilton, William Roberts and Wyndham Lewis and it gave
the newly established Rebel Art Centre as its address. Lewis’s disassociation from
Futurism in this letter is also frequently given as the rational for the change of
Blast’s subtitle to “Review of the Great English Vortex” when it appeared on 1 July
1914.25 Lewis and Roberts used the term ‘vortex’ as a synonym for the metropolis,
and the centre of the Vortex is frequently the Thames. The homosocial weight in
the story of the founding of Vorticism as a discussion between men in competi-
tion over claims for a new movement was convenient for any representation of it
as a Modernist school, in line with the general view that Modernism was a gen-
dered field of male movements and female followers or supporters.
Lewis argued in the letter cited above that the differences between Futurism
and Vorticism lay in the fact that the Futurist approach to modernity was super-
ficial. Art should reflect modernity as a condition of existence that transforms
the way the individual conceives the world. And Futurist art is mimetic because
it limits itself to the reproduction of the surface of reality, a surface that now
includes the dimension of speed. Contemporary scholars such as Luca Somigli
continue this idea by pointing out that, for the Vorticists, “the function of art
is to endow life with order and meaning by giving form to its underlying struc-
23 According to a letter Marinetti wrote to Mario Carli on 20 July 1914, he was the sole author of
this manifesto (“mio manifesto contro l’Arte inglese ufficiale, firmato anche dal pittore futurista
inglese Nevinson”). See F. T. Marinetti: Critical Writings, p. 96. The text in this edition is based on
Marinetti’s original Italian text and not the version published in The Observer.
24 Lewis: Letters, p. 63
25 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde, p. 163 stresses Lewis’s attempt to distinguish
Vorticism from Futurism.
32 Katy Deepwell
tures which are not time-bound and therefore are not subjected to the superfi-
cial transitoriness of cultural customs, practices and innovations.”26 A reading of
Dismorr’s sole surviving Vorticist painting, Abstract Composition (1914–1915, Tate
Collection), in relation to its shifting architectural elements would easily fit into
this reading of Vorticism as a phenomenon different from Futurism.
However, if we return to the relationship of the Futurists’ admiration for the
suffragettes and consider how the Vorticists celebrated the Italian movement
as a vital force, then another distinction begins to emerge. Examining the list
of women appearing in Blast’s infamous “blast” and “blessed” roster we find
that many Victorian traits of British politics, culture and mores (sentimentality,
‘Roussauisms’, ‘politeness’, etc.) were condemned. The “Blessed” list includes
the names not only of Kate Lechmere but also of several women suffragettes –
e.g. Lilian Lenton, a convicted arsonist, and Freda Graham, who slashed five
paintings in the National Gallery. Yet, the editors of Blast, lacking the Futurists’
destructive tendencies, questioned their damage of artworks.27 Mary Richard-
son’s slashing of Velázquez’ Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery in October
1914 was not ‘praised’ in Blast as a signal for the overthrow of a civilization, but
rather patronizingly referred to as one of the instances – the destruction of art
works – where the Vorticists would not support the suffragettes, fearing they may
destroy a ‘good’ (even a Vorticist) painting.28 By 1914, the ‘terror’ campaigns of
the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) had included window-smashing,
bombs, attacks on paintings, the death of Emily Davison, and they had suffered
from the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act in which women who were imprisoned and went
on hunger strike were released if their health was in danger only to be rearrested
26 Somigli: Legitimizing the Artist: Manifesto Writing and European Modernism, 1885–1915
27 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde, 19. ‘To Suffragettes’ Blast, pp. 151–152.
28 Mary Richardson’s own defence for slashing Velazquez’ Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery
was widely reproduced in the papers of the time: “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most
beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying Mrs
Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty
as much as colour and outline on canvas. Mrs Pankhurst seeks to procure justice for woman-
hood, and for this she is being slowly murdered by a Government of Iscariot politicians. If there
is an outcry against my deed, let every one remember that such an outcry is an hypocrisy so long
as they allow the destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and other beautiful living women, and that until
the public cease to countenance human destruction the stones cast against me for the destruc-
tion of this picture are each an evidence against them of artistic as well as moral and political
humbug and hypocrisy.” The Times, 11 March 1914. As an aside to their later affiliations in politics
in the 1930s, Richardson became a member of Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, while Jessica
Dismorr, by contrast, took part in Artists Against Fascism and War, an exhibition organized by
the Artists’ International Association in 1939.
when they had recovered. The Vorticists, like Marinetti, praised the suffragette’s
militancy as vital and identified with it as an energetic force for change, but their
expression of support does not extend to the destruction of artworks.
Blast also published “Indissoluble Matrimony”, a story by the young novel-
ist, feminist and journalist Rebecca West, which depicts a petit-bourgeois mar-
riage of a classic Edwardian kind, written from the man’s perspective. It demon-
strates West’s own strong ideas about free love and open relationships in contrast
to bourgeois forms of marriage. In this story, the husband’s resentments about his
wife and their marriage build up one evening into an attempt to drown her while
swimming. Believing he has done so, the husband is swallowed up by a ‘vortex’
of water and returns home in a desperate state believing he has killed her and
will be sought by the police. However, he finds her at home and asleep; relieved,
he takes off his wet clothes and falls into her arms. West’s narrative follows the
thoughts of the man in the story, and his hatred of his wife is spelled out in detail;
however, the plot makes clear how ‘off-key’ his thoughts are with the reality of
his wife and her actions. His hatred significantly emerges just as she finds her
political voice. His increasing conservatism, his desire for the quiet life, contrasts
with her new sense of public life and her left-wing alliances, as well as her active
desire to engage in politics. What the story gives us is an insight into how one
man sees his wife and how his jealousy and frustration fuel his violence towards
her. We don’t see the wife’s reaction when she wakes up and we don’t hear her
side of the story. Her physical love and existence redeems him in spite of the fact
he was convinced he had just murdered her.
I wonder why this story was included in Blast. It is unlikely that it was
accepted by Lewis purely because it features a ‘Vortex’ in the river. It represents a
refusal of extreme positions and the possibility of a rebirth “through the Vortex”
(through London, through a river). However, this option exists not only for men
but also for their relationships to women. Men’s intolerance towards their wives’
political actions is both demonstrated and refused by its inclusion in the volume.
In Andreas Huyssen’s account of Modernism, the avant-garde appears as aes-
thetically and politically radical in its claims, gestures and works. In his view,
this heritage needs to be recovered, and in doing so, a reassessment undertaken
of the challenges which vanguard artists pose to bourgeois culture and “its psy-
cho-social mechanisms of domination and control.”29 However laudable this
aim, Huyssen omits in his analysis any consideration of the avant-garde artist’s
gender. He discusses, and this is significant, the gendering of social relations,
but the split between men and women as gendered individuals is transferred to
29 Huyssen: After the Great Divide, p. 8.

34 Katy Deepwell
mass culture as the feminized ‘other’. Consequently, the male avant-garde artist
who attempts to provoke or criticize the fine arts establishment succeeds largely
only at raising consciousness, rather than instigating social and political change.
The avant-garde repeatedly put forward a model for a New Man (be it the
poet, the dreamer, the ‘Other’ of social conventions), and this is a part of Futur-
ism’s and Vorticism’s declarations alongside their protests against a stagnant
society, where bourgeois culture, in particular, is the object of their critical atten-
tion. Valentine de Saint Point pursued this model in her Manifeste futuriste de la
luxure (Futurist Manifesto of Lust, 1913), even though her ambition remained to
imagine a female peer worthy of the male Futurist. The question of a model for
a female avant-garde artist continues to be problematic in this conception, even
when their work offers a clear critique of bourgeois conventions, marriage and the
status quo. These elements of the social structure – namely sexual relations – are
commonly downgraded in the avant-garde/political model as secondary consid-
erations to a ‘real’ political agenda. Women artists protesting against these fea-
tures of society (and/or their different approach to non-conformism or a refusal
of bourgeois models) often removes them from serious consideration because of
this positioning of (male-centred) debates about political priorities and agendas.
Vorticist women artists
The decision of what counts as a Vorticist work of art changes when we include
women and classify their production as convincing and central. For all of the four
women, Vorticism was a transitory phase in a broader scheme of their lives, just as
it was for Wyndham Lewis, who even in his most egotistical mode declared how
much he had renounced the models with which he had experimented prior to 1920,
and their final renunciation was the subject of his book, The Demon of Progress in
the Arts (1954). Lisa Tickner suggested about Saunder’s work of 1913 that a solution
for Vorticist women who wanted to avoid being associated with ‘femininity’ was
to choose as their motto, ‘art has no sex’.30 Thus, they could avoid the expectation
to adopt a feminine viewpoint, i.e. one specific to a group of women, given that
only individual women, in a case study by case study, could ever be observed.31
There was no group identity between them, only differences in approach, in age,
in levels of involvement and in works made in both poetry and painting.
30 Tickner: “Men’s Work, Masculinity and Modernism”, pp. 1–38.

31 See Heathcock: Jessica Dismorr, pp. 90–99 on these women’s differences from each other in
terms of subjectivity, class and aspirations within Vorticism.
Much of the question of women artists’ rôle or relevance centres on their

relationship with Wyndham Lewis and whether or not they were ‘obsessed’,
‘scorned’, ‘beloved’ or ‘blessed’ in their sexual relationship with him. A more
careful examination of his financial dependence on them and their moral, social
and enthusiastic support for his egotism and fantasies is rarely undertaken, only
their negative impact on him is given consideration.
We do not really know how Dismorr and Lewis met. It is clear that Lechmere
played some part in bringing them together, as she knew Dismorr from the
Académie de la Palette in Paris, where they had both studied. Subsequently, she
involved Dismorr and Saunders in the Rebel Art Centre. In an undated letter,
written around late 1913 / early 1914,32 Dismorr offered her ‘support’ for Lewis after
his split with the Omega workshop, which suggests that they knew each other
before the Rebel Art Centre was established in Spring 1914. They had exhibited in
the same large group exhibitions at the Allied Artists’ Association in 1912 and 1913.
What survives of Dismorr’s letters with Lewis offers us an insight into a miser-
able relationship: his cancellation of meetings, his calling off of engagements or
arrangements, his despising her talk of “stocks and shares” (because she, unlike
him, had some) and his attempt in 1925 to end or break their friendship.33 Against
this not so pleasant picture of a hot-cold friendship are occasional comments
that reveal his admiration of her as a painter and his encouragement to make her
continue painting when she fell ill in 1920.34 It is worth remembering that these
few surviving fragments of correspondence arise from the times when they were
apart: it records when they did not meet or when they grew tired of each other’s
company. What cannot be seen from them is how much time they spent together,
how many dinners they had together or how many afternoons they spent painting
32 No date is given for this letter in the Lewis correspondence, Dept of Rare Books, Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York, online catalogue: <http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/
RMM04612.html#s3ss1>
33 This is from the Lewis correspondence, 19 October 1925 and 13 Nov 1925, where Lewis broke
off their friendship by letter, Dept of Rare Books, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. The date
of this correspondence – particularly the second letter – is not insignificant, because this is the
moment at which Dismorr’s first and only solo exhibition opened at the Mayor Gallery, 12–28
November 1925. 1925 was also the year in which she came into an inheritance from her family
estate. However, as Quentin Stevenson points out, in 1934 she wrote an article about his work,
“The Painting Periods of Wyndham Lewis”, which he thought (so they must have corresponded)
was “great stuff”. See also Heathcliffe’s Ph.D. dissertation, Jessica Dismorr, pp. 71–76, for a dis-
cussion of Lewis and money.
34 Three examples of these positive statements about her practice as an artist can be found in
the Lewis correspondence, Dept of Rare Books, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York: 4 March
1915; 17 October 1920, and one undated, possibly 1914.
36 Katy Deepwell
or talking together.35 Their ‘friendship’ actually lasted for nearly twenty years,
from 1914 to 1934, although their correspondence is generally only discussed in
terms of breaks, jealousies and petty intrigues and is therefore limited in its sig-
nificance. Dismorr committed suicide a few days before the Second World War
broke out in 1939: her actions were attributed to problems with her own health,
as much as the historical circumstances.36 Few letters or works have survived. Of
several Vorticist works from this period shown in exhibitions, only one oil paint-
ing at the Tate survives alongside her graphic works in Blast.
Saunders is supposed to have acted as Lewis’s secretary in the years of
the First World War, but this relationship is often reduced to a romantic infat-
uation, formally broken due to intervention of her family, who disapproved of
this alliance.37 The second copy of Blast had been published and distributed
from Saunders’s flat in 1915; therefore, a more accurate description of her active
involvement in its production is required. She also helped Lewis complete the
key commission of the murals at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, which was one
of the few commissions given to the Rebel Art Centre. Scholars have long indi-
cated that Saunders was more than an assistant helping Lewis with the designs
and colour schemes. Brigid Peppin quotes Saunders’s undated letter to Lewis,
in which he encouraged her to read Otto Weininger’s Geschlecht und Charakter
(Sex and Character, 1903) regarding the inferiority of women to men and their
incapacity for logical thought. Interestingly, her response was: “I had discovered
most of his facts for myself but persist in thinking that I may have a soul.”38 In
Saunders’s correspondence with Dismorr39 she talks about her sick leave during
35 A different picture of their relationship is offered by Margaret Dismorr Thompson, Dismorr’s
sister, who agreed to model for them both when she was in London, and afterwards when she
had lunch with them “in a little restaurant (maybe Chelsea) with Robert’s murals on the wall”.
She requested that Lipke did not quote or cite from her letters and he observed this request. She
wrote: “The atmosphere I felt on that occasion was light, yet quiet, serious and simple – of peo-
ple who had just one bit of work in mind but it was fun because they knew exactly how to do it”.
Letter of 3 November 1965, Lipke correspondence, Tate Gallery Archive.
36 See Stevenson: Jessica Dismorr and Catherine Giles, p. 13
37 Saunders: Letter to Wyndham Lewis of 23 June 1920. Lewis correspondence, Dept of Rare
Books, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
38 Paraphrased by Peppin in “Women that a Movement Forgot”, based on Helen Saunder’s let-
ter to Lewis, no date, Lewis correspondence, Dept of Rare Books, Cornell University, Ithaca, New
York.
39 This letter is part of a batch of correspondence and poems sent to William Lipke in March
1965 by Katie Gliddon, Tate Archive. It has no date, but Saunders mentions being about to send
Dismorr a copy of Blast II, so I am assuming it stems from 1915, given that the date for Blast: War
Number is July 1915. In it, she discusses her feelings of exhaustion and not being able to work as
the First World War and her exhaustion from her work as a ‘clerk’ in a censor’s
office in London.40 She mentions her long working hours in London, while Lewis
was acting as a war artist for the Canadian Government and about to travel to
France. The difference between their opportunities to continue as artists during
the war could not have been more pronounced.
Women artists in Edwardian London
Taking the metaphor of the conversation, which is suggested by Dismorr’s 1922

drawing for Tyro II where two women are sitting talking, I started to speculate
about a conversation between these women. What was the situation in 1912–14
for women artists? Could a conversation be reconstructed between women at this
historical moment by bringing together works from the period?
Dismorr’s life, as far as we can reconstruct it, was full of strong friendships
with other women, including for a time with Helen Saunders.41 William Lipke,
who interviewed Kate Lechmere while collecting information for his Vorticism
book in 1966, suggested that Lechmere and Dismorr met in 1911–12 at a private
art school in Paris, the Académie de La Palette,42 where Jean Metzinger, André
Dunoyer de Segonzac and Jacques Blanche were her teachers. In the winter of
1910–11, she was sharing a studio with the American artist, Marguerite Thompson
(later Thompson Zorach), who also developed a career as a Modernist painter in
the USA.43 This was in 1911/12 when both artists contributed to John Duncan Fer-
gusson’s arts magazine Rhythm. Dismorr then showed with the group of English
an artist because of being on sick leave: “I have done no work for such a long time – I suppose
Art only really comes naturally out of an excess of energy too great for ordinary life – Certainly
I have not got that – Perhaps no woman has – But I should very much like the chance of doing
some quite representative painting – as literal as Van Gogh – It would give one a chance I feel of
‘finding my level’ in art – and perhaps invention something. I still have a rough time emotionally
– one’s original character cheerful or gloomy is very little modified I think by circumstance – I
am still a solitary by nature.” Letter Helen Saunders to Jessica Dismorr, Chelsea c. late 1915, Tate
Archive. This argument about ‘vitality’ and women artists is also a central part of the discourse
around the Seven and Five and I quote examples of both, Frances Hodgkins and Barbara Hep-
worth, in my book, Women Artists between the Wars.
40 This information is from Brigid Peppin’s interview with her mother, Helen Peppin, 26 July
1988. Unpublished manuscript, given to the author.
41 Heathcock: Jessica Dismorr, pp. 117–147, discusses how her life in the post-war period was
marked by a “female ethos of friendship, travel and financial autonomy”.
42 See Lipke: A History and Analysis of Vorticism. Lipke, Tate Archive correspondence.
43 Zorach: Clever Fresno Girl.
38 Katy Deepwell
and Scottish Fauves, including Samuel Peploe, J.D. Fergusson and Anne Estelle
Rice, at the Stafford Gallery in 1912, after she finished studying and was living
and showing works in both Paris and London. Dismorr’s works included four ink
drawings, mainly nudes and one of Isadora Duncan dancing. Another friend-
ship, with Catherine Giles, had developed while studying with Max Bohm at the
Étaples art colony and with Bertha Jones whom she met at La Palette.
While we are repeatedly reminded of the effect of Roger Fry’s Post-Impres-
sionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912 in London, for some time (since the 1880s),
and in significant numbers, women artists had already absorbed these ideas
during their studies in Paris or while living and working in France.44 In 1912, the
Sackville Gallery exhibited the Futurists in London, Dismorr’s exhibited in 1912
at the Stafford Gallery. A large number of women artists were represented at the
Artists Allied Association in the period 1911–14. At their annual exhibitions, more
than 500 works were usually shown, sometimes even 3,000! Lewis, Dismorr and
Saunders showed their works in 1912, and Saunders, Dismorr and Lechmere in
1913. At this time other opportunities for women artists producing modern art-
works were provided by the Friday Club, initiated and run by Vanessa Bell. Many
of the women artists who participated in the Friday Club had been trained at the
Slade School of Fine Art or in France. The show of November 1913 in Brighton,
Exhibition of English Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Others, is significant for the
history of Vorticism for its “Cubist Room” section.45 However, it was also impor-
tant because it led to the secession of the London Group from the Camden Town
Group, as it had excluded many ‘wives and girlfriends’ (although some peers like,
44 In correspondence between Ody and Lipke – 12 Feb 1965 – he writes about how Dismorr
introduced him to Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore, saying that he recollects how “her admiration
was no doubt acceptable partly because of her status stemming from Blast, partly because
selling art was then a struggle (and having a little money she qualified as a patroness rather than
a rival) and partly because of such publicity and influence as she was in a position to exert.”
Earlier, he writes that “she was temperamentally prone to centre (aesthetically and emotionally)
on personalities and at that time Lewis had disengaged himself – though not entirely from her.”
Although he acknowledges that she was well-read, these two points have continued to produce
myths about her. This is also found in Stevenson: Jessica Dismorr and Catherine Giles, p. 5.
45 “Beneath the Past and the Future the most sanguine would hardly expect a more different
skeleton to exist that that respectively of ape and man…The work of this group of artists for the
most part underlines such geometric bases and structure of life and they would spend their en-
ergies rather in showing a different skeleton and abstraction than would formerly exist, than a
different degree of hairiness or dress. All revolutionary painting today has in common the rigid
reflections of steel and stone in the spirit of the artist.” Statement in the catalogue, Exhibition of
English Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Others in Brighton, November 1913, quoted in Somigli:
Legitimizing the Artist, p. 188.
Ethel Sands and Nan Hudson were neither).46 Nevinson’s own attempt to re-in-
stigate this ban on women at the Rebel Art Centre in 1914 did not get accepted
because the funding of the Centre depended on Kate Lechmere.47
Lechmere and Dismorr’s independent financial means are rarely discussed in
positive terms, even though Lechmere paid for the Rebel Art Centre and Lechmere
and Dismorr supported the journals Blast and The Tyro. On the other hand, the
collector and sponsor, John Quinn, is praised for his foresight and patronage,
while the women’s financial backing is only seen as a problem in their relation to
Lewis, as a source of tension and strife. As a result, these women’s rôles are com-
promised, presented only in or through a sexual relationship and as ‘helper’. The
photos of Lechmere sewing the curtains for the Rebel Art Centre in 1914, which
survive in the archive at the University of East Anglia, tend to reinforce this ‘sup-
portive rôle’, rather than one of actively helping to create an environment and
enabling the activities of the Centre. Sewing, like making and serving tea, is con-
sidered women’s work, as transpires from the following description:
The Centre started rather tamely in March 1914 with Helen Saunders and Jessica Dismorr
making fans and screens in tepid competition with the Omega and Lechmere pouring tea
and handing out cakes at the Saturday afternoon gatherings. Lectures were announced by
Pound on imagism and by Schoenberg and Scriabin on music, and talks were actually given
by the Futurist Marinetti and by Ford Madox Hueffer.48
The printing of the first edition of Blast was paid for with a loan of 100 pounds
coming from Lechmere. Lewis never repaid the money, and this is generally
treated as a small detail. Lewis’s reply to Lechmere’s request for money, when the
second edition of Blast came out, highlights his attitude to money:
‘certain moneys’ supposedly would be ‘coming to me’. Far from this being the case, the next
2 or 3 numbers of Blast will be engaged in paying off the cost of the first number. I am not
getting half a penny […] The War has stopped Art dead. I have no money at all. I am shortly
going to the Front, and am meantime desperately struggling to get my immediate affairs in
order.49
The Rebel Art Centre turned out to be a financial disaster, proving Lewis’s lack of
business acumen and his financial dependence on others.
46 See Deepwell: Women Artists between the Wars.

47 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde, p. 68.
48 Meyers: “Kate Lechmere’s ‘Wyndham Lewis’ from 1912”, based on Della Denman: “Kate Lech-
mere: Recollections of Vorticism”, which is the source of the “lapdog” quote.
49 Myers: The Enemy, p. 67 and Lewis: Letters, p. 69.
40 Katy Deepwell
Female Vorticists in the 1920s
In the years after the war, many women artists experienced a profound discour-
agement to continue their careers. The impact of the First World War on their lives
had serious repercussions in more ways than one. According to Lloyd George and
the suffragists (a different political grouping to the militant suffragettes), women
won the vote because of their support of the war effort. The First World War is
again narrated almost entirely from the point of view of male artists and sol-
diers, but women Vorticists also undertook war service. Dismorr was employed
in the Voluntary Aid Detachment, Saunders worked as a secretary in a Censor’s
office, and Lechmere became a nurse. After the war, Lechmere set up workshop
in Knightsbridge and ran a hat shop called ‘Rigolo’ where, among other commis-
sions, she made a dress for Vanessa Bell and where her clients included Edith
Sitwell and the actress Marie Tempest. Saunders did continue to paint after 1920
but was unable to show her work in exhibitions.
Jessica Dismorr suffered a serious breakdown after working in the VAD.
Lewis’ encouragement for her to continue to paint came at a time after the
doctors were prescribing her a ‘cure’ of rest from creative work. Dismorr ignored
her doctor’s advice and returned to painting, but her approach was now chang-
ing. Like other members of the Vorticist group, she turned to portraiture and,
in the mid-1920s, began to exhibit more frequently again. Her 1925 exhibition at
the Mayor Gallery was reviewed in positive terms by Reginald Howard Wilenski
and Frank Rutter.50 Dismorr had also started to publish poetry again in 1918–1919.
Yvor Winters attacked her in the Little Review of October 1919 for her “meticulous
verbosity” and described her as “the candy-fed child or a millionaire”, an attack
which contributed to her not publishing again for fifteen years.51 In the late 1920s
and 1930s, when she was no longer close friends with Lewis, she formed a new
network of contacts – including Ben Nicholson – and restarted publishing her
poetry, encouraged by her new circle of poet friends, including Roger Roughton,
David Gascoyne and others whose portraits she drew. Unlike her Vorticist works,
50 “Miss Dismorr is most successful with artistically pre-digested material, such as houses,
bridges, roads and steps […] But all her work is intelligent and marked by a becoming modesty.”
(Reginald Howard Wilenski in The Times of 17 November 1925). “Much of Miss Dismorr’s work is
experimental and all her attempts at translating personal vision into terms of plastic design are
not equally significant; but at her best, her work is genuinely significant, significant in form and
significant in expression. The exhibition should be seen by all interested in the modern move-
ment.” (Frank Rutter in the Sunday Times of 29 November 1925). This was the second exhibition
at the newly opened gallery.
51 Stevenson: Jessica Dismorr and Catherine Giles, p. 8.
many of her early and late works have survived: these include a few Fauvist
works from 1905–1913, one painting by Dismorr from the 1920 Group X exhibition,
several portraits and works from 1925 Mayor Gallery show, a larger number of
figurative works from period 1927–1934 and several key abstract works from 1935,
1937–1939. Her late abstract works were negatively referred to by close friends
as her “dress-making patterns”, yet, these works bear comparison with other
women from the same period (e.g. Paule Vézelay) and point to her ongoing rein-
vention and development of herself as a Modernist artist. The critic R.H. Wilen-
ski commented about her 1965 show that she played “a part in the most typical
artistic experiments of her generation”. Is it better to be typical than marginal?
Unlike Lewis, who renounced abstraction, Dismorr’s work became more abstract
and experimental in the early 1930s, like those of the 7 & 5 Group with whom she
associated herself.
Summary
Like many other artists of this period, Dismorr and Saunders moved through
periods and serial phases in their work. Jessica Dismorr, in particular, was no
different from many artists, including Picasso, in her serial, although passionate,
attachment to different styles of painting. She was involved in the avant-garde
scene in Britain beyond her time of involvement in Vorticism. We should be asking
more profound questions about what marks her attachment to the avant-garde
as a politics, as a method for proceeding as an artist and as a lifelong interest/
obsession. Why should a woman artist regularly travel to France, look for scenes
to paint and continue experimenting with portraiture and then abstraction to
kick-start new phases in her work? Why continue to read avant-garde literature in
French and English and write poetry with a view to publication?
While Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry have highlighted the links between
poetry and painting in the work of women Vorticists, most critics have separated
these genres and preferred one media to the other. This reinforces the idea of
Vorticism as a painterly aesthetic. Richard Cork suggested that Dismorr’s poetry
was central to her transition from Fauvism to abstraction and suggests that her
more radical ideas, like those of Saunders, are to be found in their poetry, rather
than in their geometric style of painting.52 It is difficult to establish clear thematic
links between her poetry and any specific drawing or painting, but this is also a
52 Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art in the Machine Age, p. 417.

42 Katy Deepwell
problem encountered in Lewis’s works. Pound’s Imagism, on the other hand, was
characterized by a search for a literary equivalent to visual language.53
In the absence of substantially new evidence or information about the women
Vorticists, gaps remain in our understanding of their lives and works. Maybe it is
necessary to move away from seeing these women in a ‘state of exception’ and
think about their presence as a regular and normal part of the Edwardian art
world. They certainly made very specific, if not vital, contributions to Vorticism
in the few years when this was a central focus of their lives.
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2011.
Baron, Wendy: Ethel Sands and Her Circle. London: Owen, 1977.
Baudelaire, Charles: Œuvre completes. Vol. 2. Ed. Claude Pichois. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.
Beckett, Jane, and Cherry, Deborah: “Sorties: Ways Out From Behind the Veil of
Representation.” Feminist Art News 3:4 (1989): 3–5.
Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex 1 (July 1914). London: John Lane & The Bodley Head,
1914.
Chadwick, Helen, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds.: Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate
Partnership. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996.
Cork, Richard: Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age. Vol. 1–2. London: Fraser,
1976.
Deepwell, Katy: Women Artists between the Wars. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2010.
Deepwell, Katy, ed.: Women and Modernism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
Delman, Della: “Recollections of Vorticism: Interview with Kate Lechmere.” Apollo: The
International Magazine of Arts 93 (January 1971): 52–53.
Felski, Rita: The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Greer, Germaine: The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and their Work. London:
Secker and Warburg, 1979.
Heathcock, Catherine Elizabeth: Jessica Dismorr (1885–1939): Artist, Writer, Vorticist. Ph.D.
Dissertation. University of Birmingham, Dept of Art History, 1999.
Huyssen, Andreas: After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and Postmodernism.
Bloomington /IN: Indiana University Press, 1986.
Isaak, Jo Anne: The Ruin of Representation in Modernist Art and Texts. Ann Arbor/MI: UMI
Research Press, 1986.
Lewis, Wyndham: Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism. Exhibition catalogue. London: Tate Gallery,
July – August, 1956.
53 Isaak: The Ruin of Representation in Modernist Art and Texts.

—: Letters. Ed. by William Kent Rose. London: Methuen, 1963.

Lipke, William C.: A History and Analysis of Vorticism. Madison/WI: University of Wisconsin-
Madison, 1966.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso: Critical Writings. Ed. by Günter Berghaus. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2006.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, and C. R. W. Nevinson: “The Futurist Manifesto against English
Art.” F. T. Marinetti: Critical Writings. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 94–96.
Meyers, Jeffery: “Kate Lechmere’s ‘Wyndham Lewis’ from 1912.” Journal of Modern Literature
10:1 (March 1983): 158–166.
—: The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Nevinson, Margaret Wynne Jones: “Futurism and Women.” The Vote, 31 December 1910. 112.
Reprinted in Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Whitman, eds.: Futurism: An
Anthology. New Haven/CT: Yale University Press, 2009. 74–75.
Nunn, Pamela Gerrish: From Victorian to Modern: Innovation and Tradition in the Work of
Vanessa Bell, Gwen John and Laura Knight. London: Wilson, 2006.
Parker, Roszika, and Pollock, Griselda: Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. London:
Routledge, 1981.
Peppin, Brigid: “Women that a Movement Forgot.” Tate etc. 22 (Summer 2011): 30–35.
Roberts, William: Vortex Pamphlets, 1956–1958. London: Canale, [1958].
Sedgwick, Eve: Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1985.
Somigli, Luca: Legitimizing the Artist: Manifesto Writing and European Modernism, 1885–1915.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
Stevenson, Quentin, ed.: Jessica Dismorr and Catherine Giles. Exhibition catalogue. London:
Fine Art Society, 19 June – 21 July 2000.
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Virago, 1978.
Tickner, Lisa: “Men’s Work, Masculinity and Modernism.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist
Cultural Studies 4:3 (1992): 1–38.
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1972.
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—: Collected Essays. Vol. 3. London: Hogarth Press, 1966.
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Archives consulted
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Miranda Hickman
Beyond the Frame: Reassessing
Jessie Dismorr and Helen Saunders
Abstract: Considering the work of painters Jessie Dismorr and Helen Saunders
within Vorticism necessitates addressing the question of how two women willingly
became affiliated with, and centrally involved with, an artistic group so patently
masculinist in image, ethos and culture. Both Saunders and Dismorr were active
members of the Vorticist movement, from its incipience to its demise and beyond.
To pursue this question, this essay considers how Vorticism responded to Italian
Futurism, its close neighbour in the field of early twentieth-century art, since
the nature of Vorticism’s attentive and mischievous engagement with Futurism
sheds considerable light on why and how these women navigated the terrain of
Vorticism. Dismorr’s and Saunders’s rejection of Italian Futurism as understood
by Vorticism is strongly inscribed in their work and may clarify their allegiance
to Vorticism. I would contend that the Vorticists were centrally invested in the
gender of Vorticism – concerned with cultivating, deploying and guarding a
certain model of masculinity in defensive response to a perceived cultural “crisis
of masculinity”; and the repudiation of Italian Futurism became pivotal to per-
forming that gender. Dismorr and Saunders were likewise invested in Vorticist
masculinity – although for reasons different from those of their male compatri-
ots. The essay re-reads Dismorr’s and Saunders’s place within Vorticism and dis-
cusses how they enlisted the Vorticist idiom for their own feminist purposes. The
essay highlights both their active cultural work as members of the Vorticist move-
ment and the significant body of writing developed during their Vorticist years.
Keywords: Vorticism, Futurism in Great Britain, gender, feminism, masculinity
Introduction
The two years between 2010 and the end of 2011 witnessed a notable rekindling
of interest in the early twentieth-century British avant-garde movement of Vorti-
cism, thanks to a major international exhibition, “The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in
London and New York, 1914–1918.”1 Curated by Mark Antliff and Vivien Greene,
1 See also the recent exhibition on Epstein and Gaudier-Brzeska, mentioned in Burstein: “Stag
Party.”
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0005
rotating through three sites during its span (Duke University’s Nasher Museum
of Art, the Tate Britain and the Guggenheim Collection in Venice), the show’s
structure was shaped by three major Vorticist exhibitions of the early twentieth
century: at the Doré Galleries in London (June – July 1915); at the Penguin Club
in New York, overseen by John Quinn (January 1917); and at the Camera Club
in London (Vortographs and Paintings by Alvin Langdon Coburn, February 1917).2
With its historicizing move, the exhibition thus pointed to the heady early twen-
tieth-century ‘Futurist moment’ in abstract art from which Vorticism issued.3 Vor-
ticism (whose name derived from the concept of the ‘vortex’ as a site of whirling,
galvanizing dynamic energy with a still centre4) emerged from London in 1913,
led by painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, including within its orbit painters
such as Lawrence Atkinson, Jessie Dismorr, Frederick Etchells, Cuthbert Hamil-
ton, Christopher Nevinson, William Roberts, Helen Saunders and Edward Wad-
sworth; the poet Ezra Pound; the photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn; sculptors
such as Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and, although with less active commitment, Jacob
Epstein.5
The movement was short-lived, lasting, more or less, in official form from
1914 to 1915. Its demise was hastened by the First World War, in which several of
the artists associated with Vorticism were combatants and in which some, such
as Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and T. E. Hulme, were killed. For many commentators,
the forces of the war overshadowed Vorticism and brought it to a close in 1915,6
although American lawyer and patron of the arts John Quinn, a strong supporter
of Vorticism, would host the major Vorticist exhibition in New York as late as 1917,
marking another frequently invoked bookend to the movement.
As signalled by the movement’s official periodical, Blast: Review of the Great
English Vortex, whose two issues appeared in 1914-15, as well as the work dis-
played under Vorticism’s aegis, Vorticism aspired to be a multi-media movement,
2 See catalogue for the exhibition, which houses a collection of essays on Vorticism: Antliff and
Greene, eds.: The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–1918.
3 I take the phrase from Marjorie Perloff’s classic study, The Futurist Moment (1985).
4 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, pp. 161–162. The term was supposedly first sup-
plied by Ezra Pound in the spring of 1914. On the concept’s significance, see Kenner: The Pound
Era, pp. 238–239.
5 Epstein’s work, especially his Rock-Drill series, has come to be strongly identified with, even
read as exemplary of, Vorticism, but as Dasenbrock and Cork note, Epstein was one of several
artists associated with the Vorticists who rejected official affiliation with the movement (Dasen-
brock: Literary Vorticism, pp. 56, 245; Cork: Vorticism and Its Allies, pp. 23–24).
6 Kenner: The Pound Era, pp. 246–247; Tickner: “Men’s Work”, p. 67. Lewis, too, suggested that
Vorticism had been “snuffed out” by the Great War (Wyndham Lewis on Art, p. 335).
46 Miranda Hickman
sponsoring not only various forms of visual art – painting, sculpture, photogra-
phy – but also literature. Its journal published poetry and prose by artists identi-
fied with the movement, such as Lewis, Pound, Saunders and Dismorr, and even
texts by writers not affiliated with the movement, such as Rebecca West, Ford
Madox Ford, and T. S. Eliot, whose work Lewis presumably found kindred to Vor-
ticism in spirit.
Vorticism has often been characterized as the first British avant-garde move-
ment, and not only because of its ambitious reach into many media, which
brought it into company with European avant-garde movements such as Italian
Futurism, Dada, Der Blaue Reiter and Surrealism. Unlike many comparable
groups convened in its immediate cultural environment, Vorticism indicated
interest – if with mischievous irony typical of avant-gardist rhetoric7 – not only
in new innovative artistic practice, but also in wider cultural reform and reima-
gining the societal place and rôle of art. Wyndham Lewis noted in the 1930s of
the grand scale of Vorticist ambitions: “[I]n the early stages of [the] movement,
we undoubtedly did sacrifice ourselves as painters to [the] necessity to reform
de fond en comble the world in which a picture must exist.”8 Still later, in a 1950
memoir, he observed along similar lines: “It was, after all, a new civilization that
I – and a few other people – was making the blueprints for [...]. At the time I was
unaware of the full implications of my work, but that was what I was doing [...]. It
was more than just picture-making; one was manufacturing fresh eyes for people,
and fresh souls to go with the eyes.” (125)9
Although the historiography of Anglo-American modernism has often high-
lighted Vorticism – and especially Blast – as an important site of origin for Mod-
ernism, the movement’s work has often been deprecated as minor, even by com-
mentators focussing on Vorticism. As Jessica Burstein has recently observed,
7 See Poggioli on “the humour, voluntary or involuntary, of avant-garde art” in Theory of the
Avant-Garde, p. 36.
8 Lewis: Wyndham Lewis on Art, p. 278.
9 My use of avant-garde takes a cue from the sense favoured by commentators such as Marjorie
Perloff (whose work is informed by that of Renato Poggioli), connoting art involved in a pro-
gramme that in turn entails not only a commitment to innovative artistic practice, but also what
Poggioli calls an “antagonistic” stance toward aspects of the surrounding society (such as forms
of tradition, artistic and cultural, even toward a public or publics), a multimedia programme,
and what Perloff points to as a dimension of “radical utopian vision” and “utopian buoyancy”
(she accents Poggioli’s note about the “prophetic and utopian phase” of European art during the
“Futurist moment” (xxxv)). Perloff’s The Futurist Moment, which encompasses the Vorticists,
focusses on that “short-lived period when the possibilities for an … avant-garde that would trans-
form not only art but society itself – seemed almost limitless” (xxi).
critics have shown a “literary-critical shyness regarding” the “import” of the

movement, “indexed by Lawrence Rainey’s 1998 conclusion that, compared with
Italian Futurism, the Vorticist Blast was indeed a dull affair’.”10 Antliff’s and
Green’s recent international exhibition, however, offers impetus to reassess Vor-
ticism’s achievements and legacies from “new perspectives” (to borrow a phrase
from the volume of essays inspired by the exhibition). As I noted in The Geometry
of Modernism, a myth of Vorticism as exemplary of dynamic avant-garde practice
persisted significantly in the imagination of many Anglo-American modernist
writers long after Vorticism per se had come to an close – and this suggests the
importance of reevaluating from new angles Vorticism’s genesis, cultural work,
and impact.
Futurism and Vorticism
The perennial question of the relationship between Vorticism and Italian Futur-
ism was brought to the fore again when, in 2014, Vivien Greene, co-curator of
the exhibition on Vorticism, curated a major North American retrospective on
Italian Futurism at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, yet included no Vorticist
works in the exhibition, nor mentioned Vorticism in the accompanying event pro-
gramme. As is often rehearsed, Vorticism defined itself through strategic posi-
tioning of its project with respect to those of adjacent movements, among which
Italian Futurism was crucial. In keeping with the logic of what Janet Lyon calls
“incremental self-differentiation”11 typical of avant-guerre artistic movements,
the Vorticists established their identity by distinguishing themselves through
rhetoric and publicity from three major contemporary lines of development in the
arts: Cubism, strongly associated with Picasso and Braque; Post-Impressionism,
linked with the Bloomsbury circle of Roger Fry; and Italian Futurism, led by F.T.
Marinetti. These proximate movements in particular were especially important to
Vorticism’s self-fashioning because artists associated with them, like the aspiring
Vorticists, committed to experimentation with semi- or entirely abstract visual
languages; Vorticist technique took a page from the work of each. By replying to
these movements specifically, the Vorticists staked out the enclave of their artis-
tic field of cultural production with which they were chiefly concerned – their
“league” – and pursued the strategic work of signalling how they would super-
sede their immediate competition. The notion of ‘anti-collaboration’, invoked by
10 Burstein: “Stag Party”, p. 217; she quotes from Rainey: Institutions of Modernism, p. 38.
11 Lyon: “Militant Discourse”, p. 105.
48 Miranda Hickman
Paul Edwards in his introduction to the 2009 reprint of Blast12, is especially apt
for capturing the dynamic between Vorticism and its closest neighbours.
The Vorticists’ first chosen adversary (and thus coordinate and resource) was
what Klein and Antliff call their “island rival”, the Omega Workshops in Blooms-
bury, led by Roger Fry. Several proto-Vorticists were initially affiliated with this
group; then, for both political and aesthetic reasons, they staged a break with
them in 1913.13 Shortly afterward, they also began to distance themselves from their
two “continental counterparts”14: on the one hand, Cubism, to which Vorticism
was often compared both by reviewers and the Vorticists’ own rhetoric, but which
Wyndham Lewis ultimately suggested involved too static an idiom for Vorticism.15
On the other hand, more aggressively, the Vorticists distinguished themselves from
Italian Futurism, by which the Vorticists were clearly attracted and influenced, and
to which commentators also often likened Vorticism. Ultimately, Italian Futurism
was the compatriot with which Vorticism reckoned in the most sustained and thor-
oughgoing fashion – and was thus the most central to its formation.
In 1913–14, while in formation, the Vorticists engaged closely with Italian
Futurism, but eventually dissociated themselves emphatically from Marinetti’s
ethos by means of essays in Blast, public events, and publicly circulated cor-
respondence. As the Vorticist group was coalescing, the proto-Vorticists were
keenly attentive to Italian Futurism, especially caught by the publicity antics of
its leader, F.T. Marinetti. With his lectures, poetry recitations and gallery perfor-
mances, through which he propounded the Futurist mission of promoting aggres-
sive modernity in art and denounced “passéism” in culture, Marinetti ushered
in a new, bold style of artistic propaganda for aspiring avant-garde movements.
Marinetti ‘launched’ Futurism in England with galvanic appearances in London
in 1910; by the time he returned to England with his Futurist comrades in 1912
and 1913, he was widely known in England. The Futurists exhibited artwork and
staged public events that included poetry declamation, lectures, recitation of
manifestos and concerts of noise music to stimulate and even antagonize British
audiences, who were generally fascinated, albeit often shocked.16
Lawrence Rainey has traced in detail the Futurists’ influence on both
Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound.17 As Marinetti regaled British audiences with
12 Edwards: Foreword, Blast 1, p. vii.

13 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, pp. 62–66.
14 Antliff and Klein, eds.: Vorticism: New Perspectives, Introduction, p. 1.
15 Lewis: “A Review of Contemporary Art”, Blast 2, pp. 38–47.
16 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, Chapter 6, pp. 92 ff., esp. pp. 96–97.
17 Rainey: Institutions, Ch. 1, pp. 10–41.
his bold voice, flamboyance and charisma,18 both Pound and Lewis followed
suit: indeed Lewis, who penned most of Blast’s manifesto sections, undertook
publicity campaigns clearly shaped by the Futurist example, involving extrav-
agant rhetoric (albeit deliberately more hard-boiled and ironic than that of the
Futurists), aggressive avant-garde high-jinks, and graphic designs inspired by the
Futurist ‘typographical revolution’.
The Vorticists also shared the Futurist commitment to a dynamic visual lan-
guage, but would emphasize dynamism combined with abstract geometrics.19
And like Italian Futurism, as part of their masculinism, Vorticism would display
an attitude of what the first Futurist manifesto famously called disprezzo della
donna (scorn for woman20) – i.e. disdain for women as they had hitherto func-
tioned in conventional society21 – as well as, concomitantly, for amore: roman-
tic love, that social meme pervasive in the Italian cultural context. As Marinetti
would articulate this:
Our hatred, to be precise, for the tyranny of love, we summed up in the laconic expression:
“scorn for women”.
We scorn woman when conceived as the only ideal, the divine receptacle of love, woman
as poison, woman as the tragic plaything, fragile woman, haunting and irresistible, whose
voice, weighed down with destiny, and whose dream-like manes of hair extend into the
forest and are continued there in the foliage bathed in moonlight.
We despise that horrible, heavy Love that impedes the march of men, preventing them from
going beyond their own humanity, doubling themselves, overcoming themselves so as to
become what we term extended man.
18 On Marinetti’s impact, see Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, Chs. 6 and 7, es-
pecially pp. 92, 98, 103, and Buchowska and Wright: “‘The Futurist Invasion of Great Britain,
1910–1914.”
19 Dasenbrock, for instance, notes Vorticism’s “sense of motion produced by diagonal lines”
(Literary Vorticism, p. 41).
20 See § 9: “Noi vogliamo glorificare la guerra – sola igiene del mondo – il militarismo, il patri-
ottismo, il gesto distruttore dei libertari, le belle idee per cui si muore e il disprezzo della donna.”
F.T. Marinetti: “La fondazione e manifesto del futurismo.” Teoria e invenzione futurista, p. 10. “We
wish to glorify war – the sole cleanser of the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive act
of the libertarian, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women.” F.T. Marinetti: “The
Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism.” Critical Writings, p. 14.
21 The commitment to “scorn” or “contempt for woman” forms part of point 9 of the “Manifesto
of Futurism” embedded in Marinetti’s inaugural “Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” (1909)
and was repeated in varying forms in “Against Sentimentalized Love and Parliamentarianism”
(Critical Writings, pp. 55–59); “Against Marriage” (Critical Writings, pp. 309–312); “Against the Pa-
pacy and the Catholic Mentality, Repositories of Every Kind of Traditionalism.” (Critical Writings,
pp. 323–327).
50 Miranda Hickman
[…] In this attempt to free ourselves, the suffragettes are our best allies in that the more
rights and powers they can secure for women, the more will [56] their urge to love be impov-
erished, to such an extent that they will cease to be the focal point of sentimental passion
or of lust.
Accordingly, Blast 1 would hail the “suffragettes”, although ambivalently,22

alongside manifesto-like texts that repeatedly denigrated forms of femininity
and effeminacy. Moreover, as Wees notes, before the First World War, the idea of
the “futurist” was widely linked in Anglo-American public discourse to what was
most promising and progressive in the field of the arts, assuming a significance
considerably beyond what it carried in the context of Italian Futurism;23 accord-
ingly, Vorticism was often aligned with Futurism on the basis of the leading-edge
cultural status it cultivated, as well as by virtue of its work and projected image.
For all these reasons, the Vorticists initially linked themselves closely with
Futurism. In 1913, when the Futurists paid a visit to London, the nascent Vorti-
cists held a dinner in their honour.24 Lewis expressed admiration for Marinet-
ti’s impact in the New Weekly.25 When Lewis and his comrades opened their own
Rebel Art Centre, a sort of ‘artists’ commune’ and atelier on Great Ormond Street,
they sponsored one of Marinetti’s lectures at the Doré galleries to raise money
for the project, and Marinetti was asked to speak at the Centre.26 The Centre’s
prospectus included “Futurist” principles among those that were to form the
“alphabet” for teaching at the Centre.27 As Paul Edwards notes, surprisingly late
in the period leading up to the publication of Blast, the emergent Vorticists were
still “accepting the designation ‘Futurist’.”28 Christopher Nevinson, initially posi-
tioned among the Vorticists, also entered the limelight as a loyal Futurist.
Yet by the time the Vorticists were ready to emerge as a full-fledged move-
ment – out of an anxiety of influence, and in keeping with the logic of legiti-
mation – they sought to distance themselves publicly from the movement that
had exerted a kind of mentor’s forcefield over their formation. By spring of 1914,
Italian Futurism was increasingly perceived as a threat. At that point, when Mari-
22 Blast 1, p. 151. For the campaign played out through Blast against forms of femininity and
effeminacy, see Hickman: Geometry of Modernism, ch. 1.
23 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, pp. 106–109. Lewis also noted in Blast that “of
all the tags going, ‘Futurist,’ for general application, serves as well for any of the active painters
today.” Blast 1, p. 143.
24 Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, p. 100.
25 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p. 100: see New Weekly 30 May 1914.
27 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p. 116.
28 Edwards: Foreword, Blast 1, p. vi.
netti and Christopher Nevinson launched a manifesto in the name of an English

branch of Futurism, “Vital English Art”, which invoked many artists associated
with Vorticism as members, the Vorticists staged a schism, much like that which
they had early played out vis-à-vis Fry’s Omega Workshops. When Marinetti and
Nevinson held a soirée at which the manifesto would be declaimed, Lewis and
comrades attended in order to heckle. The event, lavishly recorded in several
memoirs (including Lewis’s) is the stuff of avant-gardist legend.29 Once “Vital
English Art” appeared in The Observer, Lewis’s group circulated a public letter
to several newspapers and magazines emphasizing that their opinions did not
coincide with those of Marinetti and the Futurists, “beg[ging]” to “dissociate”
themselves.30
However, the sound and fury of avant-gardist self-definitional skirmishing
should not obscure several substantive differences between the Vorticists’ artis-
tic commitments and those of the Futurists. In Blast, Lewis’s rhetoric repeatedly
pointed to the way that, for the Vorticists, Futurism had come to represent what
Pound disparagingly called a kind of “accelerated Impressionism”.31 The Vor-
ticists sought to supersede Impressionism, which they called “belated”,32 and
sought an art that instead “underlined” the “geometric bases and structures of
life”,33 rather than registering life’s rushing surfaces and effects. The Vorticists
also emphatically rejected the “dispersals” they associated with Futurist artis-
tic practice; instead, Vorticism stood for concentration, maximum intensity and
compression, “polished sides.”34 Furthermore, just as importantly, Vorticism’s
carefully styled “attitude” (as Lewis later put it) was repeatedly differentiated
from that of the Futurists: if they interpreted the typical Futurist affect as “hul-
lo-bulloo” and “gush”, especially about modernity and its machinery (as Lewis
emphasized in the first pages of Blast),35 the Vorticists would cultivate a cool,
detached tone, a “sternness and severity of mind.”36 And this carefully main-
tained ethos would evolve into far more than mere side-effect of publicity stunts:
it became a crucial element of the gender of Vorticism, which in turn became
integral to the cultural work of the movement. In my reading, the Vorticists were
centrally, if not always altogether consciously, invested in the gender of Vorticism
29 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, pp. 110–111.

30 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, p. 112.
31 Pound: Gaudier-Brzeska, p. 82.
32 Blast 1, p. 149.
33 The Egoist 1, January 1914, pp. 8–9.
34 Blast 2, p. 149.
35 Blast 1, pp. 8–9.
52 Miranda Hickman
– concerned with cultivating, deploying, and guarding a certain model of mas-

culinity in defensive response to a perceived cultural “crisis of masculinity”, felt
especially keenly in the world of the arts; and the repudiation of Italian Futurism
became pivotal to performing that gender.37
The women artists of the Vorticist group in London
Two Vorticist artists whose contributions stand in especially keen need of reeval-
uation are Jessie (later Jessica) Dismorr (1885–1939)38 and Helen Saunders (1885–
1963). One exciting development fostering new readings of Saunders’s work
in particular has been the recent rediscovery of three new Vorticist gouaches
attributed to her, previously presumed lost,39 displayed in the recent interna-
tional exhibition, now housed at the Smart Museum of the University of Chica-
go.40 Reconsidering the work of Dismorr and Saunders within Vorticism always
involves addressing the conundrum of how it came to pass that two women will-
ingly became closely affiliated with, and centrally involved with the development
of, a movement so patently masculinist in image, ethos, and artistic culture –
arrantly a “boys’ club”,41 known for the “bully-boy style of its polemics.”42 In
exploring this question, it is illuminating to consider the problem of how Vorti-
cism responded to Italian Futurism, its close neighbour, even formative pace-set-
ter, in the field of early twentieth-century art.
How might this relate to reassessment of Dismorr and Saunders? In my
reading, Dismorr and Saunders were, on the one hand, likewise invested in Vorti-
cist masculinity – albeit for reasons different from those of their male compatriots
– and thus shared with the other Vorticists the defensive response to Futurism,
which was coded as “feminine” or “effeminate” in the Vorticist view. The trajec-
tories of these two women painters highlight specific dimensions of Italian Futur-
ism (at least as constructed within Vorticist thought) that the Vorticists sought
strategically to avoid, in order both to define their projects, overt and ulterior,
to legitimate themselves in the avant-guerre field of artistic production, and to
define their publicly displayed gender. Moreover, the nature of Vorticism’s atten-
37 For this argument, see Hickman: “Gender.”

38 Dismorr began exhibiting under “Jessica” in 1924: see Quentin Stevenson: “Chronology.” Jes-
sica Dismorr 1885–1939, catalogue for exhibition at Mercury Gallery, London 3 April – 4 May 1974.
39 See Peppin: “Women that a Movement Forgot.”
40 Balance, Canon, and Dance.
41 Burstein: “Stag Party”, p. 229.
42 Tickner: “Men’s Work”, p. 66.
tive, fraught, and impish engagement with Futurism also sheds a great deal of
light on why and how these women navigated the territory of Vorticism. Finally,
Dismorr’s and Saunders’s rejection of Italian Futurism as understood by Vorticist
lights, strongly inscribed in their work, clarifies what incited and sustained their
allegiance to Vorticism.
In what follows, I first suggest how we might re-read Dismorr’s and Saun-
ders’s place within the Vorticist ‘scene’, then how doing so can reveal more about
what has been occluded about their careers within Vorticism – how they used
and shaped the Vorticist idiom for their own purposes, which I read as feminist.
To position them newly, I highlight the significant body of writing both developed
during their Vorticist years, together with their active cultural work as members
of the Vorticist movement.
Framing the Vorticists
William Roberts’s painting, reproduced with notable frequency in histories of

Vorticism,43 appeared at the entrance of the recent Vorticist exhibition at the Tate
Britain in London: The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915,
composed in 1961–62, half a century after Roberts’s initial involvement in Vorti-
cism. The painting is thus retrospective: like an anecdote told late in life about
youthful glory days, this image of a Vorticist gathering at a London restaurant
captures how Roberts remembered the social milieu providing a formative matrix
for Vorticism. In a number of polemical pamphlets of the 1950s,44 Roberts insisted
that Vorticism had been produced through collective effort, countering Lewis’s
influential claim from 1956 that “Vorticism […] was what I, personally, did, and
said, at a certain period.”45 The painting’s atmosphere is festive: several figures
hold copies of Blast 1, its cover unmistakably fuchsia (or in the lexicon of that
milieu, “puce”); there is champagne, as though they are toasting the success of
their movement and the artistic-revolutionary work to which it aspired. Seated at
the table, from left to right, are Cuthbert Hamilton, Ezra Pound, William Roberts,
Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells and Edward Wadsworth – all prominent
members of the movement. Lewis is positioned above the others, wearing the
black hat that became a sartorial signature;46 Pound adopts a posture reminis-
43 See, for instance, Wees, Cork, Edwards, and Peppin: “Women.”

44 William Roberts: Vortex Pamphlets, 1956–1958. London: Canale Publication, 1958.
45 Quoted in Edwards: Vorticism 1914–1918, pp. 9–10.
46 O’ Keeffe: Some Kind of Genius, pp. 43, 242.
54 Miranda Hickman
cent of the semi-recumbent attitude he associated with intellectual productivity,

captured by Lewis’s famous portrait of 1939. Notably not represented is Henri
Gaudier-Brzeska, the French sculptor whose work would become paramount
among the Vorticist repertoire; at the date given by the painting’s title, Spring
1915, he was fighting at the front where, on 5 June 1915, he was killed in action.
In the upper left-hand corner, shown just entering the door as late arrivals,
are Saunders and Dismorr. That Roberts includes them at all suggests their imbri-
cation in the Vorticist community, but as Brigid Peppin notes, their placement
suggests that they are arriving in time for “dessert” but not “the main meal” – part
of the movement’s confections but not its nourishing substance.47 Their position-
ing at both a limen (the threshold of the restaurant) and in a corner, together with
the central placement of the male figures, points to the keynote masculinism of
Vorticist culture. In a movement whose ethos featured carefully mastered wild
masculinity48 – integral to both the Vorticist image and the semiotics of its work –
the ‘feminine’, and by extension women, were largely not welcome. Prima facie,
it was thus a wonder that women painters such as Dismorr and Saunders were
there at all. Again, these comments address why they were, how they were placed
within Vorticist culture, what we might make now of what their association with
Vorticism yielded, and what their Vorticist cultural work, on and off the canvas,
entailed.
Roberts’ composition thus serves as index to historiographical habits that
have marginalized Saunders and Dismorr in accounts of Vorticism in decades
since – habits often coinciding with those of early-twentieth century artistic
culture that contributed to the sidelining and diminishment of work by women.49
These historiographical tendencies have paved the way for Dismorr’s and Saun-
ders’s frequent characterization as, at best, supportive tea-servers at Vorticist
gatherings and merely minor Vorticist artists, showing a feminine ‘waywardness’
or ‘wilful crudity’ in their painting50; as well as dismissive accounts of their per-
sonal conduct, as servile ‘lapdogs’ to the charismatic Lewis,51 slavishly infatu-
47 See Peppin’s remarks in “Women that a Movement Forgot.”

48 See Lewis’s comments in Blast 2, which I read as apropos of this variety of masculinity, about
a “mastered, vivid vitality” (38).
49 See Heathcock: “Jessica Dismorr”, pp. 37 ff., and Pollock: Introduction to Vision.
50 See Cork calls Dismorr’s work “wilfully crude” and “dangerously rudimentary” (Vorticism
and Abstract Art, p. 415), and Saunders is credited with “female waywardness” (ibid. p. 424). Of
one of Dismorr’s images, The Engine, Cork notes that the effect is “oddly feeble-minded,” and
remarks: “Could it be that a feminine temperament was congenitally incapable of sustaining the
amount of aggression needed to create a convincing Vorticist work of art?” (ibid., p. 416)
51 See Lechmere’s dismissive comment, recorded in Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, p. 150.
ated with him;52 Dismorr is even described as “dotty”.53 From one point of view,
it is regrettable that Roberts’s painting again figured prominently in one itera-
tion of the recent Vorticist exhibition, since Roberts’s image risks reinscribing
entrenched readings of the membership and dynamics of Vorticist culture to the
detriment of new understandings of Dismorr and Saunders. Yet as we “enter”
the Vorticist movement, to dodge older approaches, we need first to reckon with
them: to engage with and critique in fine-grained ways the interpretive tenden-
cies that Roberts’ painting eloquently captures. Saunders and Dismorr likewise
sought to dodge modes of interpretation in their environment – specifically, ways
of reading women artists; and in their cultural context, it was their connection
with Vorticism that enabled them to do so.
Roberts’s portrait emblematizes how these women painters have tradition-
ally been “framed” in accounts of Vorticism. Taking a cue from the proximity
between English and French work in the milieu from which the Vorticists issued,
to read Saunders and Dismorr along new lines, I want to engage the French
word and concept of ‘encadrement’. This signifies, on the one hand, ‘framing’,
and on the other hand, ‘training’ or ‘formation’ – cued by the way that historical
accounts have framed these women painters are bound up in assumptions that
were also part of their Bildung, both their formal training and more general cul-
tural shaping by their environment. As attested by the work of Lisa Tickner, Cath-
erine Heathcock, Brigid Peppin and Bridget Elliott and Jo-Ann Wallace, Dismorr
and Saunders trained as professional visual artists during a late-nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century moment when women, in the context of expanding post-
secondary educational opportunities for women, entered art schools in Britain
in unprecedented numbers. As Heathcock notes, the keynote of women’s experi-
ences in art schools, such as the Slade School of Fine Art, which both Saunders
and Dismorr attended, was greater opportunity and diminished prejudice.54 Yet
even at the Slade, known for its progressive approach to education for women,
deeply entrenched was the assumption that, as John Stuart Mill observed in
the 1860s, “women artists are all amateurs”,55 resulting in a de facto two-tiered
system: while men were regarded as being capable of pursuing serious profes-
sional ambitions as artists; women, even if talented, were assumed ready to jetti-
son their work once they reached marriageable age. As Deborah Cherry and Lisa
52 Etchells emphasizes Saunders’s “schoolgirl ‘pash’” on Lewis; see Cork: Vorticism and Ab-
stract Art, p. 419.
53 Peppin: Helen Saunders, p. 10.
54 Heathcock: “Jessica Dismorr”, p. 9 ff.
55 Elliott and Wallace: Women Artists and Writers, p. 70.
56 Miranda Hickman
Tickner suggest, in the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth century, the “fem-
inine” realm with which women artists were associated was assumed inimical
to artistic “professionalism”56 and thus, in this climate, to the heights of artistry.
This pervasive logic licensed such comments as Lewis’s alleged quip that tea was
meant to be poured by “women, not artists”, as though these categories were
mutually exclusive.57 Vanessa Bell once observed the desire to avoid being seen
as “that terrible low creature, a female painter”,58 assumed artistically weak in
accord with the degree to which she displayed femininity, in conduct and work.
Thus, for women such as Saunders and Dismorr, who sought to establish as
independent professional women artists (what Amelia Jones calls “New Woman
artists”) in the early years of the twentieth century, the tacit atmospheric obstacles
to achieving professional legitimacy were many. As I have suggested elsewhere,59
I read both Saunders and Dismorr as gravitating toward Vorticism, out of a field
abundant with possible groups with which to affiliate, in part to counter cultural
and ideological currents that could hamper their progress. Given the signals sent
by Vorticism in the British avant-guerre artworld, their public linkage with Vorti-
cism enabled them, on symbolic terrain, to sidestep the category of the ‘woman
artist’ and various forms of ‘femininity’ dominant in their environment, associa-
tion with which they found debilitating, in both psychological and professional
terms.60 As Lisa Tickner suggests, the female Vorticists wanted to escape such
notions of ‘femininity’,61 although for a nexus of reasons different from those
animating their male comrades. Fellow Vorticists, such as Lewis, Wadsworth
and Etchells, demonstrated a phobic anxiety about forms of femininity – in the
art world and more generally – as they were placing ‘virility’ under threat (and
were leading, in the terms of the time, to ‘effeminacy’): Dismorr and Saunders, on
the other hand, were more immediately concerned with how the feminine could
56 “Professionalism was most vociferously claimed as masculine by the upper strata of mid-
dle-class men. In the language and institutions of art, femininity was positioned as the very
antithesis of the professional artist.” Cherry: Painting Women, p. 9. Tickner likewise suggests that
“[t]he idea of the woman artist, if … familiar” by Dismorr’s and Saunders’ moment, “was still
contested and uncomfortable,” associated with “mediocrity.” Accordingly, she notes, “Women”
were “in flight from the newly insistent but inferior category of the female artist.” “Men’s Work”,
p. 17.
57 Quoted in Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, p. 148.
59 See Hickman: “Gender of Vorticism.”
60 See Tickner: “Men’s Work”, p. 60: women artists were often “in flight” from the “newly insist-
ent but inferior category of the female artist.”
be construed through art, conduct, and/or performed gender, and how it could
impede their acceptance as ‘serious’ professional artists. If their encadrement as
artists left them framed as ‘feminine’ and thus assumed less capable than male
artists, affiliation with Vorticism allowed them to place themselves beyond this
restrictive frame – in ways that historiography, given its own customary frames,
has not always sensitively registered.
Both Dismorr and Saunders were signatories of the original Vorticist mani-
festo, appearing in Blast 1. 62 Although signing the manifesto did not necessar-
ily mean that an individual would become a central Vorticist (the name of poet
Richard Aldington appears here, for instance, and he had no involvement after-
ward except as comrade of Pound and Lewis), Dismorr’s and Saunders’ signa-
tures, in fact, accompanied integral involvement in the movement’s nucleus.
Once again, their significant rôle in the movement’s formation is initially surpris-
ing, given the Vorticists’ clear masculinist commitments. But centrally involved
they were.
In fact there were two other women painters notably involved in the Vorticist
circle – Kate Lechmere, who met Lewis in 1912 and provided funding for Vorti-
cism’s first major projects, such as Blast and the Rebel Art Centre, the early Vorti-
cist effort of 1913 to establish an atelier-cum-salon and art school;63 and Dorothy
Shakespear, who married Ezra Pound in 1913. But in the context of Vorticism, the
relatively peripheral rôles of these other women artists show up the compara-
tive importance of Saunders and Dismorr to the movement: neither Lechmere nor
Shakespear was as closely and consistently involved with Vorticism’s formation
and evolution as were Dismorr and Saunders. Lechmere painted in a Vorticist
idiom (her work is now lost)64 and apparently did the lion’s share of decoration for
the Vorticist Rebel Art Centre (in the “alphabet”65of the emergent Vorticist idiom
– brightly hued, insistently abstract, and dynamic). Yet she exited the Vorticist
current early after a feud with Lewis about money, and she did not participate
after 1914: she is immortalized in one of the “Bless” sections Blast’s declarations
62 “Manifesto.” Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex 1 (June 1914), pp. 30–43 was signed
by Richard Aldington, Malcolm Arbuthnot, Lawrence Atkinson, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Jessica
Dismorr, Cuthbert Hamilton, Ezra Pound, William Roberts, Helen Sanders, Edward Wadsworth
and Wyndham Lewis.
63 See Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, p. 147 ff.
64 See Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, p. 147 for a photo of Bunter Vogel (Colourful Bird, 1914),
a lost Vorticist painting by Lechmere.
65 See Rylands: “Introduction” in Antliff and Greene: The Vorticists: Rebel Artists, p. 21, who
quotes from the original prospectus.
58 Miranda Hickman
of allegiance,66 but ultimately she does not figure prominently in the movement’s
history outside a patron’s rôle. Shakespear seems to have contributed a few Vor-
ticist paintings to exhibitions because Pound was involved, but she signalled no
investment in the movement’s development. In contrast, Saunders and Dismorr
signed on to the movement as independent professional artists, publicly allied
themselves with it during its incipient stage, stayed with it throughout its brief
life, worked to develop it, contributed consistently to it as painters and writers,
exhibited formally as Vorticists, and even maintained ties with Lewis after the
movement had come to a close.
To provide further specifics: both women participated in the Rebel Art Centre.
Dismorr was involved in the editing of Blast;67 both she and Saunders assisted in
its distribution.68 Both contributed several creative works to the journal: in Blast
2 (1915), two drawings by each appear (from Dismorr, Engine and Design; from
Saunders, The Island of Laputa and Atlantic City), along with a poem by Saun-
ders, “A Vision of Mud”, and a poem and five brief prose pieces by Dismorr. Both
exhibited in two prominent shows of Vorticist work, in London at the Doré Galler-
ies in 1915, then again at the Penguin Club in New York in 1917. In 1915, Saunders
also assisted Lewis with developing a Vorticist room for the Restaurant de la Tour
Eiffel, featured in Roberts’s painting, where the Vorticists frequently gathered.
Moreover, letters between Saunders and Lewis and Dismorr and Lewis 1913–1915
attest to generally amicable relations and frequent meetings. Lewis acknowledges
admiration for the work of both; actively invites work from Dismorr for Blast;
mentions “E.P.”, or Ezra Pound, suggesting Saunders’ and Dismorr’s involvement
in the Vorticist collaborative circle; suggests that Saunders is helping him with
Blast contributions, and calls himself in an early letter to Dismorr “votre frère du
Vortex” (which raises the question of the extent to which it was possible to be a
“sœur du Vortex”).
Moreover, Saunders and Dismorr were invoked with admiration in a review
of their exhibition at the Allied Artists’ Association in 1914 by sculptor Gaudier-
Brzeska, by then recognized as a prominent member of the proto-Vorticist circle.
Their work, Gaudier notes, shows a fortunate “revolutionary spirit” not displayed
by all participants.69 Just after mentioning their names, in a “digression” on
“applied art”, Gaudier then invokes the “Rebel art centre” (which by summer 1914
signalled the Vorticist group), represented at the exhibition by a stand featuring
66 See Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex 1 (June 1914), p. 28.
68 Heathcock: “Jessica Dismorr,” p. 78.
69 Gaudier-Brzeska: “Allied Artists’ Association Ltd, Holland Park Hall.”
decorative objects such as “fans, scarves, boxes, and a table.” Gaudier compares
the Rebel Art Centre favourably to Fry’s Post-Impressionist Omega Workshops
(also represented at the A.A.A.), suggesting that the Vorticists, unlike the Omega
group, epitomized this “revolutionary spirit” of contemporary work. Mentioning
Saunders and Dismorr in close proximity to the Rebel Art Centre and the Omega
Workshops suggests Gaudier’s implicit acknowledgment that they merited favour-
able notice among these promising Vorticist artists. Gaudier observes that such
work stands fortunately apart from the aestheticist “prettiness” of the Omega and
Post-Impressionism: with his typical lexicon of adulation of that which was con-
sidered ‘virile’, Gaudier lauds the Vorticist work for rebuffing such ‘prettiness’
with artistic ‘strength’ and ‘manliness’.70
It was in fact this effect of ‘manliness’ that drew Dismorr and Saunders to
Vorticism. In their view, it differed markedly from, even afforded shelter from,
both the ‘femininity’ with which, as aspiring female artists, they were associated,
as well as the gender-coding linked with groups with which they had been affil-
iated. After working in other zones among the field of ‘possibles’ in early twenti-
eth-century artistic milieux, both Dismorr and Saunders deliberately chose to ally
themselves with Vorticism.
Jessica Dismorr and Helen Saunders’ paths to Vorticism
Having trained at the Slade between 1903 and 1905, Dismorr then moved to
France where, from 1905 to 1908, she studied with Max Bohm at the Étaples art
colony; then from 1910–13, at the Académie de la Palette in Paris, where among
her instructors was Scottish painter John Duncan Fergusson. Through Fergusson,
Dismorr joined the British Fauvist group, the Rhythmists, whose work was signifi-
cantly informed by the ideas of French philosopher Henri Bergson – especially his
concept of ‘intuition’ as a way to access what he read as the essential ‘rhythm’ of a
subject, human or otherwise. Dismorr exhibited with the Rhythmists and became
a leading illustrator for the movement’s periodical organ, Rhythm. As Mark Antliff
observes, the work of the group was deeply informed by a vitalist affirmation of
70 Gaudier-Brzeska notes: “People like Miss Dismorr, Miss Saunders and Miss Jones are well
worth encouraging in their endeavours towards the new light. With them stops the revolutionary
spirit of the exhibition. Before dealing with the rest of the paintings I make a digression among
applied art. The Rebel art centre has a stand. The Omega Shops have the lounge. The Rebel stand
is in unity. A desire to employ the most vigorous forms of decoration fills it with fans, scarves,
boxes and a table, which are the finest of these objects I have seen.” “Allied Artists’ Association
Ltd, Holland Park Hall”, p. 228.
60 Miranda Hickman
an elemental femininity, in Rhythmist work often represented through the female

nude, which the group read as fundamentally connected to nature’s fertility and
thus to what Bergson imagined as an élan vital.
The Rhythmists were concerned with accessing this life force through their
art – and while there were forms of activity they read as masculine that could
act as portals to it, for them it was the female form that bore closest primal con-
nection to this vital energy. Thus frequently displayed in their work is the female
body, often nude, rendered with a chiefly curvilinear vocabulary, indicating
natural fertility and abundance. Fergusson’s well-known illustration for the cover
of Rhythm, featuring a female nude whose breasts rhyme in shape with the apples
she holds, suggests the group’s dominant lexicon for vitality. Antliff notes how
this line of belief affected perception of the group’s female artists: the degree to
which they were seen as connected to this elemental ‘feminine’ was the degree
to which they were assumed to inhabit a realm of ‘Nature’, rather than cultural
production superseding Nature. While some individual women prominent in
the circle, such as Anne Estelle Rice, were read capable of artistic achievement,
in this line of thought, it was their ‘masculine’ qualities that allowed them to
become not just the stuff of art and muses for it but active creators thereof. In this
view, because of their closer ties to primal femininity, women had to surmount far
more than men to become virtuosic cultural producers.
Directly after several years of participation in this climate, Dismorr relocated
to the Vorticist ambit. Within the Rhythmist circle, she would have been keenly
attuned to how an aesthetic idiom was gendered, assumptions about gender and
fertility on which such an idiom turned, and the effects thereof on the climate for
female artists. It is therefore telling that Dismorr chose to enter a Vorticist atmos-
phere in which gender was equally accented, but in which, in notable contrast to
Rhythmist assumptions, it was a carefully styled form of masculinity – dynamic,
aggressive, governed with attitudinal severity – that was implicitly marked as an
avenue towards vitality.
In the trajectory implied by Dismorr’s choices, it is clearly legible that the
move to Vorticism (and its geometric idiom, which Dismorr adopted) represented
a marked change of course, even a rejection of the artistic mode and vision asso-
ciated with Rhythm. The female nude on which so much Rhythmist work relies is
not only conspicuously absent in Vorticist work; Vorticist work reads as involv-
ing a refusal thereof.71 Vorticist bodies, when they appear, are markedly geom-
71 See Tickner: “Men’s Work”, p. 66, who reads Vorticist work as aligned in spirit with the Italian
Futurist rejection of the nude. For example, in The Exhibitors to the Public, Balla, Boccioni, Carrà,
Russolo and Severini wrote: “We see no difference between one of those nude figures commonly
etricized, rendered mechanical or robotic: the classic image of Jacob Epstein’s

Rock-Drill (1913–1915), the aggressive driller with its sinister mask and drill,
encompassing and superseding the kind of fertility signified by a small fetus-like
creature presented in what looks like its womb, exemplifies a Vorticist drive to
transcend the merely female animal body, along with the kinds of erotics and fer-
tility this female body implies, with forms of cyborg masculinity, often achieved
through prostheses. The kind of femininity the female nude represents, together
with the primal fertility associated with Nature, is thus abjected within Vorticism
in the service of Vorticist identity formation. Accordingly, I read Dismorr’s turn to
Vorticism as signalling such a rejection of the female nude and what it signified in
ideological terms72, though for a matrix of reasons different from those account-
ing for the usual Vorticist aversion. Whereas Vorticist abjection of the nude (and
accordingly, the register of Nature) often issues from misogyny, I see Dismorr’s
repudiation as emerging from a feminist desire to avoid a ‘feminine’ mode she
wished to keep at bay, in both her art and artistic persona.
Saunders, similarly, enacts her choice through a refusal of the values and
expectations dominant in her cultural background, and again, of forms of fem-
ininity, artistic and cultural, that she sought to avoid. Like Dismorr, Saunders
came from an affluent family, and evidence implies that it was more socially con-
servative than Dismorr’s. 73 After initially working with the Slade-trained Rosa
Waugh, Saunders herself attended the Slade in 1907, dismaying her family with a
called artistic and an anatomical plate. There is, on the other hand, an enormous difference
between one of these nude figures and our Futurist conception of the human body.” Rainey,
Poggi and Wittman: Futurism: An Anthology, p. 106. Similarly, Boccioni demanded in his Tech-
nical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture: “We must destroy the systematic nude and the traditional
concept behind statuary and monuments.” Rainey, Poggi and Wittman: Futurism: An Anthology,
p. 119. And Ivo Panaggi and Vinicio Paladini declared in their Manifesto of Futurist Mechanical
Art: “It is no longer nudes, landscapes, figures, symbolisms no matter how Futurist, but the
panting of locomotives, the screams of sirens, cogs, pinions, and all that mechanical sensation
KEEN RESOLUTE which makes up the atmosphere of our sensibility.” Rainey, Poggi and Witt-
man: Futurism: An Anthology, p. 272.
72 Hickman: “Gender”, p. 127. See especially Faith Binckes’s remarks about how Dismorr’s de-
sign for Rhythm, of Isadora Duncan, shows an angularity that signals her effort to turn away from
typical Rhythmist modes of representing the female body. Binckes: Modernism, Magazines, and
the British Avant-Garde, p. 159.
73 Heathcock: Jessica Dismorr, pp. 8, 91–92. Peppin’s reading of Saunders’ Hammock suggests
that she strained to move beyond the confines of her upbringing to situate herself in avant-garde
contexts. The misspelling of her name in Blast 1, p. 43, was most likely deliberate, in deference
to her family’s consternation at her public linkage with Vorticism. See Peppin: Helen Saunders,
p. 12.
62 Miranda Hickman
move to London on her own. In 1912, the year she probably met Lewis, she exhib-
ited her work at Quelques Artistes Independants Anglais in Paris, organized by
Fry, with whose circle she was significantly affiliated. Given the alliances and
antipathies of her immediate climate, her decision then to side with Lewis and
to adopt an idiom of Vorticist geometrics clearly reads as a rebellious choice to
pledge allegiance to an aggressive adversary of her former allies.
Vorticist prose works by Dismorr and Saunders
These claims about why Vorticism appealed to Dismorr and Saunders are borne
out by the signals of their writing – and the patterns of their writing, in turn,
shed light on their distinctive inflections of the shared Vorticist visual idiom:
how Dismorr and Saunders inhabited the dynamic geometrics of the Vorticist
language and used this language both to register and enact feminist choices. In
Blast 2, one of a cluster of brief texts Dismorr publishes is “June Night”, in which
a narrator, evidently a woman, is waiting for “Rodengo”, a paramour who gal-
lantly “calls” for her at her “dark little villa.”74 In this narrative, Dismorr stages a
change of course for her first-person narrator that reads as compressed allegory
for the change of taste and heart that brought her to Vorticism. Initially the nar-
rator notes, “For Rodengo I have an ardent admiration.” Rodengo himself is an
“ardent”, dashing figure with “pink cheeks” and a “black beard”, tonally adjacent
to a “night of opera”, later associated with the “romantic”. At first the narrator
waits with “happiness” and “amiability”, marking a state away from which the
narrator then evolves. While the narrator initially says, “I am not good at finding
my way back anywhere”, by the end of the account, she has escaped Rodengo,
left her friends, and ventured out on her own. She traverses a sultry June night of
romantic “summer lightning”, but what attracts her during her journey are the
shapes and lights of the park; monochromatic visions (“Dark as onyx with rims of
silver are the little pools”); and architectural structures that suggest cool distance
– thus relief from the immediate climate – and sacredness: “the tea-kiosk of whit-
ened stucco is as remote as a temple.” The narrator’s desire to break from what
she initially admires becomes more explicit: “I want to escape: but Rodengo is
lazy and will not stop warbling his infuriating lovesongs.” (p. 67). This marks the
zones of romance from which the narrator increasingly seeks to extract herself:
“Rodengo, you have a magnificent tenor voice, but you bore me [...]. Surely I have
had enough of romantics! Their temperature is always above 98 ½, and the accel-
74 Blast 2, pp. 67–68.
erated pulse throbs in their touch. Cool normality and classicalism tempt me.”
(p. 67) The narrator then “take[s] refuge” in “news and byways”, feels “temporar-
ily disgraced, an outcast, a shadow”, but she achieves independence: “At least
here I breathe my own breath” (p. 68). The text continues:
Now out of reach of squalor and glitter, I wander the precincts of stately urban houses.
Moonlight carves them in purity. The presence of these great and rectangular personalities
is a medicine. They are the children of colossal restraint, they are the last word of prose.
(Poetics, your day is over!) In admiring them I have put myself on the side of all the sever-
ities. (p. 68)
For many reasons, the “precincts” to which the narrator is now powerfully drawn
signal the Vorticist aesthetic as Dismorr read it. Dismorr’s version of the Vorti-
cist idiom, one sharing the angular geometric elements, diagonals and dynamic
rhythms of other Vorticist work, often moves in a markedly architectural direc-
tion: her Abstract Composition (1914–1915) and Edinburgh Castle (c. 1914–15) both
convey this.75 Accordingly, the narrator’s vision here of stately urban houses”,
with their “great and rectangular personalities” and the “discipline of ordered
pilasters and porticoes”76 suggests Dismorr’s form of Vorticism, and the inclina-
tion toward classical self-control (“colossal restraint”), which to her was a main
reason for affiliating with Vorticism.77 Moreover, strikingly, Dismorr’s narrator
seeks such restraint as a check to, and space of relief from, the “volatility” she has
felt, which rests upon such geometric shapes “as a swimmer hangs upon a rock.”
The “swiftness” of the bus on which she initially rides has made her “too emo-
tional”; she welcomes the alternative “emotion” of “related shapes” (“shapes”
clearly signals the abstract Vorticist idiom). Retrospecting about Vorticism years
later, Lewis emphasized the degree to which the Vorticist mode resided in ‘atti-
tude’ and a turn away from certain ranges of ‘emotion’:
[Vorticism was] not entirely a ‘tough guy’ attitude [...]. There were no schoolboy heroics,
of the emotional Hemingway order [...] It was just the sternness and severity of mind [...]
appropriate to the man who does the stuff (in contrast to the amateur who stands rapt in
front of it [...].). [The attitude] was, yes, professional. 78
75 Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, pp. 416, 418.

76 See also Dismorr’s “London Notes” in Blast 2, p. 67, which features an image of “gigantic
cubes of iron rock … set in a parallelogram of orange sand.”
77 This is in keeping with the way that T.E. Hulme, in “Modern Art and Its Philosophy” (in-
fluenced by Wilhelm Worringer) invokes the proto-Vorticists as those positioned on the side of
‘abstraction’ in an ‘abstraction’/ ‘empathy’ dichotomy wherein, in his thought, ‘abstraction’ is
marked as allied with classical ‘discipline’.
64 Miranda Hickman
Like Lewis, Dismorr links the Vorticist mode to the “cool” rather than the “hot”;
“restraint” rather than exuberance, and thus a welcome “refuge” from other
forces. Moreover, Dismorr’s text indicates how much she was swayed by Vorti-
cism’s reading of the need to stay clear of the emotional temper associated with
Italian Futurism – by how Vorticist detachment was often established via rejection
of the emotional tone the Vorticists associated with Marinetti and his comrades.
Although Futurist manifestos explicitly rejected amore (see above, note 21), Dis-
morr’s “June Night” reflects, from the Vorticist perspective, the problem that the
Futurists remained too allied with the romantic. Dismorr, I would suggest, was
likewise invested in such “coolness”, although for reasons different from those of
the male Vorticists – women of her day were already too linked to uncontrolled
emotion for her to be able to afford semiotic links with “volatility.” As the reso-
nance between the language of “June Night” and Lewis’s language above sug-
gests, Dismorr’s way out of the debilitating connection to ungoverned emotional-
ism, toward a “professional” attitude, was through the “precincts” of Vorticism.
In an adjacent line of thought, Vorticism also appealed to Dismorr for ways it
enabled a feminist venture beyond the constraints of Victorian femininities. Her
brief prose piece “Matilda”, in Blast 2, conjuring a Victorian “Angel in the House”
figure, strongly suggests a model of femininity (“set in an ordered and common-
place rightness”; “coveting neither delight or risk”)79 to which her imagination
responds with critical aversion. Her “Monologue” in Blast 2, meanwhile, signals
the linkage between what I have read as an imagined adoption of a Vorticist
“female masculinity” – one staged through the adoption of a Vorticist armored
body in the course of the speaker’s monologue – and access to the zones of “risk”,
along with “delight” therein, not afforded by such Victorian femininity.80
Both lines of attraction also ring true for Saunders’ writing of this time. As
I have noted elsewhere, Saunders’ poem “The Cave”, undated but likely com-
posed during the Vorticist period,81 indicates Saunders’ reading of Vorticism as
a kind of haven, one associated with craft, from unwanted outside forces. Saun-
ders’ imagery indicates that the poem’s scenario stands as parable for what she
preferred about involvement with Vorticism: the ‘polished’ beauty of speaker’s
‘beautiful’ cave environment – “Here underground the sea has scoured and
swept/ With industry it has pressed and hewn and polished” – rhymes signif-
icantly with Lewis’s characterization of Vorticism in Blast 1 as “proud” of its
79 Blast 2, p. 69.
80 Hickman: “Gender”, pp. 132–133.
81 “The Cave” is published in Peppin: Helen Saunders, pp. 31–32.
“polished sides” and “disastrous polished dance” (strikingly, both Saunders and
Lewis invoke “polished” twice).82
In play for both Dismorr and Saunders, too, is the thought of Wilhelm Worrin-
ger, which, through T.E. Hulme, significantly influenced Vorticist thought: Wor-
ringer linked the emergent abstract geometric idiom in the arts of this moment
(associated explicitly in his remarks with Epstein and Lewis) with sanctuary
from overwhelming phenomena.83 In Worringer’s psychological reading, the ten-
dency toward abstraction grew from a wish to find “a point of tranquility” and a
“refuge” from the “bewildering world of phenomena” (16). As it does in Dismorr’s
“June Night”, a similar understanding of Vorticist geometrics comes through in
Saunders’ “The Cave.” Also signalled by Saunders’ poem are ways that aggres-
sion (closely linked in this context with Vorticism) can be used to defend against
such unwanted external forces (“Outside rocks are jagged/ [...]. / But if you take a
hammer you can smash and batter/ their coarse features out of shape” (31).
Moreover, signals in Saunders’ letters of the Vorticist years suggest that, as
was the case for Dismorr, Vorticism enabled Saunders to imagine her way beyond
the confines of the kinds of femininity to which her upbringing had limited her.
As Brigid Peppin suggests, images such as Saunders’ 1913–14 gouache, Hammock,
which features an apparently female figure, suggests a woman ‘strung out’
between the values of her well-to-do bourgeois upbringing, and the domestic
femininity it entailed (signalled by the image of a Queen-Anne chair), and the
possibilities suggested by the avant-garde environment that the painting’s pro-
to-Vorticist idiom implies.84 Moreover, an early letter of Saunders to Lewis notes
that Saunders was, at Lewis’s suggestion, reading Otto Weininger’s Geschlecht
und Charakter (Sex and Character, 1903), the anti-feminist philosophical trea-
tise that compelled the attention of many early twentieth-century intellectuals
and artists. This, in turn, suggests Saunders’ sensitization to matters of gender,
attention to differences between ‘Woman’ and ‘Man’ (on which Weininger’s trea-
tise turns), and focus on the concept of ‘genius’, a state which Weininger saw
women as far less able to achieve than men. In a fashion reminiscent of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, Saunders betrayed self-doubt about her ability, as a woman,
to transcend ordinary existence toward such ‘genius’.85 Involvement with Vorti-
cism, with its pronounced ethos of masculinity, thus afforded her a refuge from
82 Blast 1, p.149.
83 See Worringer: Abstraction and Empathy.
84 For Peppin’s reading, see Hickman: “Gender”, p. 126.
85 For Saunders’s comments, see Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, p. 507. For my argument, see
Hickman: “Gender”, pp. 129–131.
66 Miranda Hickman
(to recall Dismorr’s terms, perhaps a kind of ‘medicine’ or antidote for) her usual
cultural positioning as a woman, one that in turn allowed closer approach to that
desired ideal.
Striking here – and this is where the link to Vorticism’s relationship to Futur-
ism comes in– is that both women notably invest in dimensions of Vorticism
that are established and highlighted through Vorticism’s elaborate quarrel with
Italian Futurism. Accented in Dismorr’s and Saunders’s narratives of rejection
are features that come to the fore as Vorticist rhetoric fends off Futurism. Dis-
morr’s narrator in “June Night” stages a refusal of the romanticism and hot-tem-
pered ‘volatility’ Vorticists associated with Futurism, as well as, pointedly, its
famous ‘Automobilism’ (skewered through her narrator’s parodic reference to the
“unmannerly throbbing vehicle” she decides to quit). For Saunders, meanwhile,
it is the ‘dispersals’ associated by Vorticism with Italian Futurism that seem at
issue when her speaker in “The Cave” turns away from a “sea” that is “too glitter-
ing and wide” and “Earth” that “spreads itself out with diffuse explanatory splen-
dor.” Thus both become invested in the work of dissociation specifically from
qualities that, at least within Vorticist thought, were strongly linked with Futurist
work. Vorticism refused the dimensions of Futurist performance and aesthetics
which, despite its ‘scorn’ for woman and amore, carry what Vorticism perceived
as unwanted femininity vitiating the masculinity to which it aspired. And these
specific lines of refusal are just the ones that Dismorr and Saunders also empha-
size in their brief narratives – here, if ironically, for feminist ends.
Summary
What this suggests is that, as we renew acquaintance with the visual art of Dismorr
and Saunders, to parse newly their uses of the Vorticist idiom, we might use the
patterns of their writing to illuminate the qualities and elements that for them,
made Vorticism preferable, and to highlight the feminist import of these. In light
of their writing, such feminist significance comes through not so much via spe-
cific representative images – for instance, of women apparently entrapped in one
of Saunders’s gouaches, which Richard Cork called “Female Figures Imprisoned”,
and where, Tickner suggests, “Saunders probably comes closer than anyone else
in the pre-war avant-garde to producing an overtly feminist painting.” Rather,
their feminist efforts are revealed through how the gendered codes of the Vorticist
idiom took on significance for Dismorr and Saunders in their cultural context –
how such an idiom offered ‘purity’, a ‘medicine’, respite from ‘volatility’, and
a polished ‘cave’ that served as sanctuary. The common theme here of forms of
relief suggests a new way of reading Worringer’s theme of ‘refuge’ from a feminist
angle: it underlines how much early twentieth-century aspiring women profes-

sional artists needed such forms of ideological ‘refuge’ as conditions of possibil-
ity for their work. If the masculinist clamor and bombast of Vorticism made it an
unlikely ‘point of tranquility’ (endowing with new meaning the Vorticist image
of ‘stillness’ at the centre of the vortex), this attests to what appears, through the
work of historicization, as the colossal power of binaries in this cultural environ-
ment – and the radical difficulties of navigating ‘femininity’ in this early twenti-
eth-century artistic milieu.
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Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Selena Daly
Mary Swanzy (1882–1978): A Futurist
Painter from Ireland
Abstract: Mary Swanzy was an important Irish avant-garde painter of the early
twentieth century. She studied in Paris for a time and is noted for her paintings
inspired by Cubism. However, her œuvre also shows influences of Futurism,
which she experienced first-hand in Italy prior to the First World War. This side
of her career has received much less attention than the Cubist influences. This
paper traces and analyses Swanzy’s relationship with Futurism, and highlights
the influences of Futurism on her work. In addition, I shall situate Swanzy’s rela-
tionship with Futurism within the context of the reception of the Italian move-
ment in Ireland. Avant-garde art was not particularly prominent in Ireland, a
country more concerned with political than artistic issues during the early twen-
tieth century. Unlike Cubism, Futurism never made any significant inroads into
Irish society. Cubist paintings were exhibited in Dublin in 1911 and 1912, but there
was never a similar Futurist exhibition. Nonetheless, Futurism received a mod-
erate amount of coverage in the Irish press, the characteristics of which will be
analysed in this essay.
Keywords: Futurism and Cubism, Modernist art in Ireland
Introduction
In André Breton’s “Le Monde au temps des surrealists” (1929), on which most of
Western Europe has been obliterated, the island of Ireland is magnified into an
enormous piece of land, completely dwarfing the dot beside it, which represents
Great Britain.1 Breton’s decision to accord Ireland such a prominent position on
the map was certainly motivated by his admiration for Irish Modernist literature,
and famous Irish writers such as William Butler Yeats, Jonathan Swift and, of
course, James Joyce. Ireland is much less recognized and renowned, however,
for the contributions of its people to the history of European Modernism in the
field of the visual arts. Recently, there has been an attempt to address the schol-
arly neglect of Ireland’s contribution to avant-garde art. The exhibition Analysing
Cubism, held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2013 highlighted
1 Breton: “Le Monde au temps des surréalistes,” pp. 26–27.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0006
the links between modern Irish artists and the avant-garde currents in Paris in
the first half of the twentieth century. As the title of the exhibition indicates, the
focus was on the relationship of Irish artists with Cubism; the influence of other
historical avant-garde movements on the cultural life of Ireland has not received
similar attention.
This essay examines the connections between Ireland and Futurism in the
early decades of the twentieth century (1910s–1930s) by examining the reactions
of the Irish cultural establishment to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s rowdy move-
ment, and particularly by focussing on the figure of Mary Swanzy (1882–1978).
She was an important Irish female painter of the twentieth century, whose con-
tribution to Irish modern art has long been underestimated and neglected, par-
tially because she travelled widely and was frequently absent from Ireland, and
partially because she experimented with many different artistic styles during her
long career, which makes her output (for the most part undated) hard to cate-
gorize. Swanzy is most noted for her experiments with a Cubist-inspired style
in the 1910s and 1920s, which have led some critics to identify her as the first
Irish Cubist. However, others, such as art historian S.B. Kennedy have argued
that although Swanzy “was certainly one of the first Irish artists to be familiar
with Cubism it is unlikely, as is occasionally suggested, that she was the first Irish
artist to adopt that manner, the latter distinction almost certainly belonging to
Mainie Jellett”.2 Indeed, given their long presence in Ireland and promotion of
Cubism, the female artists Mainie Jellett (1987–1944) and Evie Hone (1894–1955)
are more readily associated with Cubism in Ireland. Whatever her status in rela-
tion to Cubism, Mary Swanzy was without a doubt the first, and only, Irish Futur-
ist painter, a status that has thus far been denied to her. However, it is important
to bear in mind the words of Seán Kissane, curator of the 2013 Analysing Cubism
show, who felt that although “Cubism, Futurism and Fauvism are all of equal
interest to [Swanzy], […] she is beholden to no single style or school”.3
A biographical sketch of Mary Swanzy
Mary Swanzy was born in 1882 to a professional, Protestant family in Dublin. She
attended private schools in Dublin, Versailles and Freiburg, and was fluent in
French and German. She painted from an early age and, in 1897, began attending
classes at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, where she continued until
2 Kennedy: Irish Art and Modernism, p. 35.

3 Kissane: “Analysing Cubism”, p. 16.
72 Selena Daly
1912. From 1900, she also studied at the studio of May Manning, where John Butler
Yeats, brother of William and arguably Ireland’s most famous twentieth-century
painter, was an occasional teacher. She specialized in portraiture in these early
years, and when she was twenty-four, she exhibited a portrait of her father at the
Royal Hibernian Academy.
In 1908, she set up a studio in Dublin with painter Clare Marsh (1875–1923)
with the intention of continuing her work in traditional portraiture and teaching.
She found herself to be unsuited to this line of work, commenting many years later
that “in general ladies to not wish to be painted by ladies, and gentlemen do not
wish to be painted by ladies, ladies have to paint doggie-woggies and pussy-wus-
seys”.4 On the death of her father in 1913, Swanzy came into an inheritance, and
thereafter, enjoyed more freedom to pursue her career in painting as she wished.
As she herself commented, this was not only due to her financial circumstances
but also her gender. Although she may have felt curtailed by her gender in 1908,
ultimately it afforded her the freedom she desired to travel internationally and
to paint. She remarked that “if I had been born a Henry and not a Mary, my life
would have been very different”.5
After spending time in both France and Italy before the First World War (see
below), she returned to Ireland for a time. Following the Armistice, she travelled
to Czechoslovakia and to the Balkans to assist in the aid programmes there. Sub-
sequently, in the 1920s, she spent a number of years travelling around the Pacific
Islands, including Samoa and Hawaii, where she had relatives. She painted
numerous landscapes during these years, which were reminiscent of Paul Gau-
guin’s Tahiti paintings. Swanzy relocated to London in 1926, where she would
remain until her death in 1978 (save for the years of the Second World War, which
she spent in Dublin). This self-imposed, quasi exile from Ireland for most of her
adult life partially explains Swanzy’s absence from the canon of modern Irish
art. She said in the 1970s, to longtime collector of her work Patrick Murphy, “I
deeply love Ireland and have thought very seriously of going back to live and die
in it, but I couldn’t stand the narrowness of my life there”.6 By the 1930s, she had
left behind her Cubo-Futurist experimentation and painted in a variety of eclectic
styles tending towards the allegorical. She continued to exhibit in both London
and Dublin, and travelled frequently to mainland Europe.
4 Interview with Anthony O’Mahony on RTÉ Radio 1, 5 May 1977.

5 Quoted in Brennan: Mary Swanzy, n.p.
6 Quoted in Brennan: Mary Swanzy, n.p. 
The fortunes of avant-garde art in Ireland
Ireland is unusual in its relationship to avant-garde art because its most famous
proponents of European-inspired modern art were in fact women, primarily
Jellett, Hone and Swanzy.7 These three women, and many more besides them,
spent periods of time studying on the continent, and France in particular exerted
an enormous influence on the development of Irish art in the early twentieth
century. Since the mid-1800s, many Irish artists had taken up residence in Paris
in order to study at one of the many academies there, and from the last decades
of the nineteenth century, Irish women also followed this tradition. Like Swanzy,
these young women were usually Protestant with independent means. Various
reasons have been put forward for this unusual association of female painters
and avant-garde experimentation in Ireland. Alan and Mary Hobart suggested:
“At a time when the national school demanded symbolic images of ‘men of the
west’ – a kind of ‘free state’ realism – artists like Mary Swanzy, Evie Hone and
Mainie Jellett were less constrained by convention [… and] were alive to the most
innovative forms of European painting.”8
Anne Crookshank related this state of affairs to the Irish art scene, rather
than national politics, writing:
It was the women, not the mainly very conservative male artists of the 1920s and 30s who
brought Ireland into the 20th century. Always free of the shackles which men had made for
themselves in their academies and in their attitude to life, women – now that they could go
out and earn a living – were able to experiment with excitement and verve.9
However, in spite of the fact that many Irish painters were being exposed to the
latest trends in post-Impressionist art while in Paris, it would be an extremely
slow process for these Modernist trends to be accepted either by other artists in
Ireland or the general public. The principal reason behind the wariness in Ireland
towards modern art is to be found in the country’s particular political and cul-
tural history. The partition of Ireland and the founding of the Irish Free State in
the early 1920s “created a political climate that was suspicious, inward-looking
and xenophobic”.10 The Gaelic Revival movement began in the late nineteenth
century as a literary phenomenon but soon spread to other artistic fields. The
7 Marshall: “Women and the Visual Arts in Ireland”, p. 28.

8 Alan and Mary Hobart: “Mary Swanzy”, p. 4.
9 Crookshank: “Introduction”, p. 6.
10 Kissane: “Analysing Cubism”, p. 15.
74 Selena Daly
nationalist aims of this movement appeared at odds with the international and
forward-looking spirit of Modernism. Robert O’Bryne commented:
Within Ireland, opposition to the introduction of non-national influences habitually sprang

from an understandable fear that the consequence of this cultural invasion would be the
engulfing of indigenous traditions. Modernism was thus regularly contested on the basis
that it was not Irish.11
Terry Eagleton has also noted that there was “little or no avant-garde” in Ireland,
continuing that “there could be no exhilarating encounter between art and tech-
nology in such an industrially backward nation”.12 He argued that it was the
Anglo-Irish population (i.e. Protestants) who embraced Modernism. Because
they were politically marginalized from the struggle for Irish independence from
Britain, they turned to Modernism as “an ersatz kind of identity and belonging, a
community of sorts [… and] were remarkably well-placed to provide the country
with a modern vanguard, as a displaced coterie with elitist instincts and cosmo-
politan sympathies”.13
In spite of these challenging conditions for modern artists in Ireland,
the avant-garde did succeed in penetrating the Irish cultural landscape in the
1910s. In 1911, Ellen Duncan (later curator of the Municipal Gallery of Modern
Art, Dublin) organized at the United Arts Club in Dublin an exhibition entitled
Works by Post-Impressionist Painters, featuring paintings by André Derain, Paul
Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The
following year, she held an exhibition of Cubist paintings at the same gallery,
showing works by Picasso and Juan Gris. This exhibition, Modern French Pic-
tures, held from 29 March to 4 May 1912, was the first to show Cubist paintings
in Ireland. Cubist paintings would not be on display again in Ireland until 1923,
when Mainie Jellett organized a group exhibition for the Society of Dublin Paint-
ers at the St. Stephen’s Green Gallery (20 October 1923 to 17 November 1923). Her
work was met with incomprehension and criticism.14
11 O’Byrne: “Irish Modernism”, p. 13.

12 Eagleton: Heathcliff and the Great Hunger, p. 299.
13 Eagleton: Heathcliff and the Great Hunger, p. 200.
14 See Coulter: “Mainie Jellett”, pp. 98–100.
Futurism and Ireland
Marinetti’s movement did not enjoy a similar level of attention as Cubism in Irish
society.15 There was never an exhibition of Futurist painting in Ireland during
Marinetti’s lifetime (nor, indeed since), and Marinetti never travelled to Dublin.16
Any direct contact that Irish writers and artists had with Futurism occurred either
in Great Britain or on mainland Europe. Ireland’s most famous author, James
Joyce, encountered Futurism while he was living in Trieste in the 1910s, and Futur-
ist influences in his work have been traced by a number of scholars.17 Ireland did
also feature on Marinetti’s cultural horizon. In his pre-Futurist, Symbolist phase,
he was acquainted with the poetry of Irish poet William Butler Yeats, and he pub-
lished extracts from Yeat’s play Deirdre in his magazine Poesia in 1907. The two
also met on at least two occasions between March 1912 and June 1914, when Mari-
netti made trips to London.18
Once he had launched Futurism in 1909, Marinetti included Ireland in his pro-
jected sphere of influence. As is well known, Marinetti was famous for sending out
announcements and copies of his publications to critics and newspapers all over
the world, in order to promote Futurism. Luca Somigli has observed that “even in
countries where there was not an active futurist artistic practice, the publication
of manifestoes in the popular press became a way to establish a presence, to get
the public interested and involved in the futurist project”.19 This was the case in
Ireland, where Futurism received a moderate amount of coverage. It seems likely
that Mary Swanzy, who was resident in Ireland for most of the period between
1909 and 1914, would have read these newspaper reports and would have been
kept up-to-date with Futurist activities in Italy, London and beyond.
For the most part, Futurism in Ireland received a similar treatment in the press
as it had in Great Britain, and was generally greeted with a mixture of disdain and
dismissive bemusement. One point which does set Irish press reaction apart from
15 For a more detailed discussion of Futurism and Ireland, see my entry in the Handbook of
International Futurism, ed. by Günter Berghaus, forthcoming 2015.
16 An anonymous art critic in the Irish Times suggested that in the wake of the Post-Impression-
ist and Cubist exhibitions in Dublin in 1911 and 1912 “there is talk of the Arts Club Committee
affording us later on in the year the opportunity of seeing some of the Futurists’ productions”,
but this did not come to pass (Anonymous: “Post-Impressionists and Cubeists [sic]”, Irish Times,
29 March 1912).
17 See McCourt: “James Joyce: Triestine Futurist?” and Del Greco Lobner: “James Joyce and Ital-
ian Futurism”.
18 Vinall: “English Contributors to ‘Poesia’”, p. 558.
19 Somigli: Legitimizing the Artist, p. 165.
76 Selena Daly
its British counterparts is the relative attention paid to Marinetti’s political activ-
ities, hyper-nationalist outlook and revolutionary goals. Luca Somigli has noted
that “the political dimension of futurism was almost completely erased from the
reports in the British press”,20 and that only one British newspaper journalist
mentioned Marinetti’s involvement in Italy’s campaign in Tripoli, Libya in 1912.
The same was not true in Ireland. In fact, in an Irish Times article of August 1912
about Futurist literature, the anonymous writer was confident of a familiarity
with Marinetti among the newspaper’s readership precisely because of his links
to the Tripoli campaign, writing: “Signor Marinetti’s name is, no doubt, known
to many of our readers; his championship of the Italian attack upon Tripoli gave
him a wider notoriety than he could ever have won with his philosophy of art”
(24 August 1912). The reason for the different response in Ireland may be that
aspects of the Futurist programme were deemed to have particular resonance and
relevance for the country’s political circumstances. In the first Irish Times article
dedicated to Futurism, dated 5 May 1909, the commentary concluded by relating
the content of the first manifesto to the Irish context, stating:
If the ‘Futurists’ do in the next ten years a tenth part of what they propose to do, they will
have warmed their hands to some purpose. […] The younger generation in Ireland will
follow with interest, and possibly with some sympathy, the developments of this fiery
Italian movement against the cramping tendencies of a socialistic age. These young men
may not be destined to go far, but they manifestly intend to go fast.
Mary Swanzy in France and Italy
Through coverage in newspapers such as The Irish Times, and through her expo-
sure to avant-garde circles in Paris, Mary Swanzy would surely have been aware
of Futurism from its inception or shortly thereafter. However, direct engagement
with Futurism was only possible for those artists, like Swanzy, who had the oppor-
tunity to travel beyond the island of Ireland. In 1905, Swanzy spent time in Paris
studying under Auguste Joseph Delécluse in his studio for women and practicing
her technique. The following year, she returned to Paris and worked at the acde-
mies of Antonio de la Gándara (a well-known portrait painter), Filippo Colarossi
(also known as ‘Académie de la Rose’) and at La Grande Chaumière (home of the
‘Art Indépendant’21). She possibly spent time also in Matisse’s atelier and visited
20 Somigli: Legitimizing the Artist, p. 173.

21 It was ‘independent’ of the ‘official’, State-sponsored style of painting promoted by the École
des Beaux-Arts.
Gertrude Stein’s monthly salon, where she saw unframed paintings by Picasso.22
These encounters exposed her to the work of the Fauves and the proto-Cubists,
but she did not immediately adopt a Cubist style in her paintings.
As stated above, Swanzy came into an inheritance when her father died in
1913. At this point, as she remembered in a 1977 interview, “I went away from here
[Dublin] for just a change of air, to settle my life and see what I would do and I
went to Italy”.23 According to this interview, she had planned to stay in Italy for at
least five or six years, developing and extending her artistic education by visiting
the galleries and museums there. However, the First World War broke out and
she was forced to return to Ireland. Notoriously vague about her movements, it
is unclear whether she returned to Ireland in summer 1914 when war in Europe
broke out, or in May 1915 when Italy abandoned her neutral stance and entered
the conflict. Swanzy did not remain in Ireland for long. She made trips to the
Continent and spent eighteen months in Saint Tropez.24
Little is known about Swanzy’s time in Italy prior to the First World War,
although it is almost certain that she encountered Futurism first-hand. We know
that she based herself in Florence during this time. 1913 was one of the most active
years for Futurism in the Tuscan capital and Florence was animated by Lacerba
and its editors Giovanni Papini and Ardegno Soffici. In late 1913, when Swanzy
was residing in Florence, the lacerbiani staged an exhibition of Futurist artworks
at the Libreria Gonnelli (13 November 1913 – 18 January 1914). Lacerba dubbed
it “the most important, the most modern, and the newest [exhibition] that has
ever been mounted in this medieval town”25 and, apparently, over 6,000 paying
visitors attended. Was Swanzy one of them? It is entirely possible. Among the
works exhibited were four works by Giacomo Balla, all dated 1913; Umberto Boc-
cioni’s Stati d’animo (States of Mind, 1911) and Costruzione orizzontale (Horizontal
Construction, 1912, a portrait of his mother); Luigi Russolo’s Automobile in corsa
(Racing Motor-car, 1912–13) and Volumi dinamici (Dynamic Volumes, 1913) as well
as works by Gino Severini and Carlo Carrà. 26 She may also have attended the
grande serata futurista, dubbed the ‘Battle of Florence’, held at the Teatro Verdi
on 12 December 1913, at which Marinetti, Boccioni, and Carrà all spoke.27 The
performance was a riotous affair with the audience estimated at between 5,000
22 Campbell: “Art Students and Lady Travellers”, p. 20.

23 Interview with Anthony O’Mahony on RTÉ Radio 1, 5 May 1977.
24 Brennan: Mary Swanzy, n.p.
25 “[…] la più importante, la più moderna, e la più nuova [esposizione] che sia stata mai fatta in
questa medioevale città.” Lacerba: “Esposizione futurista di Lacerba”, p. 9.
26 Del Puppo: Lacerba, pp. 167–171.
27 Berghaus: Italian Futurist Theatre, pp. 122–128.
78 Selena Daly
and 7,000, according to Lacerba and Corriere della sera, respectively.28 Given her
interest in avant-garde art, her presence in Florence at this time, and the discern-
ible Futurist influences in her paintings, it seems highly likely that she directly
encountered Futurism during this period.
Futurist elements in works by Mary Swanzy
Attention will now be given to paintings by Mary Swanzy that display a particular
relationship to the ideas and concepts of Futurist painting. In 1923, Swanzy iden-
tified herself as a landscape painter when she travelled to Honolulu,29 and much
of her Futurist-inspired work focusses on natural landscapes (see Fig. 2). Although
she entitled one of her works Oil Painting à la mode d’André Lhote (undated), in
recognition of the influence of this Cubist painter on her work, these landscape
paintings, usually described as ‘cubist’, actually have far more in common with
Futurist principles of painting. Most of Swanzy’s paintings were not named by the
artist herself; thus the ‘Cubist’ designation attached to many of her landscapes is
an external identification and not indicative of Swanzy’s declared influences. The
curved lines, which distort and fragment the pictorial surface of Swanzy’s land-
scapes are a feature not present in landscapes by Cubist painters, such as Maisons
à l’Estaque (Houses at L’Estaque, 1908) by Georges Braque or Paysage (Landscape,
1911) by Albert Gleizes. Swanzy’s landscapes indicate a familiarity with the tenets
of Futurist painting, and are particularly similar to the compositional style of many
of Giacomo Balla’s works, which also show landscapes and natural subjects.
One of the central aims of Futurist painting was to “render the invisible”,30
and this was a feature of the work of Boccioni, Russolo and Balla. In an article in
Lacerba in March 1913, Boccioni explained:
For me atmosphere is a materiality that exists between objects, distorting plastic values.
Instead of making it float overhead like a puff of air (because culture has taught me that
atmosphere is intangible or made of gas, etc.), I feel it, seek it, seize hold of it and empha-
size it by using all the various effects which light, shadows, and streams of energy have on
it. Hence, I create the atmosphere!31
Boccioni continued that this empty space between objects was represented by
“endless lines and currents emanat[ing] from our objects, making them live in
28 See Berghaus: Italian Futurist Theatre, p. 122.

29 Cullinane: Mary Swanzy, p. 33.
30 Boccioni et al: “The Exhibitors to the Public”, p. 107.
31 Boccioni: “The Plastic Foundations”, p. 140.
the environment which has been created by their vibrations”.32 This interaction
between the subject and the surrounding environment was also achieved by the
“Futurist interpenetration of planes”.33
The Futurist desire to impart solidity to the atmosphere and to represent
the distortion of vision due to the presence of atmospheric strata is particularly
evident in the work of Luigi Russolo, for example Solidità della nebbia (Solidity
of Fog, 1912), and Giacomo Balla’s studies of swifts in flight, which he began in
1913 and continued with for much of the following decade. His painting, Paesag-
gio (Landscape, 1913), is also emblematic in this regard. Both Balla and Russolo
employed curved lines and concentric circles in their representations of air and
atmosphere, a technique with which Swanzy would appear to have been familiar.
Like the works of Balla from the late 1910s and early 1920s, the colours change in
Swanzy’s paintings each time two lines intersect and form a shape.
Fig. 1. Canal Embankment (undated).
32 Boccioni: “The Plastic Foundations”, p. 141.

33 Boccioni: “Futurist Sculpture”, p. 114. Róisín Kennedy mentions in passing a link between
Boccioni’s ideas and Swanzy’s experiments with a Cubo-Futurist aesthetic but does not develop
this point further (Róisín Kennedy: “Cubism, a Feminist Aesthetic”, p. 77).
80 Selena Daly
Fig. 2. White Tower (c.1926).
White Tower is Swanzy’s most overtly Futurist-style painting. According to

Swanzy herself, it was painted while she was in Italy. However, like most of her
work, the painting is undated and she only recalled to Patrick Murphy (the paint-
ing’s current owner) in a conversation in 1971 that it had been painted “many
years before”.34 After Swanzy’s death, Murphy suggested the date range 1925–
1927, which has been widely adopted as definitive. However, in a recent inter-
view with me in August 2013, he revealed that he now believed it possible that
this painting (and her other Cubo-Futurist works) could have been completed
earlier, perhaps during the years 1914–1920. Such a date appears convincing to
me. Having been exposed to Futurist artworks and writings, it is plausible that
she was first inspired to experiment in that style at that stage in her career, rather
than more than ten years later.
The influence of Futurist ideas on White Tower is unmistakable. Indeed, in his
memoir, Patrick Murphy recalled an anecdote, according to which Beth Straus,
then Vice-President of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, mistook the paint-
34 Murphy: A Passion for Collecting, p. 78.

ing for a Futurist masterpiece.35 The tower of the title is one of the many structures
in the Tuscan town of San Gimignano; yet, in Swanzy’s painting it resembles not
so much a medieval tower, as an urban skyscraper. The smooth façade and grey
colour of the tower suggest a concrete construction, and the low vantage point of
the viewer makes it even appear taller. It rises up out of the earth with an energy
and dynamism similar to that evoked in many Futurist paintings. In addition, the
clean lines and bulk of the tower also bring to mind the architectural sketches
of Antonio Sant’Elia. The predominantly green and blue tones set this painting
apart from the more traditionally ‘Cubist’ palette Swanzy employed in paintings
such as Canal Embankment (undated; see Fig. 1).
Fig. 3. Propellors (1942).
Although best known for her Cubo-Futurist and Samoan landscapes, Swanzy
did not neglect other subjects in her work. Two quite similar paintings, Pro-
pellors (1942; see Fig. 3) and Futuristic Study with Skyscrapers and Propellors36
35 Murphy: A Passion for Collecting, p. 267.

36 This painting was not named by Swanzy herself but was given to it later. Hence the term
‘Futuristic’ rather than ‘Futurist’.
82 Selena Daly
(undated), show evidence of the influence of Futurist ideas in both their compo-
sition and their subject matter. These paintings also confirm the difficulty in accu-
rately dating Swanzy’s paintings given that she explored similar styles at different
times and returned to Futurist-inspired subjects in the 1940s, after a gap of twenty
years or more. The composition of both paintings is almost identical. Propellors on
long poles shoot out from the bottom-right-hand corner of the canvas, creating an
energetic sense of forward motion. The paintings are more abstract than many of
Swanzy’s works but demonstrate a clear interest in objects associated with moder-
nity and speed. While not concerned with the depiction of movement itself, as the
Futurists were, these paintings do seem to have drawn inspiration “from the tan-
gible miracles of contemporary life, from the iron network of speed which winds
around the earth, from the transatlantic liners, the dreadnoughts, the marvelous
flights that plow the skies, the shadowy audaciousness of submarine navigators”.37
Fig. 4. Woman with White Bonnet (c.1920).
37 Boccioni et al: “Manifesto of Futurist Painters”, p. 62.

Like most of her work, Swanzy’s portrait Woman with White Bonnet (Fig. 4) is
undated. It is generally accepted to have been painted before 1920 in Paris as
a photograph exists of it, taken in a studio at No. 229 Boulevard Raspail in that
year.38 Woman with White Bonnet is a three-quarter-length portrait of a young
woman sitting indoors in front of a small easel, paintbrush in hand. The bonnet
of the title appears to be a cloche hat, of the kind fashionable in the immedi-
ate post-war period. A curl of black hair peeps out from under the bonnet onto
the woman’s tilted cheek. The face has expressionless black eyes, small lips,
and pinched but plump features. The style is similar to that of the landscapes
discussed above, in which the surrounding atmosphere is made visible and in
which the borders between objects are not fixed and intersect with one another.
Swanzy’s portrait has been compared to Pablo Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein
(1905–06),39 which Swanzy saw in Stein’s house, although this link seems to me
to be, at best, tenuous. Picasso portrayed Stein, sitting in an armchair with her
face turned sideways, in a monumental, ‘Primitivist’ manner. Swanzy’s portrait,
on the other hand, features the dissecting lines of Cubo-Futurism, of which there
is no trace in Picasso’s portrait.
A more convincing influence on Swanzy’s portrait is Umberto Boccioni’s
Costruzione orizzontale (1912), which has not before been identified as a possible
influence on this work. It was exhibited at the Lacerba show in Florence in 1913,
and Swanzy may have encountered it there. Once more, in terms of subject matter
and basic composition, there are obvious similarities between the two works.
Costruzione orizzontale is a portrait of the artist’s mother, sitting at home in front
of a balcony window. However, the brushwork is much simpler and less dense
than that of his more famous painting Materia (Matter, 1912). In accordance with
the tenets of Futurist painting, there are multiple intersecting planes in Boccioni’s
portrait. Swanzy employs a similar technique in her portrait. Pushing up past the
figure’s right shoulder and almost plunging into her eye is a thick pillar, which
could be a tower or a chimney stack. Plants sprout from the woman’s left shoulder
and right hip, revealing no separation between the subject and the background.
The woman’s body appears transparent at times, as the brown wood of her chair
and easel can be seen overlapping with and penetrating her body. As the Futurist
painters declared in La pittura futurista: Manifesto tecnico (Technical Manifesto
of Futurist Painting, 1910): “Our bodies penetrate the sofas upon which we sit,
and the sofas penetrate our bodies”.40 While Boccioni’s Costruzione orizzontale
38 Campbell: “Art Students and Lady Travellers”, p. 143.

39 Kennedy: “Squaring up to Mary Swanzy”, n.p.
40 Boccioni et al: “Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto”, p. 65.
84 Selena Daly
represents a more sophisticated application of Futurist principles, Swanzy’s por-

trait is nonetheless a striking interpretation of these proclamations.
Conclusion
In his well-known 1991 study on Irish Art and Modernism, art historian S.B.
Kennedy claimed that “as soon as one begins to examine specific details of the
period and the work of a number of artists it becomes clear that there was in
Ireland a substantial knowledge and understanding of Modernism in many quar-
ters”.41 There is some truth to Kennedy’s claim, to which the coverage of Futurism
in the Irish press can attest. However, it must always be remembered that artists
gained exposure to the latest artistic trends on their travels to France and Italy,
and often struggled to gain acceptance for their work from the conservative Irish
art establishment.
Mary Swanzy has not had a solo exhibition in Ireland since the last two in
Dublin (1982) and Sligo (1987), neither of which constituted a comprehensive
examination of her œuvre. As the first Irish artist to apply not only Cubist but also
Futurist principles to her paintings, a re-evaluation of her place in the canon of
modern Irish art is long overdue.
Bibliography
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Brennan, Fionnuala: Mary Swanzy 1882–1978. BA Thesis. Dublin: Trinity College, 1983.
Breton, André: “Le Monde au temps des surréalistes.” Le Surréalisme en 1929. Special issue of
Varietés (Brussels), June 1929. 26–27.
Boccioni, Umberto: “Futurist Sculpture, 11 April 1912.” Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and
113–119.
—: “The Plastic Foundations of Futurist Sculpture and Painting, 15 March 1913.” Lawrence
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Futurist Painters, 11 February 1911.” Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman,
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—: “Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto, 11 April 1910.” Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi,
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2009. 64–67.
41 Kennedy: Irish Art and Modernism, p. 1.

—: “The Exhibitors to the Public, February 1912.” Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura
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eds.: Irish Women Artists: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day. Exhibition
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“Esposizione futurista di Lacerba.” Lacerba 1:23 (1 December 1913): 9.
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Sound documents
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Silvia Contarini
Valentine de Saint-Point: A Futurist Woman?
Abstract: This essay discusses the fascinating and extraordinary career of the
French artist Valentine de Saint-Point (1875–1953). It unfolded on three continents
(Europe, America, Africa) and over a span of fifty years, covering the first half
of the twentieth century. Saint-Point had wide-ranging interests that made her
engage in spiritualism and theosophy, participate in avant-garde art movements,
including Futurism, contribute to the aesthetics of Ideism, convert to Islam,
support the anti-colonial struggle and, throughout her life, question and explore
the identity of woman. During her years in Egypt, she became rather reclusive and
pursued highly esoteric interests. Evaluating the broad span of her œuvre, which
includes poems, plays, essays, manifestos, paintings, drawings, dance, political
lectures and journalistic activities, I come to the conclusion that the works which
merit more extensive study can be reduced to her writings and manifestos of the
years 1912–1914, that is to say, to the period during which she veered towards
modernity and was an important member of the Futurist movement. Valentine
de Saint-Point’s legacy is tied to her theoretical rather than her artistic output,
during a short period overshadowed by Futurism. The texts examined here are
her Manifeste de la femme futuriste (Manifesto of the Futurist Woman) and Man-
ifeste futuriste de la luxure (Futurist Manifesto of Lust), as well as her text on the
Métachorie (a theoretical reflection on her Ideist dance practice).
Keywords: Futurism in Paris, Futurism and Feminism, gender issues, the women’s
question, feminine identity, the New Woman
Saint-Point’s life and œuvre: Questions of approach

and methodology
Until ten years ago, one could have still said that the French artist Valentine de
Saint-Point (1875–1953) was an unknown entity in the French world of letters.
However, ever since the 2010 New York exhibition that was dedicated to her
and the publication of the imposing catalogue, Feminine Futures, edited by the
curator, Adrien Sina,1 this is no longer the case. Sina’s volume contains a rich
documentation, new factual data and remarkable reproductions of her work, as
1 See the review, “Valentine de Saint-Point: Performance, War, Politics and Eroticism” in the
International Yearbook of Futurism Studies 3 (2013).
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0007
88 Silvia Contarini
well as informative essays by Sina himself, Giovanni Dotoli (on the relationship
between Valentine de Saint-Point and Ricciotto Canudo) and Nancy Gaye Moore
(on Saint-Point and dance), amongst others. It is worth noting here a few others,
albeit less ambitious studies that have appeared over the past ten years or so in
France and Italy. These include Ilena Antici’s fine article on the Manifeste de la
femme futuriste (The Manifesto of Futurist Woman, 1912), which offers an evoc-
ative interpretation of this important manifesto; Élodie Gaden’s doctoral thesis
on writings by women in Francophone Egypt (2013), in which multiple chap-
ters are dedicated to Valentine de Saint-Point’s Orientalism and to the years she
spent in Egypt; Elisa Borghino’s doctoral thesis, Des voix en voie (Voices on the
March, 2012), which is an attempt – although not always successful – to retrace
the network of relationships that were established by a few female figures at the
heart of the French historical avant-garde.2 The biographies written by Véronique
Richard de La Fuente (2003) and Barbara Ballardin (2007) have not always made
their sources explicit any have therefore not added any substantial new insights
to scholarship. Finally, I should mention my own publications, comprising a few
chapters dedicated to Valentine de Saint-Point’s Futurist period in my book, La
Femme futuriste (The Futurist Woman, 2006), a study of the trajectory that led
Valentine de Saint-Point from Futurism to anti-colonialism (2006), as well as a
brief essay that concentrated on Valentine de Saint-Point’s concept of women’s
theatre (2012).
Despite the recent rise of interest in her work, there continue to be grey
areas with regards to certain transitional periods in Valentine de Saint-Point’s
life, namely the years during and after the Great War, when she undertook some
U-turns that could be seen as surprising. The biographical aspect, more or less
covered in the studies mentioned above, had already been the object of an inter-
esting article by Abel Verdier, entitled “Une étrange petite niece de Lamartine,
Valentine de Saint-Point” (Lamartine’s Strange Grandniece, 1972), and Fawzia
Zouari’s doctoral thesis, Valentine de Saint-Point au carrefour de deux cultures
(Valentine de Saint-Point at the Crossroads of Two Cultures, 1983), which the
author supplemented with a biographical novel, La Caravane des chimeres (The
Caravan of Chimeras, 1990). This ensemble of recent studies does not fill in all
the gaps in our knowledge about Valentine de Saint-Point, but gives a sufficiently
satisfactory overview of this unusual artist’s life and œuvre.
I do not wish to repeat here what has already been written about Valentine de
Saint-Point’s life story, nor list her numerous works (some of which are mentioned
2 These include Sonia Delaunay, Claire Goll, Marie Laurencin, Hélène d’Œttingen, Valentine de
Saint-Point, and Elsa Triolet.
in the bibliography). However, I should like to highlight some unusual features

of her fascinating and extraordinary career that unfolded on three continents
(Europe, America, Africa) and over a span of fifty years, covering the first half of
the twentieth century. Saint-Point took an interest in spiritualism and theosophy,
became a member of avant-garde art movements such as Futurism, contributed
to the aesthetics of Ideism,3 supported the anti-colonial struggle and explored
the identity of woman. She converted to Islam and moved to Egypt, where she
became rather reclusive and pursued highly esoteric interests. Her wide-ranging
œuvre included poems, plays, essays, manifestos, paintings, drawings, dance,
political lectures and journalistic activities. They were diverse enough to appeal
to dissimilar constituencies and can be studied according to the criteria of differ-
ent academic disciplines. It is therefore not astonishing that her life or her works
have found highly diverging, if not conflicting interpretations. Those who cherish
her rôle as muse and protagonist in the artistic and intellectual life of the Parisian
Belle Époque highlight her relationship with Ricciotto Canudo and her intense
public life as organizer, speaker and editor, which brought her into contact with
virtually everybody who counted as an artist, writer, musician, painter or sculp-
tor in Paris. Others focus on her work as a performer and emphasize her contri-
bution to modern dance, especially with her Métachorie, the Ideist dance she the-
orized on and put into practice during the years 1914–1917. In recent years, great
attention has been paid to her Futurist manifestos and her taste for a scandalous
life outside the norms of respected society. Much less known is her philosophical,
theosophical and esoteric vision and her conversion to Islam. Her life in Egypt
will impassion those who want to see in Valentine de Saint-Point either a woman
participating in the anti-colonial struggle, or a woman who was deeply attached
to the spiritual values of the Orient.
Faced with such an abundance of works and plurality of interpretative
approaches, any new attempt to address the attraction that Valentine de Saint-
Point elicits requires a precise justification of the interest one is bringing to
this artist and of the methodology chosen for the investigation. One should ask
oneself if any attention paid to Valentine de Saint-Point’s life and personality,
tainted as it is by scandal, mystery and exoticism, is not to the detriment of her
work. Saint-Point was a free and fascinating woman who led a passionate and
singular life; she approached the challenges and transformations of her times in
an original manner and with a strongly independent spirit. Moreover, her choice
3 Idéisme was a philosophical and aesthetic current that was opposed to Naturalism and
sought develop works of art that were expressions of ideas rather than reflections of mundane
reality.
90 Silvia Contarini
of the Orient cannot help but intrigue us today.4 But, when everything has been
taken into account and the entirety of her œuvre is evaluated, those works which
merit more extensive study can be reduced to her writings and manifestos of the
years 1912–1914, that is to say, to the period during which she veered towards
modernity and her rapprochement with Futurism (I shall return to her interest
in other avant-garde movements later). The texts in question here are her Mani-
feste de la femme futuriste (Manifesto of the Futurist Woman, 1912) and Manifeste
futuriste de la luxure (Futurist Manifesto of Lust, 1913), to which one should add
her text on the Métachorie (Beyond the Chorus, 1913), followed by her practical
realization of her ‘Ideist dance’. Herein lies the first paradox: Valentine de Saint-
Point’s legacy is tied to her theoretical rather than her artistic output, during a
short period overshadowed by Futurism. This will be the subject of this study.
This takes us to the second, absolutely crucial aspect of how to interpret
Valentine de Saint-Point’s creative writings. Should one seek coherent through-
lines in her works? Is there any compelling connection between her life and
œuvre? Should one look for biographical aspects in her texts, literary or theo-
retical, written at the beginning of the century or thirty years later? The tempta-
tion towards a unified reading that aims at finding some points of convergence is
strong; moreover, the diachronic perspective has a certain justification. I myself
have proposed that her reflections concerning women were a common thread
between her life and works, beyond the inevitable detours, ruptures, choices and
U-turns.5 For his part, Adrien Sina has attempted to find coherence in her pen-
chant for esotericism, which Valentine de Saint-Point never quite abandoned.6
When others have preferred to underline the rupture caused by her conversion
and move to Egypt, they did so in order to set her ‘orientalist’ life in opposition
to her Parisian years.7 Nevertheless, this diachronic perspective, although com-
pletely legitimate, risks giving a distorted view of Saint-Point, and one is right to
4 Élodie Gaden emphasizes Valentine de Saint-Point’s adherence to the anti-colonial struggle

and sees her “du cote des subalterns” (on the side of the subalterns) (Gaden, p. 387), a statement
of which the adequacy is not all that evident.
5 Contarini: “Valentine de Saint-Point: Du futurisme à l’anticolonialisme.”
6 See the texts by Adrien Sina in the volume he edited, Feminine Future, notably on pp. 17–20.
7 This is clearly the view advocated by Zaouri in her dissertation, Valentine de Saint-Point au car-
refour de deux cultures, and more recently in a more nuanced manner by Gaden: Écrits littéraires
de femmes en Égypte francophone. Zouari sees in Saint-Point’s conversion to Islam a healthy dis-
tancing from, even renunciation of, her previous life, and notably a rejection of Futurism; Gaden
highlights the fact that Saint-Point, while in Egypt, did not frequent the Futurist branch in Cairo,
but rather established contact with Egyptian feminists circles. See Gaden: Écrits littéraires de
femmes en Égypte francophone, p. 101.
question whether or not the search for such linear narratives is always useful and
justified. A synchronic outlook, centred on a short period and on specific themes,
can prove to be more fruitful. This is the angle I have chosen to adopt here.
Thus, my attempt to determine whether Valentine de Saint-Point was a Futur-
ist or not does not yield to any fascination with her colourful biography, neither
does it seek for any coherence in her extended career over several decades. My
study focusses on her Futurist manifestos and addresses the question of why
Valentine de Saint-Point felt drawn towards Futurism. It investigates her contri-
bution to Futurism, the influence of the Italian avant-garde on her thought and
work, and finally, it seeks to assess the relevance of her œuvre to our contempo-
rary world.
Fig. 1. Valentine de Saint-Point. Photograph by Léopold Reutlinger, c.1906. Vintage hand-tinted

gelatin silver bromide print. (Adrien Sina Collection)
The New Woman: Valentine de Saint-Point and feminism
This essay seeks to establish whether or not Valentine de Saint-Point can be

considered an avant-garde artist, to what extent her work, her positions and her
choices brought her in line with Futurism, and whether she anticipated artis-
tic tendencies or prefigured ideas that were subsequently developed further
by others. In setting out my investigations in these terms, one incontrovertible
92 Silvia Contarini
element is missing: the woman question. It is without doubt that Valentine de

Saint-Point took a great interest in women’s identity, their rôle and fate; it was no
coincidence that the recent exhibition curated by Adrien Sina placed in its title
the word ‘feminine’ before the word ‘futures’.
Valentine de Saint-Point’s reflections and work revolved around women.
She made this explicit in her Futurist manifestos, her manifesto on dance, and
in other texts published in those years, e.g. Une femme et le désir (A Woman and
Desire, 1910), La Femme dans la littérature italienne (Women in Italian Literature,
1911), Le Théâtre de la femme (Women’s Theatre, 1913). Moreover, Valentine de
Saint-Point reflected on herself as a woman, as a female artist, as a female artist
in the making, as an artist of the future, as a New Woman who transforms herself,
in a world that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, appeared to make the
Spirit of the New a motor of the path towards modernity.
In this essay, it is my intention to not merely establish whether Valentine
de Saint-Point was a Futurist, but whether she was a Futurist woman. What did
she contribute to Futurism as a woman? What influence did Futurism have on
her reflections on womanhood? Consequently, it is the relation between these
two terms, ‘woman’ and ‘Futurism’, these two lines of enquiry, feminine iden-
tity and adherence to Futurism, that I should like to explore here. To undertake
this investigation, it is essential to draw both upon a sound knowledge of Futur-
ism and of the woman question, as it was understood at that time. Furthermore,
the abundant studies of the avant-garde movement will not suffice as a founda-
tion for our analysis; the use of theoretical instruments and critiques elaborated
within studies of feminism and gender in the last few decades will equally help
us understand the vision of woman, as elaborated by Valentine de Saint-Point,
and its compatibility with the aims of feminism at the time. I also propose to con-
sider whether or not Valentine de Saint-Point’s ideas anticipated concepts devel-
oped more recently: for example, the cultural dimension of sexual identity, and
beyond that, the distinction between sexual belonging, sexual orientation and
sexual prerogatives.
Starting with theoretical and critical assumptions rooted in Gender Studies,
I shall discuss some extremely divergent interpretations of Valentine de Saint-
Point’s relations with the Futurist movement and of her two Futurist manifes-
tos, in order to finally present my own reading and conclusions, which in a more
extensive and detailed fashion I have already proposed in my publications of the
past years.8
8 Although time has passed and new publications on Saint-Point, on Futurism and the woman
question have appeared, I still consider my previous studies valid. This essay is an attempt to
Before doing so, however, I should like to consider briefly, even at the risk
of later repeating myself, the proximity – historical and ideological – between
Valentine de Saint-Point and feminism. Was she a feminist, as proclaimed in
her French Wikipedia page? Was she close to Egyptian feminism, after having
eschewed Western feminism, as Gaden suggests? Knowing that Valentine de
Saint-Point had a tendency to take up differing positions towards feminism, in
each text and period of her life, and knowing that she expressed ideas in her the-
oretical declarations that stood in contrast to those she put across in her creative
works, it is important that we avoid putting words into her mouth which are then
contradicted by her (although she was well capable of doing so). When reading
her texts and manifestos, one should bear in mind what the word ‘feminism’
meant at the time and what it means today. The realities included in this word are
disparate, and the connotations that it assumes are, according to context, more
or less positive. The feminist movement at the beginning of the twentieth century
was not homogenous. It included a variety of often divergent currents – Catho-
lic, bourgeois or Socialist –, with some of them upholding maternity and family
values while others advocating divorce, some of them promoting emancipation
while others remaining prudent with regard to equal pay. Although suffrage
was a principal demand and the rights of woman were at the heart of debates,
female identity was not really an issue. One only needs to recall Countess Galletti
Rasponi Spalletti’s statement at the opening of the Primo Congresso Nazionale
Femminile (First National Women’s Congress, 1908):
Our feminism is not a battle cry but rather advocates peace between the classes […] If we
are vindicating certain rights for women, this is because we believe that they are ready to
warrant the new obligations that modern society has imposed on them, without, however,
forgetting that which has been and always will be their claim to glory: motherhood and
the education of man. [...] A woman will always be a woman, and she certainly does not
have the foolish or grotesque aspiration to occupy the place of a man. [...]. It depends on
us to make our work attractive to all and to prove that it is not a danger, but a benefit to
society.9
develop them further and to expand them with some new thoughts, while reiterating, when ap-
propriate, my previously formulated analyses.
9 “Il nostro femminismo non suona lotta, come molti credono; ma si adopra al contrario per
l’unione delle classi, che è una delle sue più care aspirazioni, e la raggiungerà, ne siamo certe,
per mezzo del lavoro e della simpatia che tutti riunisce. […] Se rivendichiamo per la donna alcuni
diritti, è perché la crediamo pronta a sostenere i nuovi doveri che la moderna civiltà le impone,
senza che per questo debba dimenticare quelli che furono e saranno sempre il titolo più bello
della sua gloria: la maternità e l’educazione dell’uomo! […] La donna resterà sempre donna, e
non ha certo la stolta quanto grottesca aspirazione di prendere il posto dell’uomo [...]. Da noi
94 Silvia Contarini
Could a female, avant-garde and independent artist like Valentine de Saint-Point

sympathize with such a feminism? Did her views correspond to what we under-
stand as feminism today? In fact, the word ‘feminist’ was utilized, and can still
be, to denote any person concerned with the question of womanhood, beyond its
historicity and any specific claims. In this sense, Valentine de Saint-Point could
perhaps be defined as a feminist, while if one puts her back into the context of
her times, one would be forced to admit that she was not close to feminism and
that her preoccupations often diverged from the battles fought by the women of
her time.
Valentine de Saint-Point and Futurism
Although some uncertainties still persist with regard to the precise date of Val-
entine de Saint-Point’s first encounter with Marinetti,10 it is assured that it took
place well before the foundation of Futurism (1909). Valentine de Saint-Point,
just like her companion, Ricciotto Canudo (whom she met in 190211), had pub-
lished several texts in Marinetti’s periodical Poesia. They all circulated in the
same artistic and intellectual milieux of turn-of-the-century Paris, the centre of
modernity, which attracted a cosmopolitan crowd and was teeming with crea-
tive and innovative momentum. There was no lack of opportunity for meeting
at spiritual séances, so cherished by the artists and the intellectuals of the
time,12 and at the Apollonian soirées organized by Valentine de Saint-Point in
her much-frequented salon.13 Later, the ‘Mondays’ of the Montjoie review, run
by Canudo, would also become a meeting place for all of Modernist Paris. These
dipende il rendere simpatico il nostro lavoro e provare che non è un pericolo, ma un vantaggio
per l’intera società.” Frattini: Il primo congresso delle donne italiane, p. 21.
10 Sina also highlights the little known fact that Valentine de Saint-Point had Italian roots. Her
father was born in Milan, and her grandfather was an attaché at the embassy in Rome. See Sina:
Feminine Futures, p. 22.
11 According to Dotoli, “Ad metam et ultra”, p. 94, the encounter in all probability took place at
Auguste Rodin’s studio.
12 Dotoli observed that all avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century were connect-
ed with the world of esotericism, theosophy, etc. Valentine de Saint-Point and Ricciotto Canudo
fought energetically for the renewal of art on the basis of their spiritual vision of the world. See
Dotoli: “Ad metam et aultra, pp. 94–95. On the importance of the occult in Futurism, see Cigliana:
Il futurism esoterico and La seduta spiritica.
13 On 17 February 1912, on the occasion of the Futurist exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune,
the first of her Soirées Apolloniennes was held in her studio. Rachilde gave a reading of her play,
Le Vendeur de soleil, and F. T. Marinetti recited some of his poems. Other luminaries present
events provided an extraordinary introduction to the new arts and offered prac-
tical examples of creative ruptures with traditional protocols. Here, Valentine de
Saint-Point and Canudo crossed the paths with artists such as Guillaume Apol-
linaire, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Claude Debussy and Rachilde, to
mention just some of the best known amongst them. Valentine de Saint-Point and
Marinetti’s first encounters took place in this elated and feverish atmosphere, in
this context of a creative quest for spiritual and intellectual excitement, in this
field of artistic exploration of unknown and uncharted territories. It is perfectly
understandable that a woman of scandalous reputation, who contemplated the
formation of a new type of woman, and a provocateur, who had the ambition of
achieving nothing less than a reconfiguration of the world in both its intellec-
tual and material domains, found a common ground and decided to act together
within the Futurist movement.14
The incontestable facts are that Valentine de Saint-Point penned two Futurist
manifestos, dated 1912 and 1913, and participated in Futurist events, e.g. with
her lecture on La Femme et le futurisme on 4 June 1912 at the Galerie Giroux in
Brussels, repeated at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 27 June 1912 and at the Gal-
leria Sprovieri in Rome on 27 December 1913. Marinetti included Valentine de
Saint-Point as director of female action in the organization chart of the Futurist
movement in 1914.15 She was thus the first Futurist woman; she was also the only
female author of Futurist manifestos and the only woman to be given a leadership
rôle in the movement. Her presence, though productive, would nevertheless be
short-lived, for after the start of the war, Valentine de Saint-Point would follow
other paths.
Let us thus reflect on the common elements that made the French artist, for a
while, rub shoulders with the Futurists. At the beginning of the 1910s, Valentine
de Saint-Point already had a certain amount of artistic notoriety in Paris, largely
due to her literary output; she also had a scandalous reputation as a result of her
extravagant and free lifestyle. When Marinetti issued his Foundation and Mani-
festo of Futurism in Le Figaro, Saint-Point had already published some texts that
addressed the specifically female forms of artistic creativity and the amorous and
included Philippe Berthelot, Saint-Pol-Roux, Florent Schmitt, Jane Catulle-Mendès, Umberto

Boccioni, Gino Severini, Ricciotto Canudo, etc.
14 On the reception of the Futurist movement in France, its inception and and the time of the
meetings between Marinetti and Valentine de Saint-Point, see Cescutti: The Reception of Futur-
ism in France (1909–1912).
15 This organization chart was published in Lacerba 2:15 (1 March 1914). While the men are des-
ignated as poets, painters and sculptors, Saint-Point was given the charge of “azione femminile”,
an entirely intervented domain that was going to disappear in subsequent charts.
96 Silvia Contarini
erotic dimensions of women. This fact should be borne in mind when looking at
her Futurist manifestos: her interest in woman – woman as creator and woman
as desiring subject – preceded (and would follow) her rapprochement with Futur-
ism.
Other aspects of her worldview merit some closer attention in order to fully
understand her affinities with the Italian avant-garde. For example, Valentine de
Saint-Point tried her hand at all forms of art and collaborated with various pub-
lications through a series of theoretical and critical texts. In all of these efforts,
she reflected on the modalities of how to achieve a renewal of art and humanity,
and in this she implicated herself directly, personally and wholeheartedly. Her
conception of art was deeply connected to life, to transformation and revitaliza-
tion, to the unknown energies in the human being. Such an attitude largely corre-
sponded to the fundamental premises of Futurism; at the very least, they did not
oppose them. Although Valentine de Saint-Point’s anti-traditionalism was less
radical than Marinetti’s, they shared a rejection of bourgeois rules of morality
and their taste for transgression. There was only one point in which she differed
from the Futurists: she did not subscribe to their enthusiasm for technology.
In short, it is by no means surprising that Valentine de Saint-Point decided
to pursue a common goal with the Futurists. Whether she did so for strategic
reasons (to give more visibility to her own ideas), for the purpose of provocation
(given the impact this would have), or out of a deeply held belief in the precepts of
the Italian avant-garde movement, matters little in the end: she did it. It is there-
fore necessary to consider the context of the manifesto of the Futurist woman,
published in March 1912 by the Futurist headquarters in Milan, and publicly pre-
sented in June 1912, first in Brussels and then in Paris,16 which was then trans-
lated into several languages.
Critics insist on the fact that this manifesto was a response to the “scorn for
women” made explicit in point nine of the Foundation and Manifesto of Futur-
ism. 17 This is correct, in as much as the subtitle of the manifesto precisely indi-
cates “Response to F.T. Marinetti”, and the famous ninth clause is taken up in the
epigraph. Nevertheless, this response was published with the support of Mari-
netti, who accompanied Saint-Point when she presented it in public lectures.
16 A slightly romanticized description of these events can be found in Ballardin: Valentine de
Saint-Point, p. 40. Severini in Life of a Painter, pp. 97–99 recounts her lecture on Lust at an un-
known location.
17 “We wish to glorify war – the sole cleanser of the world – militarism, patriotism, the de-
structive act of the libertarian, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women.” Marinetti:
“Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”, p. 14.
Does this mean that Marinetti agreed with the content of the manifesto? In
my view, this is not necessarily the case, because Futurism was not an orthodox
school,18 was not afraid of internal contradictions, and fostered external offshoots,
both in France and in the wider global domain. Everything supports the assump-
tion that Marinetti gave the manifesto his endorsement and encouragement. The
reason for this may have been that following the publication of the first Futurist
manifesto (1909) Marinetti saw a need to return to the meaning of this disprezzo
della donna, explaining and justifying the term and concept behind it. Marinetti
was not at all unhappy about the fact that it unleashed such a controversy, after
all, this was publicity for his movement! However, he wanted to set things right,
because the phrase elicited negative reactions from men and women of influence
in the Parisian circles that were important to him. He thus chose to clarify matters
in an interview given a few months after the publication of the manifesto,19 in
which he specified that the object of his contempt was not woman per se, but the
sentimental woman, the myth of the woman-as-muse. He even launched into a
eulogy of French feminism by contrasting it with Italian feminism! He then reiter-
ated his explanation in his anthology of writings, Le Futurisme (Futurism, 1911),
18 In An Open Letter to the Futurist Mac Delmarle, he declared: “Futurism is not a petty religion
or a school, but rather a great movement of intellectual energy and heroism.” Marinetti: Critical
Writings, p. 104. He repeated this statement in In This Futurist Year (Critical Writings, p. 232) and
An Artistic Movement Creates a Political Party (Critical Writings, p. 278).
19 See “Interview sur le Futurisme”: [La Cocherie]: “Some people think very badly of you for
having talked a great deal about ‘scorn for women’. Are you not afraid of bringing upon yourself
the ferocious attacks of the more exquisite half of the human race because of this?” [Marinetti]:
“I have perhaps been far too concise, and I’ll try and clarify our ideas on this point, immediately.
We wish to protest against the narrowness of inspiration to which imaginative literature is being
increasingly subjected. With noble but all-too-rare exceptions, poems and novels actually seem
no longer able to deal with anything other than women and love. It’s an obsessive leitmotif, a
depressing literary fixation. Truly, is woman the only starting point for, and the only purpose of,
our intellectual development, the unique driving force of our sensibilities? We desire a serious
reduction, in the contemporary mind, of that exaggerated importance, which our snobbishness
and complicitous sense of chivalry have encouraged a usurping feminism to assume. This move-
ment is triumphant in the France of today, thanks to a magnificent elite of intellectual women
who daily demonstrate their admirable talents and their irresistible charm. However, feminism
is harmful and even ridiculous in Italy and everywhere else, where it is limited to being merely
an outlet for petty ambitions and oratorical aspirations. In short, we want to combat the tyranny
of sentimental love, which, above all in the Latin countries, undermines and saps the strength
of creative minds and of men of action. We wish to replace the idealized profile of Don Juan with
that of Napoleon, with that of Andrée and of Wilbur Wright, in the imagination, and, in general,
to root out the evils of twenty years of vain obsession with amorous adventures and adultery.”
“Futurism: An Interview with Mr. Marinetti”, in Critical Writings, pp. 19–20.
98 Silvia Contarini
in a chapter entitled, “Le Mépris de la femme” (Scorn for Women).20 Marinetti

clarifies the term by linking it to his loathing of sentimentalized love:
Our hatred, to be precise, for the tyranny of love, we summed up in the laconic expression
“scorn for women.” We scorn woman when conceived as the only ideal, the divine recepta-
cle of love, woman as poison, woman as the tragic plaything, fragile woman, haunting and
irresistible, whose voice, weighed down with destiny, and whose dreamlike mane of hair
extend into the forest and are continued there in the foliage bathed in moonlight.21
Marinetti then lingers over feminism in order to affirm that the suffragettes are
Futurism’s allies, for the more rights a woman has, the less concerned she will
be with love. He even affirms that the supposed inferiority of woman is nothing
other than the consequence of centuries of differentiated education which effec-
tively caused the inequality between the sexes.
Whether Marinetti’s U-turns were triggered by opportunism or whether they
were, as I believe them to be, a confused and half-hearted attempt to re-think
the relations between the sexes should not concern us here. 22 Suffice it to state
that Marinetti’s interest in the woman question intensified after the publication
of the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, in which the issue is merely hinted
at in one short phrase. Undoubtedly, Marinetti was surprised by the reactions it
received. He understood that there was a connection between feminism, which at
that moment was expanding across Europe, and the debate on the social status
of women, which was gaining pace also in Italian society. Let us also remember
that Futurism, a totalizing movement, had the ambition to profoundly change the
conditions of everyday life, to transform human sensibilities and to undertake
a ‘Futurist refashioning of the universe’. The women’s question was an integral
element in this ‘Futurist revolution’ and offered a fertile ground for intervention.
Thus, after having explained his views at great lengths, and after having kept
alive his interest in the topic, Marinetti passed the baton to Valentine de Saint-
Point and put her in charge of ‘female action’ within the Futurist movement.
20 This chapter was republished in Italian, in a slightly edited version, with the title, “Contro
l’amore e il parlamentarismo” in Guerra sola igiene del mondo (1915).
21 “Against Sentimentalized Love and Parliamentarianism”, p. 55.
22 A more detailed discussion of this point can be found in my book La Femme futuriste, notably
pp. 169–172 and 307–326.
The Manifesto of the Futurist Woman
The Manifesto of the Futurist Woman, as is the case with the subsequent Futur-
ist Manifesto of Lust, occasionally shows traces of the kind of views Valentine
de Saint-Point had been harbouring for a few years regarding the female artist,
love, sexuality and motherhood, as well as traces of some Futurist precepts that
she made her own for the occasion. The style of her presentation, her emphases
and the accent given to certain propositions were determined by the genre of the
manifesto.23
The first and principal assertion in the Manifesto of the Futurist Woman is that
women and men are equal in their mediocrity. Mépris (contempt or scorn), a word
that Valentine de Saint-Point re-employs conscientiously, must consequently be
applied to humanity as a whole, given that it is mediocre, and not just one of the
two sexes it is composed of. This idea may seem mundane, but it is not, because
Marinetti and the other Futurists, who subsequently joined the debate, assigned
the responsibility for this situation exclusively to women. To them, the very fact
that women are confined to the household and focus their attention exclusively
on their sentimental yearnings represents a ‘problem’ for the Futurist man.24
Is Valentine de Saint-Point suggesting that women and men are equals in
their excellence? When reading this manifesto, one gets the impression that this
is not the case and that it is women who have to make the effort to develop their
qualities by rediscovering their instinct and their inner strength. Saint-Point pos-
tulates that her epoch lacks virility, which is why Futurism, irrespective of some
exaggerations, is absolutely right to propose the virile male, the strong-willed
warrior, as a model to emulate. Here, the French artist and the Italian avant-garde
movement have an important point in common: both appreciate the very same
qualities: strength and willpower, combat and self-assertion. Such qualities, Val-
entine de Saint-Point maintains, must be developed by women.
She thus argues against women who are clinging to the hearth (‘pieuvres
des foyers’ – p. 10)25 and who are trapped by their sentiments like animals (‘bes-
tialement amoureuses’ – p. 10). She only retains two models from those that have
23 For a discussion of the genre of the manifesto in relation to gender issues, see Tomiche: “Gen-
res et manifestes artistiques.”
24 Moreover, in L’Italia futurista, the column that took up the very polemical debate on the
woman question in the years 1916–1918 was called “Donna + amore + bellezza (Punti di vista e
discussione)”. The editorial committee explained that this would launch a debate on the ‘immenso
e complesso problema della donna’: i.e., the problem of the woman and and not of the man.
25 Citations from the Manifesto of the Futurist Woman are taken from the version edited by Mo-
rel.
100 Silvia Contarini
existed in the past: the warrior women who fight more ferociously than men (e.g.
the Amazons, the Erinyes, Semiramis, Joan of Arc, Jeanne Hachette and Char-
lotte Corday) and the mothers of warriors, such as Caterina Sforza, known as the
‘Tigress of Forlì’, whose heroism went so far as to sacrificing her son Ottaviano,
for whom she displays the greatest admiration. Instead of showing contempt for
women and deriding them for their feebleness, one must exhort them to redis-
cover their wild, cruel and dissolute nature. Women have to change radically in
order to develop their innate qualities. But how can this be done? Valentine de
Saint-Point is convinced that feminism is both a political and an intellectual error
because it focusses too much on the vindication of rights; its actions cannot bring
about the turmoil sought by the Futurists, but, on the contrary, foster only the
preservation of institutional order. 26 Here is yet another common point of ref-
erence between Valentine de Saint-Point and Futurism: both advocate a rupture
with and the subversion of established codes and norms; both reject institutions,
be they political, religious, domestic, or other.
Valentine de Saint-Point firmly believes that women in their current state
of existence are not what they are by nature; rather, she thinks that they have
become what they are now because culture has bestowed on them certain rôles
and obligations. Is Saint-Point therefore rejecting any notion of an innate feminine
essence? Are men and women not only equal but also the same? In the end, is the
point of this manifesto that women can be like men, and men like women? In my
interpretation, the Manifesto of the Futurist Woman does not go that far; rather,
it only articulates what it claims to be in the epigraph: a response to Marinetti’s
slogan. Woman, she counters, can participate in the fight against sentimentalism,
be an innovator and anti-conventionalist. She too can effect a transformation of
her condition, and that without adhering to feminism but rather to Futurism. She
too can be as heroic, courageous and strong as a man. In fact, this sort of emula-
tion of virile models suggests less an affirmation of androgyny than a method of
reconciling the two sexes, of giving them a common horizon. Saint-Point wants
all humans to surpass themselves and to reach a state of excellence, in spite of
and beyond their differences; she wants the New Woman to occupy a leadership
position in a world that is perpetually renewing itself. In short, woman can be a
Futurist and participate in the movement. There is no contradiction between being
a woman and being a Futurist. Marinetti can open his movement to women.
26 “Le Féminisme est une erreur politique. Le Féminisme est une erreur cérébrale de la femme,
erreur que reconnaîtra son instinct. Il ne faut donner à la femme aucun des droits réclamés par
les féministes. Les lui accorder n’amènerait aucun des désordres souhaités par les Futuristes,
mais, au contraire, un excès d’ordre.” Saint-Point: “Manifeste de la femme futuriste”, p. 12.
There is another aspect in this manifesto, more complex, and quite compli-
cated to grasp. It touches upon the identity of woman and her place in society.
Saint-Point offers some rather contradictory thoughts (although one should not
necessarily seek coherence of thought in a manifesto that proposes new ideas
and does so in an occasionally haphazard manner) and remarks that the rôle of
a warrior or of a wild and licentious creature is not compatible with the duties of
a woman with children to take care of. Towards the end of the manifesto, Saint-
Point sketches out a double distinction between men and women, which permits
her to emerge from this impasse, but which de facto does nothing other than
reproduce existing conditions. She first separates the rôles of men and women:
while the man, freed from his family obligations, leads his life of audacity and
conquest, the woman watches over the offspring. When the children are old
enough, she incites them to sacrifice and heroism. Valentine de Saint-Point then
separates the rôles of mother and mistress by specifying that each woman can
choose whether to dedicate herself to a child or a man, the two functions being
incompatible: “Woman must be either mother or lover. True mothers will always
be mediocre lovers, and lovers will be insufficient mothers by virtue of excess.
Equal in their rapport with life, these two women complete each another.”27
Judging by these pronouncements, there is no denying that Valentine de
Saint-Point’s Futurist woman is ultimately conceived in relation to man. Her sex-
ualized body determines her destiny to be either a mother or a mistress. Must
we then conclude that this manifesto only partially modifies Marinetti’s vision of
women? Indeed, since instead of being subjected to contempt or scorn, women
assume the rôle of being either a brave mother of his children or his lustful partner
in bed; in both cases, man shows some esteem, recognition and appreciation of
his female companion. However, it is also true that the type of woman that Saint-
Point sees evolving in the new Futurist world is a woman who possesses all the
virile qualities such as courage, power, violence, lust without displaying a single
female weakness, all while preserving her sensuality and her predisposition for
motherhood, which Marinetti had not envisaged.28 Thus, Valentine de Saint-Point
imagined a woman who can evolve, can change and can possess traits that may
27 Saint-Point: “The Manifesto of Futurist Woman”, p. 112. “La femme doit être mère ou amante.
Les vraies mères seront toujours des amantes médiocres et les amantes, des mères insuffisantes,
par excès. Égales devant la vie, ces deux femmes se complètent.” Saint-Point: “Manifeste de la
femme futuriste,” p. 14.
28 Marinetti preferred to imagine a future world without women, or without the participation
of women in the reproduction of the species. See Le Roi Bombance (King Guzzle, 1905), Marfaka
le futuriste (Marfaka the Futurist, 1910), and the manifesto, L’uomo moltiplicato e il regno della
macchina (Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine, 1910).
be masculine but do not detract from her feminine characteristics. Furthermore,

Saint-Point intuits a distinction between sex and gender, between being biolog-
ically a woman or man, and the prerogatives that are usually attributed to the
‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ gender. Valentine de Saint-Point did not systemati-
cally confer a negative image to ‘femininity’ and a positive image to ‘masculinity’.
In her view, such qualities must complement each other in every human being. A
man – or even a superman – possesses some feminine attributes:
It’s absurd to divide humanity into women and men; it is composed only of femininity
and masculinity. Every superman, every hero to the extent that he has epic value, every
genius to the extent that he is powerful, is the prodigious expression of a race and an era
precisely because he is simultaneously composed of feminine and masculine elements,
femininity and masculinity: which is to say, a complete being. An individual exclusively
male is nothing more than a brute; an individual exclusively feminine is nothing more than
a girl. There are moments in the life of humanity, collectivities, just as there are in individu-
als. Fecund periods, in which a greater number of geniuses and heroes spring forth from a
cultural terrain in ferment, are periods rich in masculinity and femininity.29
The two powerful ideas she puts forward here constitute a very modern vision:
the first being that not only can women be virile, but also that men possess a
feminine component; the second, that biological sex does not determine gender,
that is to say, feminine and masculine attributes. I shall return to the significance
of these ideas in the conclusion of this essay, after having addressed another res-
olutely revolutionary aspect of Valentine de Saint-Point’s thought.
The Manifesto of Lust
The Futurist Manifesto of Lust takes up and develops a theme – lust30 – which
Valentine de Saint-Point had barely touched upon a year earlier. While the Mani
29 Saint-Point: “The Manifesto of Futurist Woman”, p. 110. Saint-Point: “Manifeste de la femme

futuriste,” p. 8.
30 Luxuria (debauchery) is one of the seven deadly sins, next to pride, gluttony, anger, sloth,
greed and envy. As such it has a very negative connotation in the Anglo-Saxon world, given its
Puritanical heritage. In France, it has acquired a range of different meanings beside lechery and
sexual depravity: passion, desire, sensual pleasures, hedonism, indulgence, sumptuousness,
decadence, etc. Furthermore, it can be associated with the older Latin meaning, ‘luxuria’ or ‘lux-
us’ (extravagance, wealth, splendour, or excessive consumption of luxury goods). In English,
‘luxury’ has lost the sexual connotations it once had, whereas in French ‘luxure’ can refer to an
extravagance in both a physical and financial sense. For Valentine de Saint-Point, the sexual
meaning stands in the foreground, but in a positive sense signifying a vital life force.
festo of the Futurist Woman presented itself as a response to Marinetti, this one
was published in response “to dishonest journalists who twist phrases in order to
ridicule the Idea”. At the same time, it is dedicated “to those who can detect only
Vice in Lust”.31 These preliminary remarks indicate that Valentine de Saint-Point
knew that the theme of lust would provoke certain reactions. There was no short-
age of scandal, as is detailed in Marinetti’s memoires:
Valentine de Saint-Point wrote the Manifesto of Lust and launched it in the Salle Gaveau
The early masters of Italian pictorial Futurism Boccioni Russolo Carrà Balla Severini join
me in Paris
The Manifesto of Lust is declaimed by a young sensual mouth under two huge green eyes
whose long eyelashes correspond with golden curls under tiara with authentic pearls that
correspond with a sumptuous silver shoe on the left and a heavy multi-eyed sparkling loop-
ring enfolding the foot of the most beautiful woman in the world
No preamble the illustrious poet elegant lady estranged wife of a minister asserts and wins
with multiform charms and desire amongst many graceful ladies to have a duel with an
insolent critic
Distracted by Boccioni and Severini we constitute the bodyguard but she defends herself
her beautiful body however not from all as Rachilde screams from a stage all well your
Futurism my lady but say what do you think of syphilis
The Parisian Futurist poetess goes with Boccioni to inaugurate a major exhibition at the
Royal Gallery in Brussels whose frenetic series of discussions culminated in three days and
three consecutive nights spent with 300 painters and sculptors from all parts of Belgium
to debate paint reason conclude finish off beer sausages pipes cigars shock of hair tramps
blondes painters and immense paintings pros and cons aesthetics of the machine plastic
dynamism simultaneity new materials.32
31 Saint-Point: “Futurist Manifesto of Lust”, p. 130. “Réponse aux journalistes improbes qui
mutilent les phrases pour ridiculiser l’idée; [...] à ceux pour qui la Luxure n’est encore que péché,
à tous ceux qui n’atteignent dans la Luxure que le Vice”. Saint-Point: “Manifeste futuriste de la
luxure”, p. 17.
32 “Valentine de Saint-Point che scrisse lanciò il Manifesto della lussuria nella sala Gaveau / I
primi maestri del Futurismo italiano pittorico Boccioni Russoio Balla Carrà Severini mi circon-
dano a Parigi / Il Manifesto della lussuria viene declamato da una sensualissima bocca giovanile
sotto due immensi occhi verdi le cui lunghe ciglia rimando coi riccioli d’oro a diadema di perle
autentiche si richiamano alla sontuosità di un calzare d’argento a sinistra e all’anello pesante
occhiuto e scintillante che invetrina il più bel piede di donna del mondo / Nessun preambolo
l’illustre poetessa dama elegante moglie separata di un ministro impone e vince coi molti fascini
e con la voglia sotto molte grazie leggiadre di avere un duello con un critico insolente / Distratti
con Boccioni e Severini noi costituiamo la guardia del corpo ma si difende da sé il corpo bellissi-
mo non da tutti però che Rachilde da un palco strilla va molto bene il vostro Futurismo signora
ma dite cosa pensate della sifilide / La poetessa futurista parigina venne con Boccioni ad inau-
gurare la grande mostra della Galleria Royale di Bruxelles la cui trepidante serie di discussioni
di vendite culminò in tre giorni e tre notti consecutive passate con 300 pittori e scultori venuti da
The content of the Futurist Manifesto of Lust thus lends itself to exciting curi-
osity and polemics: “Lust, viewed without moral prejudices and as an essential
element within life’s dynamism, is a force”, Valentine de Saint-Point affirms at
the beginning and end of the manifesto. She pronounces herself to be convinced
that lust is a source of energy, that flesh, far from opposing the spirit, completes
it, that orgasm is a form of sublimation that permits the attainment of a cosmic
sentiment of communication with the earth, and that pleasure is a quest for the
unknown, an act of creation.
If one looks at the examples Saint-Point cites in support of her thesis, lust
seems to belong solely to individuals of the male sex, while woman, whether
she be prey or a goddess, remains an object of sensual pleasure. All in all, in
this first part of the manifesto, few concepts upset a traditional view of sexual
rôles: the male predator and the female prey. However, in what follows, Valentine
de Saint-Point develops different ideas. As if remembering that she herself is a
woman, and not a female object, she re-embarks on her quest for an identity and
expresses the foundations of her thought. Thus, after a general condemnation of
all religions, of common morality, of love and of romanticism, she reiterates her
praise of the power of desire. She now specifies that it is a question of attraction
“which draws together two bodies of whatever sex, two bodies that want each
other, that are straining toward unity.”33
Let us keep in mind two important pronouncements: the first is that desire
and will are reciprocal, that is to say that every woman can experience desire
and express her will (this idea will be made more explicit in the last part of the
manifesto); the second is that desire can be felt for a person of the same sex. In
this manifesto, it is thus a question of affirming the free choice of sexual orienta-
tion and its unhindered expression. Furthermore, Valentine de Saint-Point insists
on the necessity of being conscious of one’s own sexual desire. The manifesto
encourages its readers:
Let people who have been drawn together by physical attraction dare to express their
desires, the allure of their bodies, their presentiments of joy or disappointment at the pros-
pect of fleshly union, instead of talking solely about the delicacy of their hearts. […] We
tutte le parti del Belgio a dissertare dipingere raziocinare concludere riconcludere birra salamini
pipe sigari zazzere barboni biondi pittrici e quadri immensi prò e contro l’estetica della macchina
dinamismo plastico la simultaneità i nuovi materiali”. Marinetti: Una sensibilità italiana nata in
Egitto, p. 288.
33 Saint-Point: “Futurist Manifesto of Lust”, p. 131. “Cette attirance à la fois subtile et brutale
de deux chairs quels que soient leurs sexes, de deux chairs qui se veulent, tendant vers l’unité.”
Saint-Point: “Manifeste futuriste de la luxure”, p. 20.
must face up to lust in full consciousness. We must make of lust what sophisticated and
intelligent people make of themselves and their own lives; We must make lust into a work
of art. […] The joys of such coupling should lead to ecstasy, should develop all the potential
and should make blossom all the flowers contained in the seeds of united flesh.34
The intentional tone sounds like vindication and like encouragement: Valentine
de Saint-Point’s Futurist woman does not submit to uncontrollable impulses,
she does not experience amorous wanderings, but she affirms her will and her
choice, especially with regard to her erotic desires. All beings must achieve fulfil-
ment by following their desire and their sexual orientation.
Interpretations of the two manifestos
As I mentioned in the introductory chapter, an interpretation of these two man-

ifestos depends on whether one reads them in relation to the complete œuvre of
Valentine de Saint-Point, by privileging her approach to the woman question, or
by focussing on her adherence to Futurism. A variety of critics have remarked on
the intrinsic aporias in these texts, some considering them to transmit a sexist,
misogynistic and antifeminist ideology, even anticipating the reactionary ideol-
ogy of fascism;35 others, in contrast, underline their concordance with the most
libertarian ideas promoted by the Futurists (such as the praise of free love, cri-
tique of the institution of the family, rejection of romanticism, and so on), thus
making Saint-Point’s manifestos an important forerunner of the Futurists’ over-
ture to women. A few critics have highlighted the assertion of female emancipa-
tion in them36, or even the premises of a vision of sexual differences founded not
34 Saint-Point: “Futurist Manifesto of Lust”, pp. 131–132. “Que les êtres rapprochés par une atti-
rance physique, au lieu de parler exclusivement des fragilités de leurs cœurs, osent exprimer
leurs désirs, les préferences de leurs corps. [] Il faut être conscient devant la luxure. ll faut faire
de la luxure ce qu’un être intelligent et raffiné fait de lui- même et de sa vie ; il faut faire de la
luxure une œuvre d’art. […] Il faut porter les joies de cet accouplement à leur paroxysme, dével-
opper toutes les possibilités et éclore toutes les fleurs des germes des chairs unies.” Saint-Point:
“Manifeste futuriste de la luxure”, pp. 20–21.
35 See, for misogynistic and antifeminist ideology, Caramel’s entry “Love and Sexuality” in
Hulten: Futurism & Futurisms, pp. 503–505. And see, for anticipating the reactionary ideology,
the opinion of Guerricchio: “Il modello di donna futurista”, p. 35. More nuanced, but in the same
vein, Santarelli: “Il fascismo e le ideologie antifemministe.”
36 Valentine de Saint-Point’s concept of the virile woman and her anarco-libertarian vitalism
stood in opposition to traditional models of womanhood and the morality of her time. See Desid-
eri: “Alcuni modelli femminili futuristi”, pp. 58–62.
on biological determination but on elements of identity, as theorized by Lucia Re

with reference to Julia Kristeva.37
Yet, if one looks at the central themes of the two manifestos, it appears that
Valentine de Saint-Point, far from limiting herself to the contestation of tradi-
tional feminine models, at times certainly formulated in a confused manner, dealt
with three essential questions: the definition of gender, the constitution of a new
feminine identity and the issue of sexual orientation, accompanied by thoughts
on the power of desire and the awareness of one’s body beyond sexual belonging.
Valentine de Saint-Point’s manifestos contributed to a dismantling of the
cliché of the sentimental, fragile woman, but they did not, as the Futurists did,
exalt the brutality of a violent possession, as Marinetti advocated in Abbasso
il tango e Parsifal (Down with Tango and Parsifal, 1914). Saint-Point aimed at
exploring the nexus between sexuality and creativity, two elements that were
deeply rooted in her conception of the New Woman. Creativity is required for this
woman to achieve the profound changes to which she aspires; a free practice of
her sexuality is required to give lucid expression to her sensuality; both men and
women have to be conscious of this and then make responsible choices; both are
subjects who form an equal relationship in which spiritual fulfilment accompa-
nies the gratifications of the flesh.
These programmatic thoughts made Valentine de Saint-Point stand out
from the Futurists. This explains why she, despite the publicity of the manifes-
tos and the stir they caused, never became a reference point for the Futurists.
With the exception of Italo Tavolato, who proposed a very personal reading of
the Manifesto of Lust in his Elogio della prostituzione (In Praise of Prostitution,
1913), not one male Futurist, not a single female Futurist ever mentioned the
French artist and her manifestos in their writings.38 Following the immediate
echo, Saint-Point’s manifestos were forgotten, ignored or disregarded, even
in the debates on women’s issues that filled the pages of L’Italia futurista and
Roma futurista.
37 Re: “Scrittura della metamorfosi e metamorfosi della scrittura”, pp. 311–327.

38 In the 1940s, Maria Goretti cites in her book La donna e il futurism Valentine de Saint-Point
as a positive model of a female Futurist, but still expressing regret at her excessive attachment
to erotic themes.
Conclusion
Elsa Dorlin’s recent publication on Sex, Gender and Sexualities, begins with the
following words:
Sex commonly designates three things: biological sex, as it is assigned to us at our birth –
male or female sex –, the rôle or sexual behaviour that are meant to correspond to it – gender,
provisionally defined as attributes of the feminine and of the masculine – that differenti-
ated socialization and education of individuals produce and reproduce; finally, sexuality,
that is to say, the act of intercourse, of ‘having’ or of ‘doing’ sex.39
Dorlin discusses how feminist theories investigate these three dimensions, their
relation to each other, and the specifics of what constitutes the natural, the cul-
tural and the social. Yet, a good century before, Valentine de Saint-Point had
already intuitively formulated her position regarding these three elements. Her
starting point was not a general theory of gender, but an attempt to understand
why the woman she aspired to be did not exist, what needed to be done to bring
her into existence, how she could ‘invent herself’. This recalls Monique Wittig’s
statement: “In a world in which we do not exist except in silence – literally in our
social reality, figuratively in books – we must, like it or not, constitute ourselves,
rise from out of nowhere, mould our own legends in our own lives.”40
Valentine de Saint-Point managed to sketch out her ideas in a context that
was favourable to ruptures and new proposals. In the Europe of the early twenti-
eth century, great transformations were underway that suggested that a different
future was possible. Valentine de Saint-Point was not afraid of change, she even
invoked it, in an extraordinary impetus towards the New, a novelty which in her
view could only come about with the renewal of the individual. In such a context,
Valentine de Saint-Point’s rapprochement with Futurism was no accident: Mari-
netti’s rejection of the past and his cult of the New demonstrated that Futurism
incarnated all that which was the most virulent and most potent at that moment.
Did the Italian avant-garde movement influence Valentine de Saint-Point’s
thought? I would suggest that her involvement with Futurism was an essential
factor, for it allowed her to give her elaborations prominence, to convey her ideas
to a general public and to effectuate her desire for a break with the past. In other
words, it was in her years of rapprochement with the Futurist movement that
Valentine de Saint-Point reached the summit of her life and her œuvre. In her
39 Dorlin: Sexe, genre et sexualités, p. 5.

40 Wittig: “Avant-note”, p. 16. This passage is missing in the English edition published in The
Straight Mind and Other Essay. Boston : Beacon Press, 1992.
Futurist years, Valentine de Saint-Point pursued a Utopia that was not the ‘Futur-
ist refashioning of the universe’; it was a fashioning of a new type of woman, a
woman different from all those in existence, a free woman, independent, artist,
creator, conscious of herself, of her spirit as well as her body.
In the vibrant atmosphere of a time when anything seemed possible, Mari-
netti was convinced that thanks to the progress of technology and science the Man
of the Future would be a mechanical and extended man (L’uomo moltiplicato del
regno della macchina), capable of autogenesis. Valentine de Saint-Point thought
differently when it came to the female part of humanity. She did not appeal to
technological progress, but rather demanded the destruction of the models of
the past with their great imbalances, in order to constitute the New Woman. A
woman, to paraphrase Wittig’s adage cited above, who rises from out of nowhere
and moulds her own legend in her own life.
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—: “Manifeste de la femme futuriste: Réponse à F. T. Marinetti.” Valentine de Saint-Point:
Manifeste de la femme futuriste. Ed. by. Jean-Paul Morel. Paris: Mille et une Nuits, 2005.
7–15.
—: “Manifeste futuriste de la luxure.” Valentine de Saint-Point: Manifeste de la femme

futuriste. Ed. by. Jean-Paul Morel. Paris: Mille et Une Nuits, 2005. 17–23.
—: “The Manifesto of Futurist Woman (Response to F. T. Marinetti).” Lawrence S. Rainey,
Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, eds.: Futurism: An Anthology. New Haven/CT: Yale
University Press, 2009. 109–113.
Salaris, Claudia: Marinetti: Arte e vita futurista. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1997.
Santarelli, Ezio: “Il fascismo e le ideologie antifemministe.” La questione femminile in Italia dal
‘900 a oggi. Special issue of Problemi del socialismo 17:4 (1976): 76–10.
Severini, Gino: The Life of a Painter. Princeton/NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Sina, Adrien, ed.: Feminine Futures: Valentine de Saint-Point. Performance, War, Politics and
Eroticism = Tragédies charnelles: Valentine de Saint-Point. Performance, guerre, politique
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Verdier, Abel: “Une étrange arrière-petite-nièce de Lamartine: Valentine de Saint-Point
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Université Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1983.
—: La Caravane des chimères. Paris: Orban, 1990.
Eamon McCarthy
Flirting with Futurism: Norah Borges and
the Avant-garde
Abstract: The Argentine visual artist Norah Borges (1901–1998) travelled to
Europe with her family and began her artistic career in Switzerland and Spain at
just 17 years of age. She arrived in Europe at a time of war but also at a moment
in which avant-garde movements were questioning the future direction of visual
representation. Her development as an artist within this context would prove
decisive and Norah developed a style of her own by drawing eclectically upon
Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism. She also combined elements of these
movements with influences from more traditional forms of painting, evading cat-
egorization by any particular Modernist school or -ism. This fusion of elements
resulted in her work being hailed as the epitome of the Spanish avant-garde
movement ultraísmo, and getting published in some of the most important avant-
garde periodicals of the time. This essay seeks to explore the influences of Futur-
ism in Norah’s early prints and considers the longer-lasting effects the movement
had on her style. It builds upon previous studies of Norah’s early prints, which
have provided detailed analyses of the influences of Expressionism and Cubism,
and aims to draw out the elements of Futurism contained in her earliest works.
Whilst the emphasis is on the influences of Futurism, the intention of the analysis
is to underscore the artist’s successful blending of diverse styles in images that
resonated with the wider concerns of various avant-garde movements.
Keywords: Ultraism, Expressionism, Cubism, blending of avant-garde styles,

Modernism in Argentina, graphic art
Introduction
In 1914, the Argentine visual artist Norah Borges (1901–1998) travelled with her
brother Jorge Luis and their parents on a grand tour to Europe. In Switzerland,
they became trapped by the First World War, at which point the fourteen-year old
Norah1 interrupted her journey and took up training at the School of Fine Arts
1 Born Leonor Fanny Borges Acevedo, she is known as Norah, and I shall refer to her in this
essay by this name, as the surname Borges is nowadays almost exclusively linked to her older
brother.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0008
112 Eamon McCarthy
in Geneva. Following the war, the family continued their voyage and travelled
to Mallorca, Seville and Madrid (1918–21). It was here that Norah published her
first prints and where her unique style was embraced by her contemporaries as
the epitome of ultraísmo, the Spanish avant-garde movement. Norah returned to
Argentina in 1921 and, alongside her brother, Jorge Luis Borges, helped to intro-
duce avant-garde styles to her own country.
Norah’s time in Europe was crucial for her artistic training, as her stay coin-
cided with a period in which the whole purpose of art was being questioned and
the various -isms were proposing new aesthetic directions for artists of all dis-
ciplines. She flirted stylistically with Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism at a
time when she was only just beginning to work as an artist. The questions raised
by these new movements overlapped with her search for her own style. Her avant-
garde friends noted how she incorporated innovative stylistic devices into her
works and helped her to disseminate her prints in a diverse range of cultural mag-
azines of the time.2
Critics have noted the influence of various European avant-garde movements
on Norah Borges’s early works and it is clear that she was cognisant of and willing
to experiment with a range of styles. In one of the first articles to examine her
work, Plaza Chillón states that Norah “used an aesthetic that was completely
modern but which was not defined by a specific style. Futurist, Cubist, and par-
ticularly Expressionist influences can be seen in her first prints”.3 Chillón’s focus
on the influence of German Expressionism is echoed in the works of other critics,
who have delineated the importance of the movement to her training.4 Expres-
sionism was the first avant-garde movement that she encountered in Lugano. In a
rare interview, she underscored the significance of her discovery of Expressionist
poetry and woodcuts.5 There is no doubt that the German Expressionism had a
2 In Spain Norah’s work appeared in Baleares, Grecia, Ultra, Alfar and Papel de Aleluyas, among
others. Her prints were also published in the French magazine Manomètre and in the Polish Form-
isci, as well as in a range of Latin American avant-garde publications, including Amauta in Peru.
3 “[...] utilizó una estética inmersa plenamente en la modernidad no definiéndose por un esti-
lo concreto. En estos primeros grabados se pueden observar reminiscencias futuristas, cubistas
pero sobre todo expresionistas.” Plaza Chillón: “Entre el ultraísmo y el surrealismo”, p. 307. Em-
phasis in the original.
4 Nelson: Five Central Figures, pp. 159–60; Artundo: Norah Borges, pp. 37–41; Alcalá: “Pretérita
Norah”, pp. 51–60; Babino: “Norah Borges en España”, pp. 167–78; and Alcalá: “Norah Vanguard-
ista”, pp. 16–18. The most explicit reference to Norah’s interest in Expressionism comes from
Jorge Luis: “Una de sus primeras pasiones fueron los expresionistas alemanes; pintaba crucifix-
iones, flagelaciones, martirios y violentas contorsiones de mártires”. Borges: Norah, pp. 11–12.
5 Bonet: “Hora y media con Norah Borges”, p. 5. The most detailed studies of the influence of
Expressionism in Jorge Luis Borges are Maier: Borges and the European Avant-garde, pp. 97–123,
Flirting with Futurism: Norah Borges and the Avant-Garde 113
dominant influence on Norah Borges’s early prints. As María Elena Babino states,
there is certainly a stylistic impact, albeit one which “is always characterized by a
less angular and in some way more lyrical style than that of her German sources”.6
The influences of Expressionism may also be seen at the level of content, with the
focus on religion in prints such as La Verónica (1918) and the themes of Der Blaue
Reiter emerging in works like El pomar (1920).7
The traces of Cubism are secondary to Expressionism; nonetheless, in one
of the first studies dedicated exclusively to her works from the period 1920–1930,
Patricia Artundo notes that “the references to Cubism would be an almost con-
stant presence in her works”.8 She further clarifies that Norah was not a Cubist
artist per se, but identifies the lack of depth and careful geometric planning as
evidence of a debt to the aesthetics of the movement. May Lorenzo Alcalá goes
further than this in her monograph dedicated to Norah and notes the difficulties
of labelling Norah’s work Cubist or even applying the term to her early works at
all, pointing instead the influence of Renaissance techniques:
This is a period in which the artist adopts certain techniques that do not propose showing
the object from all perspectives, as Picasso and Braque did. Norah divides the surface of her
pages into sections marked by straight lines – along the parallel and diagonal – in the same
way as Renaissance masters, but instead of making these lines disappear in her subsequent
image, she accentuated them, creating a network of clearly defined planes, which produce
a destabilising effect, a sense of still movement. 9
Alcalá coins the term rombismo (rhombohedronism, i.e. a deconstruction of an

object and its representation in rhomboid shapes) to describe Norah’s style at this
time as a means of rejecting the label of Cubism while simultaneously emphasiz-
and Expósito: Lecturas alemanas del Borges ultraísta. For a study of Expressionism in the work of
both siblings see Artundo: “Entre ‘La Aventura y el Orden’.”
6 “[…] siempre estará caracterizado por una manera menos angulosa y en cierta forma más lírica
que el de los referentes alemanes.” Babino: “Norah Borges en España”, p. 170.
7 Alcalá: “Pretérita Norah”, p. 55, and Artundo: Norah Borges, p. 39. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue
Rider) was a group of artists, founded in Munich in 1911, which had a fundamental importance
for Expressionism.
8 “[…] las referencias a él [el cubismo] constituirían una presencia casi constante en su obra”.
Artundo: Norah Borges, p. 32.
9 “Ésta es una etapa donde la artista adopta ciertos efectos técnicos que no tienen la pretensión
de mostrar el objeto desde todas sus perspectivas, como proponían Picasso y Bracque. Norah
divide la superficie del papel en sectores recortados por rectas – paralela y diagonales – como
lo hacían los maestros del renacimiento, pero en vez de hacer desaparecer esas líneas con el tra-
bajo posterior, las acentúa, generando una red de planos articulados que producen una ilusión
desestabilizante, un vértigo estático.” Alcalá: Norah Borges, pp. 38–39.
114 Eamon McCarthy
ing the blend of a deep understanding of art with stylistically innovative tech-
niques. The need for such a term and Alcalá’s careful assessment of Norah’s
accentuation of line, as well as Artundo’s care to stress that “her loyalty to the
Cubist movement would not be absolute”, exemplifies the difficulties in classify-
ing Norah’s work according to avant-garde -isms.10 Indeed, the aesthetic impera-
tives which characterize Expressionism and Cubism may appear at times contra-
dictory, but Norah successfully integrated aspects of both of them into her early
works, and critics have been very careful to point to this mixture of styles without
attempting to fit her neatly into any one category. However, while the presence of
Expressionism and Cubism has been studied in some detail, the same cannot be
said of the influences of Futurism. Of course, it is important to underscore that
of the three avant-garde movements identified in her early works, the traces of
Futurism are the least obvious. The lesser presence of Futurism in her works not-
withstanding, I shall explore in this essay its impact on the artist’s early works in
order to appreciate more fully her engagement with the movements of the histor-
ical avant-garde. In addition to this, I shall briefly consider the more long-lasting
influences of Futurism in Norah’s works and explore some of the ways in which
she engaged with the European avant-gardes throughout the 1920s. The analysis
of Futurism in her earliest works will address an understudied element of her
avant-garde production but, crucially, I aim to show that it is almost impossible
to isolate the influence of one movement from another and that Norah’s flirtation
with many movements contributed to what ultimately became her own style.
Norah, Futurism and the Spanish Avant-garde
Within a couple of months of the publication of the Foundation and Manifesto of

Futurism in the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1909, a translation into Spanish
was published in Prometeo in Madrid.11 This rapid diffusion of Futurist ideas was
aided by F. T. Marinetti’s subsequent publication of a manifesto written specifically
for a Spanish readership, Proclama futurista a los españoles (Futurist Proclama-
tion to the Spaniards, 191012), did not, however, lead to a widespread engagement
10 “[…] su adhesión a esta tendencia [el cubismo] no sería total”. Artundo: Norah Borges, p. 32.
11 Sbriziolo: “Futurist Texts in the Madrilenian Review ‘Prometeo’”, pp. 99–100.
12 First published in Prometeo 3:20 (June [recte August] 1910): 517‑518, and reprinted in F. T. Mari-
netti: El futurismo. Traducido del italiano por Germán Gómez Gómez de la Mata y Nicasio Hernán-
dez Luquero. Valencia: Sempere, 1912. 165–178. A French version was published as “Proclamation
futuriste aux Espagnols.” F. T. Marinetti: Le Futurisme. Paris: Sansot, 1911. 207–221. An Italian ver-
sion appeared as “Contro la Spagna passatista” in I manifesti del futurismo. Firenze: Edizioni di
with its aesthetic principles in Spain.13 When the Spanish avant-garde movement,
ultraísmo, was developing around 1918, just as the Borges family moved to Spain,
“it defined itself as open to all modern influences, willing to absorb and assimi-
late them eclectically”.14 In an attempt to find a specifically Spanish avant-garde
style, ultraísmo borrowed from many other European movements and defined
itself against writers such as Unamuno and Valle-Inclán.15 Norah’s brother, Jorge
Luis, who was involved in writing the defining manifestoes of the ultraísta move-
ment, noted the overlaps between European avant-garde styles within ultraísmo
in a letter written in 1920 to his friend, Maurice Abramowicz, in which he states:
“The entire ultraísta movement in Spain is closely connected to German Expres-
sionism and Italian Futurism”.16 In a manifesto published in 1921 in Mallorca, and
signed by Jorge Luis Borges, the main goal of the movement was summed up as
“to impose unexpected images upon the universe”.17
This lack of prescription or self-definition and the focus on creation of new
imagery allowed artists and poets to draw upon certain elements of other move-
ments without having to theorize or explain how these reconciled themselves
with each other in their works. The focus was squarely upon a general concept of
the New. Derek Harris felt that this “coexistence of different and even contradic-
tory attitudes” led to a “confusion, rather than a fusion, of the different elements,
a hybrid creation, a squared circle”.18 While the aesthetics of the Spanish avant-
garde may have been confused, Norah’s earliest works were successful “hybrid
creation[s]”, in which she fused Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism to create
her own unique style. It is precisely the wide-ranging – or to put it more nega-
tively, nebulous – aesthetics of ultraísmo that allowed Norah Borges to flirt stylis-
tically with Futurism without having to embrace its principles in any sustained or
systematic fashion.
“Lacerba”, 1914. 52–59, and as “Proclama futurista agli spagnuoli” in F. T. Marinetti: Guerra sola
igiene del mondo. Milano: Edizioni futuriste di “Poesia”, 1915. 59–68. An English translation can be
found in Marinetti’s Critical Writings. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 97–103.
13 The reception of Futurism in Spain is studied in detail in Herrero-Senés: “Polemics, jokes,
compliments and insults”.
14 Anderson: “Futurism and Spanish Literature”, p. 157. Leticia Pérez Alonso analyses the links
between ultraísmo and other avant-garde movements through visual poetry in her essay, “Futur-
ism and Ultraism.”
15 The rejection of previous literary models is clear in the first published manifesto for the
movement. Vando Villar: “Manifiesto ultraísta”, p. 9.
16 “Todo este movimiento ultraísta español es pariente cercano del expresionismo alemán y del
futurismo italiano.” Borges: Cartas del fervor, p. 75.
17 “[…] imponer facetas insospechadas al universo”. Sureda: “Manifiesto del Ultra”, p. 20.
18 Harris: “Squared Horizons”, pp. 3–4.
116 Eamon McCarthy
Fig. 1. El circo (The Circus). Cover illustration of the first issue of Ultra (27 January 1921).
The fact that Norah did not adhere to any Modernist school in an obvious way
and that, instead, she pursued a highly eclectic style meant that her prints soon
rose to a prominent position in Spanish avant-garde magazines. She published
some of her first prints in the leading magazine Grecia, where she “graphically
reformulated the magazine’s association with the classical past” and signalled
its openness to ultraísmo.19 It was in an article in that same magazine that its
director, Isaac del Vando-Villar, declared: “This modern painter, with green
eyes, which sparkle like gems, is already within the Parthenon of Ultraism”; and
he rounds off his short piece with a direct address to his fellow ultraísta poets,
stating: “Ultraist brothers: greet Norah Borges. She is our painter and she is also
blessed with a sweet beauty, similar to that seen in Botticelli’s divine angels”.20
Leaving aside the gendered approach to her work, it is clear that Norah is
hailed as an ultraísta artist par excellence. In the light of these credentials, it is
hardly surprising that the first cover illustration for the newly founded magazine
Ultra would be one of her prints. Whereas Grecia became an outlet for ultraísta
art and poetry, Ultra was established from its inception as the magazine of the
Spanish avant-garde movement. Her works appeared on the covers of four of the
periodical’s twenty-four issues, and alongside the Uruguayan artist Rafael Barra-
das and the Polish Władysław Jahl she was a key contributor of visual art to the
19 Davidson: “Norah Borges, the Graphic Voice of ‘Ultraísmo’”, p. 13.

20 “El ultraísmo ya tiene en su templo a esta moderna pintora de los ojos verdes y refulgentes
como gemas.” “Hermanos del Ultra: Norah Borges es nuestra pintora: saludadla, porque además
está nimbada de una dulce belleza, análoga a la de los ángeles del divino Sandro Botticelli.”
Vando Villar: “Una pintora ultraísta”, p. 12
magazine. El circo (Fig. 1), her cover image for the first edition of Ultra, set the
tone for the magazine and encapsulated her style at this time. Davidson notes the
similarities between Picasso’s harlequins and Norah’s ringmasters in this print,
who “beckon for the audience to join the fray”.21 The figures, which “emulate the
superimposed constructions of cubist collage”, hold back the curtain and draw
the viewer into the concentric circus ring, which is reminiscent of Robert Delau-
nay’s and Sonia Delaunay-Terk’s works.22 The repetition of the image of leaping
horses at the centre perhaps alludes to the Futurist goal of capturing movement
in images, and they add to the sense of vitality suggested in the print, while the
ludic nature of the subject matter encapsulates the playfulness of the avant-gar-
de.23 The choice of this print for the first issue of the new ultraísta magazine
clearly signals that her eclectic style was identified as modern by her contempo-
raries and that her ideas on aesthetics at this time chimed with the ultraísta vision
of the Spanish avant-garde.
However, Norah was by no means fully integrated into the group. Her work
as a woman artist in the masculine field of cultural production and the socially
conservative values of her family mean that Norah occupied a difficult position
in relation to the Spanish avant-garde.24 She reflects this situation very neatly in
an interview: “At that time, we young girls did not go to the cafés”.25 Her words
allude to a social code which kept her away from the tertulias26 where the prin-
ciples of ultraísmo were discussed.27 But rather than cast this exclusion as nega-

22 Ibid. Robert Delaunay was a French artist who, with his Ukrainian wife Sonia Delaunay-Terk,
co-founded the Orphist movement, noted for its expressive colours and geometric shapes.
Around 1910, Sonia Delaunay developed the simultaneous contrast of light rainbow colours and
called it ‘simultaneism’. In 1914, they took refuge from the Great War in Spain and Portugal,
where they functioned as a catalyst of Modernism.
23 Horses were a prominent theme in Boccioni’s œuvre, and circus, cabaret and music-hall were
exemplary models for Futurist theatre.
24 For accounts of the social conservatism of the Borges family see Williamson: Borges, pp. 21,
33 and 95.
25 “[…] en aquella época las chicas no íbamos a los cafés”. Bonet: “Hora y media con Norah
Borges”, p. 6.
26 Tertulias were semi-formal gatherings, usually in cafés, where members of the avant-garde
discussed literary or other artistic matters. These intellectual circles could take place at regular
intervals and involve the same core group of people.
27 Much valuable work has been done on the changing roles of women at this time, yet my argu-
ment here relates very particularly to Norah and her family. See for example Kirkpatrick: Mujer,
modernismo y vanguardia. In relation to Norah’s comments, it should be noted that this was not a
universal phenomenon, as the example of Maruja Mallo attests. Yet Mallo is the exception rather
118 Eamon McCarthy
tive, we should consider the fact that it afforded her the freedom to experiment
with a variety of avant-garde devices without having to justify her use of them
or reconcile them with opinions of other ultraístas. Moreover, she was free to
explore a variety of subjects and draw upon older styles in her works, including
Renaissance and Baroque Spanish paintings, works by other women artists and
religious subjects, which do not always sit easily within the framework of the
historical avant-garde. Gambrell has labelled the position of “women intellectu-
als who were affiliated in this peculiarly ambiguous way with a range of metro-
politan formations” as that of “insider-outsider”.28 This term precisely delineates
Norah’s relationship with the Spanish avant-garde and explains how her work
was used as an example of ultraísmo without her becoming embroiled in defining
exactly how it fitted within or reflected the goals of the movement. It is by being
an outsider, whose work is inside the movement that she manages to fuse the
aesthetics of European avant-garde movements and create a visual style which is
identified as ultraísta.
Norah’s rôle within the avant-garde went beyond that of an artist. According
to Sergio Baur, she was also a woman who “inspired poets and writers, a type of
muse for the avant-garde”.29 A number of writers dedicated poems to her, but it
was her relationship with Spanish poet and critic Guillermo de Torre that would
have the greatest impact upon her life work. The pair met in Madrid in March
1920, at which time Torre was a key figure in the Spanish avant-garde. He was,
without doubt, a leading exponent of Futurism in Spain, largely through his only
published collection of poetry, Hélices (1923), which was indebted to Marinetti’s
technique of parole in libertà.30 It is impossible to determine exactly Torre’s influ-
ence upon Norah’s work, yet his critical writings provide an indication of how it
was perceived and received by her contemporaries. Just three months after the
two first met, Torre published an essay, “El arte candoroso y torturado de Norah
Borges” (The Pure and Harrowing Art of Norah Borges), in which he emphasized
the inventive style of this “painter, whose innovative work is like an emotional
lyric poem”.31 He mentioned Norah’s interest in German Expressionism, but did
than the rule. See Mangini: Maruja Mallo, pp. 45–46 and Ferris: Maruja Mallo, pp. 47–104, note
particularly pp. 51–57.
28 Gambrell: Women Intellectuals, Modernism, and Difference, p. 12.
29 “[…] no solo la artista que le puso imagen a la literatura de renovación, sino la que inspiró a
poetas y escritores, como una musa de la vanguardia”. Baur: “Norah Borges”, p. 87.
30 Bohn: The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, p. 172. Also see Corsi: “Futurist Influences in the Work
of Guillermo de Torre.”
31 “[…] pintora novísima y lírica adolescente emocionada”. Torre: “El arte candoroso”, p. 6.
not refer to Futurism as one of the influences on her work. The most important
feature of the article is the way he labelled her style:
Out of the anxiousness of her eager innovation, emerging from her innocently thrilling tem-
perament, Norah Borges fulfils our great predictions of the appearance of a resplendent
Renaissance-inspired painter. Due to her predilection for new planimetrics, she is elevated
to an ultraist plane of a similarly tangential ideology.32
Although Torre drew attention to the effects produced by the lines and angles
– an effect that was, at least in part, indebted to Futurism – he abstained from
tracing the influences of any one particular movement or artist on her work.
However, he did align her with a series of other women artists by suggesting that
she coordinates “her work with works by other similar modern female figures”.33
Alongside his praise, his careful identification of her style as somehow ‘feminine’
reveals the distinctly unsubtle ways in which he sought to ensure that Norah was
not seen as a daring feminist, while still extolling the innovative nature of her
works. May Lorenzo Alcalá has noted that during the time when he was wooing
Norah, Torre was particularly effusive in his writings about her works, while in
the revised version of his seminal study, Literaturas europeas de vanguardia, “he
wanted to draw a veil over his wife’s ultraist works”.34
As well as praising Norah in his critical writings, Torre dedicated two poems
to her. These were written during their period of courtship and in them he encap-
sulated, albeit obliquely, her unique style, including the debt to Futurism. 35 Of
course, Torre’s poems cannot be read as critical studies of Norah’s works but they
do capture to varying degrees some of the ways in which her works coincided with
wider aesthetic questions, including the lack of hierarchical distinction between
image and text.36 Crucially, they point towards the eclectic styles and images she
32 “Por el ansia de su avidez innovadora, emergida de su vibrátil candorosidad temperamental,

Norah Borges rima con nuestros auguralismos de lucíferos renacentistas. Por su apasionamiento
de las planimetrías inéditas, asciende a un plano ultraísta de afin tangencialidad ideological.”
Torre: “El arte candoroso”, p. 6.
33 “[…] su obra con la de otras simpáticas figuras femeninas de avanzada”. Torre: “El arte can-
doroso”, p. 7.
34 “[…] quiso echar un manto de olvido sobre aquella etapa [ultraísta] de su mujer”. Alcalá:
Norah Borges, p. 81.
35 Torre dedicated two poems to Norah. The first, “Resol” appeared in Grecia 3:50 (1 November
1920), p. 6 and was included, with two minor changes, in Hélices. “Amiga”, Torre’s second poem
dedicated to Norah, first appeared in Ultra 1:16 (20 October 1921), p. 2, without a dedication and
was published with some significant changes in Hélices.
36 Torre: “Amiga”, Hélices, p. 148.
120 Eamon McCarthy
employed. In my analysis of Futurist traces in her early works I hope to reflect the
blend of “the isomorphic city / Conscious aeroplanes / Changing perspectives”
that Torre saw in her prints.37
Fig. 2. Cristo apaciguando las aguas (Jesus Calming the Storm, 1918). Media unknown, 27x21cm.
Futurism in Norah’s Early Works
Norah Borges’s earliest works are certainly stylistically close to German Expres-
sionism, yet the representation of motion imbues these works with a sense of
dynamism characteristic of Futurism. Of course, these two movements are not
mutually exclusive and, as an analysis of some of her early prints will show, it is
not possible to separate out their influences. In the 1918 print, Cristo apaciguando
las aguas (Jesus Calming the Storm; Fig. 2), for example, the thrusting forward
of the boat through the undulating waves brings a kinetic energy to the image.
The angle at which the two figures behind Christ hold the oars and the depic-
tion of these cutting through the water intensifies the focus on movement. This
print was made while the Borges family was still living in Switzerland and the
sense of dynamism seen in it may be drawn from Expressionism, particularly the
tendency to carve small jagged lines into woodcuts in order to make them more
expressive. Similar depictions of the sea can be found in Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s
37 “[…] la ciudad isomorfa / Aviones conscientes / Perspectivas cambiantes” (ll. 3–5). Torre:
“Resol”, Hélices, p. 126.
Petri Fischzug (The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1918), which resembles Norah’s
image, particularly around the oar on the left. Whilst dynamic movement within
an image may be linked to both Expressionism and Futurism, the focus on reli-
gion, with attention drawn to the centrally located figure of a radiant Christ, is
certainly more in keeping with an Expressionist aesthetic, which did not shun
religious imagery in the way Futurism did.38
As this example shows, it is difficult to associate particular styles used by
Norah with any one avant-garde movement, as many of them shared certain key
features. But what is clear is the fact that Norah Borges selected certain aspects
and stylistic devices from a range of Modernist schools, mixed and mingled them
in her works in a truly experimental manner, and generally avoided copying any
particular aesthetic tradition.
Fig. 3. Juerga flamenca (A Flamenco Gathering, 1919–20). Media and dimensions unknown.
The print Juerga flamenca (A Flamenco Gathering; Fig. 3) is another example of

the ways Norah blended Futurism with Expressionism in her early works. In a
recent article, Carlos García clarified the subject and possible date of this print,
which were obscured by Norah in her scrapbook.39 She labelled the print La fiesta
de la Santa Patrona de Valldemosa and noted that it was made in Mallorca in
1919–20; however, Santa Catalina Thomàs, the patron saint of Valldemosa, was
38 In the “Proclama Futurista a los españoles”, Marinetti is unequivocal about the need to
dismiss religion and religious subjects from art as young Spanish avant-gardists are followed
by “una extensa retraguardia de mujeres y de frailes”. Marinetti: “Proclama futurista a los es-
pañoles”, p. 520.
39 Carlos García: “Norah Borges en México”.
122 Eamon McCarthy
not canonized until 1930. García notes that the title Juerga flamenca was in fact
used when the print was reproduced in the magazine Ronsel in 1924, and suggests
that the print was probably made in Seville in late 1919 or early 1920. Of course,
the influence of Flamenco in Seville is the most compelling argument for disre-
garding the title given in Norah’s scrapbook. If attention is turned to the tech-
niques used in the print, it certainly seems to be contemporaneous with other
prints made in Seville in 1919–1920.40 As well as the use of small jagged lines to
intensify the internal dynamism of the piece, it is again the subject matter which
reveals a debt to Expressionism. The folk themes of Expressionist art, evident in
the Blaue Reiter Almanach,41 are adapted here through Norah’s focus on dance.
Despite the obvious debts to Expressionism in Juerga flamenca, it is once
again evident that Norah drew upon Futurist aesthetic in her depiction of the
dancers. García’s dating of this print as ‘Seville, 1919/20’ strengthens the case for
the more conscious use of Futurist aesthetics. While no specific documentation
proves that either of the Borges was familiar with Futurist manifestos, the refer-
ences to Marinetti’s movement in Spanish magazines means that by the time they
reached Seville, the siblings would have been aware of Futurism’s key concerns.
The print emphasizes the circularity of movement in dancing. The carving of
the contrasting black and white arcs on the dance floor suggests that the figure
on the left is circling the space. This sense of the movement of the figure is rein-
forced by the curve at which the viewer sees the orchestra and audience, and by
replication of the shapes created by the dance steps in what appears to be the
sun in the top right. The use of semicircles in this way may also point to knowl-
edge of the work of Delaunay and Delaunay-Terk. Although this link is difficult to
substantiate through documentation, it is not entirely implausible, as their work
was well known in Spain.42 Besides the expression of movement within Futur-
ism, the effect of light on an object was a key theme in paintings such as Carlo
Carrá’s painting Il movimento del chiaro di luna (The Movement of the Moonlight,
1910–11) and Balla’s Mercurio passa davanti al sole (Mercury Passes Before the
Sun, 1914). The same concern is evident in Norah’s depiction of the sun here,
40 I am thinking specifically of the similarities evident in two untitled works reproduced in Ar-
tundo: Artistas modernos rioplatenses, p. 29.
41 The Blue Rider group wanted to overcome traditionalist art by taking recourse to more fun-
damental forms of expression, which they discovered in ‘primitive’ Bavarian folk art, Russian
icons and German medieval art. Some of this they reproduced in the Blue Rider Almanac of 1912.
42 Sonia Delaunay opened a shop in Madrid in 1919; see Quance: “Love and the Woman Artist”,
pp. 77–78. Robert Delaunay provided illustrations for some of Huidobro’s poetry in 1917 and one
of his paintings was reproduced on the cover of Grecia 3:48 (1 September 1920).
which seemingly drips over the scene, highlighting the figures and other positive
areas within the print. The rendering of light in this way underscores the vibrancy
of the movement depicted, and Norah managed to convey the way in which the
rays of light bounce off the moving dancers and orchestra, thus intensifying the
sense of vitality within the image.
Fig. 4. Rusia (Russia), from Grecia 3:48 (1 September 1920), p. 7.
The same circular arc of movement was used again in an illustration for her broth-
er’s poem ‘Rusia’, which was published along with the poem in the magazine
Grecia.43 Norah’s woodcut, only given the title Rusia (Fig. 4) because of the poem,
is full of energy, with figures marching towards the spectator.44 This advancing
crowd and the sun can easily be identified with the corresponding lines from
Jorge Luis’s poem and are depicted along a sweeping, circular arc that alludes to
the dynamic movement of the multitude.
The depiction of individuals in this way is particularly reminiscent of Umberto
Boccioni’s La cittá che sale (The City Rises, 1910) and again draws upon Delau-
nay’s use of lines, emphasizing the many points of comparison between the styles
43 Norah Borges: Rusia, and Jorge Luis Borges: “Rusia”, Grecia 3:48 (1 September 1920), p. 7.
44 Artundo notes that it was unlike Norah not to provide titles for her woodcuts in Grecia, and so
the intention must have been that this particular piece would accompany Jorge Luis’s poem and
work with the same title. See Artundo: “Entre ‘La Aventura y el orden’”, p. 67.
124 Eamon McCarthy
upon which Norah drew. The composition of the mass of people, and the flag
forming a diagonal line across the woodcut inextricably link these people with
the cause for which they march as they are unified under its canopy. The allusion
to the shape of the sickle in the composition further ties the image and the crowd
depicted in it to the Russian Revolution. The throbbing multitude represents the
soldiers thrusting forward in Jorge Luis’s poem. The military theme and strong
perspective created by parallel lines in the background are in keeping with both
early Futurist and Expressionist aesthetics. The composition along the diagonal,
the grid-like structure and use of curved lines are all typical of Norah’s particular
style at this time, yet the subject matter is far removed from her usual choices. The
close relationship between woodcut and poem and the atypical subject matter for
Norah indicate that in this particular piece, her work is close to using the same
aesthetic as her brother’s poem. This is most unusual, because “the art she pro-
duced for the little magazines did not defer to or normally even make reference to
any of the texts published alongside it”.45 Yet, even as part of this unique collabo-
ration on an unusual subject, Norah still maintained her distinctly eclectic style.
As well as the portrayal of movement in her early works, her depictions of the
city also reveal the influences of Italian Futurism. The invocation of the city as a
symbolic representative of modernity is by no means limited to the Futurist move-
ment and it is certainly an enduring image within a range of avant-garde –isms.
According to John J. White:
Works like Boccioni’s La Strada entra nella casa, La città che sale, and Le forze di una strada,
or Carrà’s Ciò che mi ha detto il tram and La strada dei balconi seem by and large consonant
with the mythicised city images of Georg Heym or the way the modern metropolis is pre-
sented in poetry of Kurt Hiller, Ernst Stadler, and Ludwig Rubiner, and in the paintings of
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.46
These points of contact between German Expressionism and Italian Futurism

indicate some of the key concerns of the period, and it is these shared interests
that allow an artist like Norah to borrow eclectically from the styles of a variety of
the -isms circulating at the time.
45 Quance: “The Practice of Book Illustration”, p. 73.

46 White: “Futurism and German Expressionism”, p. 47.
Fig. 5. El viaducto (The Viaduct). Title page of Grecia 3:44 (15 June 1920).
The print, El viaducto (The Viaduct; Fig. 5), published on the cover of Grecia in
June 1920, is one of her first cityscapes. Juan Manuel Bonet notes that the structure
depicted here “ought to be considered the most representative symbol of Ultraist
Madrid, something similar, in its own way, to what the Eiffel Tower meant for the
Parisian avant-gardists”.47 Norah Borges’s rendering of this iconic structure again
blends the three avant-garde styles evident in her early works. Vanessa David-
son has discussed the significance of this image, noting that the print “exhib-
its [Norah’s] partial assimilation of layered, cubist space”.48 Davidson is clearly
thinking of images such as Braque’s paintings of the viaduct at L’Estaque and the
Cubist influence of these paintings on Norah’s image is clear to see. However, the
use of Cubism does not preclude the influence of Futurist cityscapes, particularly
in relation to the creation of odd angles, which lend a sense of dynamism as well
as an odd perspective to the work.
47 “[…] debe ser considerado como el símbolo más representativo del Madrid ultraísta algo así
como una versión humilde, de andar por casa, de lo que para los vanguardistas de París repre-
sentaba la Torre Eiffel.” Bonet: El ultraísmo, p. 334.
126 Eamon McCarthy
Boccioni’s Officine a Porta Romana (Workshops at Porta Romana, 1909) in

which he seeks to “liberate the maximum quantities of light and pictorial dyna-
mism”, and his 1911 painting Le forze di una strada (The Forces of a Street), which
depicts the movement of a tram through the dark city streets at night-time, show
that one of the ways in which he captures the dynamism of the city is by alter-
ing perspective to highlight the angles created by crossing streets and by captur-
ing the multiple layers of buildings and features that make up the cityscape.49
Norah’s print, El viaducto, is constructed in the same fashion, with the viaduct
itself cutting across the front of the image, intersecting with a street at right
angles. Furthermore, the links between Futurism and Expressionism might again
be employed to point to the truly hybrid nature of Norah’s works. As John J. White
notes, Kirchner’s Nollendorfplatz (Street Scene near Nollendorf Square, 1912) is
“technically influenced by Futurist modes of ‘Dynamisierung’ without display-
ing that debt so explicitly” and contains the same striking use of angles that is
evident in the works of Boccioni and Norah Borges.50 The use of multiple styles
means that, in El viaducto, Norah captured a symbolic space for the Spanish
avant-garde by using an eclectic blend of the aesthetics of the wider European
avant-garde, which in return reflects the spirit of ultraísmo as an open-minded
movement.

Fig. 6. Paisaje de Mallorca (Mallorcan Landscape), from Grecia 3:47 (1 August 1920), p. 7
49 Coen: “Umberto Boccioni”, p. 90.

50 White: “Futurism and German Expressionism”, p. 54.
Fig. 7. Paisaje de Buenos Aires (Cityscape of Buenos Aires). Title page of Ultra 1:17 (30 October
1921).
El viaducto is not an isolated example of the use of this type of perspective. The
two cityscapes of Mallorca (Fig. 6) and Buenos Aires (Fig. 7) are constructed in a
similar way and again exhibit the same blending of styles. In Paisaje de Mallorca,
a figure holding a jug on her head is walking along an elevated path. This pas-
sageway runs from the left corner to the centre of the image and mimics the angle
of the viaduct in the earlier print. The predominance of positive space within
the print suggests the buildings are bathed in light, while the use of pattern
(cross-hatching on the sky and patio and the leaves on the trees) increase the
feeling of movement within the print itself. The same flattened layering of space
identified with Cubism seen in El viaducto is evident here and is again used in the
contemporaneous Paisaje de Buenos Aires.
The two cityscapes share the same stylistic traits as the two earlier prints. The
image of her native city shows a street corner viewed from above at an oblique
angle. Some crosshatching and small jagged lines – characteristic of German
Expressionism – add vivacity to the print. However, unlike the other two prints
considered here, Paisaje de Buenos Aires occupies a special place in Norah’s
œuvre as it signals a re-engagement with her hometown, as well as forming a
key link between Spanish ultraísmo and its Argentine counterpart.51 Again, the
blending of various European styles is evident, but what comes to the fore is the
51 Jorge Luis Borges was the leading figure in the attempt to introduce ultraísmo to Argentina,
and he wrote manifestoes and produced magazines in order to increase awareness of the move-
ment and its aims. He was involved in producing two issues of the mural magazine Prisma, to
128 Eamon McCarthy
presence of a series of features that Norah would continue to incorporate into her
cityscapes for the rest of her career. These include architectural features associ-
ated with criollo style buildings, such as the columns, balustrades, windows and
tiled patios, as well as other elements that might be read as representative of the
nation, such as the sun in the centre, the statue of the horse and rider and the
obscured lettering of the shop front sign. This print shows that Norah’s eclectic
use of European avant-garde styles was not only representative of the Spanish
movement but also embodied the first steps in the direction of an aesthetic reno-
vation in Argentina. She may not have been present at their discussions, but her
works came to be the visual representation of their goals. Norah’s ‘insider-out-
sider’ position in relation to the male-dominated avant-garde groups in Spain
and Argentina gave her the freedom to respond as she pleased to a variety of the
aesthetic questions raised by diverse movements.52
Norah and Futurism in Buenos Aires
The Borges family returned to Buenos Aires in March 1921 and Norah sent Paisaje
de Buenos Aires to Spain for publication. This practice was not unusual and both
she and her brother continued to publish work in the same Spanish cultural
magazines to which they contributed while living in Spain. After settling again
in Argentina, Norah maintained her links with Spain by continuing to publish
work in Spanish avant-garde magazines and, of course, through her relationship
with Torre. The Borges family returned to Spain for a year (1923–24), and by that
time, Norah had already begun to retreat somewhat from her avant-garde style.
There are many reasons for this evolution of her style, not just the atmosphere
of the more artistically conservative Buenos Aires. Norah, like many others of
her generation, participated in what Jean Cocteau called a ‘rappel à l’ordre’.53
By 1923–24, many artists had already begun retreating from the excesses of the
first avant-gardes, and Norah, too, was responding to a general stylistic retreat.54
Despite the changes in her style, her works were still considered ‘modern’ both
in Spain and Argentina, and in her native Buenos Aires she contributed a large
number of works to cultural magazines.
which Norah contributed two prints. The first run of the magazine Proa (with only three issues)
was also edited by Jorge Luis, with significant contributions by Norah.
52 Gambrell: Women Intellectuals, Modernism, and Difference, p. 12.
53 Cocteau: Le Rappel à l’ordre. Paris: Stock, 1926.
54 Nelson: “Norah Borges: (Self-)Criticism”.
When Norah returned to Argentina in 1924 after her second trip to Europe,
she became associated with Argentina’s newly founded magazine Martín Fierro.
The Argentine avant-garde, like its Spanish counterpart, was by no means pre-
scriptive and Martín Fierro published articles on a variety of topics and repro-
duced paintings and other artworks from a variety of European and Latin Ameri-
can artists. Moreover, as Beatriz Sarlo notes, “for the avant-garde the inconclusive
debate about national culture became another key issue to be resolved as part of
a vast movement of aesthetic renovation”.55 Unlike the iconoclasm of the Euro-
pean avant-garde, Argentine Modernism was concerned with building a sense
of national identity as well as renewing the arts. The discourse of destruction
and overthrowing the past contained in Marinetti’s Foundation and Manifesto of
Futurism certainly seemed anathema to such a project. Nonetheless, in June 1926,
Marinetti visited the city56 and delivered a lecture organized by the Asociación
“Amigos del Arte”.57
In order to mark Marinetti’s visit, an exhibition of Argentina’s modern artists
was arranged, and Norah’s work was shown alongside works by Emilio Petto-
ruti and Xul Solar, both of whom had also lived and worked in Europe. Martín
Fierro published a number of articles related to the visit and included reproduc-
tions of some of the paintings exhibited. The double issue 29–30 of 18 June 1926
printed Marinetti’s first Futurist manifesto, a section on Futurism from Torre’s
Literaturas europeas de vanguardia (1925), and an introduction to Marinetti by the
Franco-Italian film critic Nino Frank, dated “Paris, mayo 1926”. A brief unsigned
“Homenaje a Marinetti” provided a biographical overview of Marinetti and
served as his introduction to the reader. Nino Frank underscored the importance
of Futurism within the European avant-garde and, very tellingly, showed how it
became blended with Cubism and Expressionism:
But that is not all. Although in Europe Futurism has always been subordinate to other avant-
garde movements, such as Cubism or Expressionism, in Italy it has had a marked influence
and has managed to create a new air of lyricism, colour and mysticism. Without Marinetti, it
would have taken much longer to restore health to Italian poetry and art.58
55 Sarlo: Jorge Luis Borges, p. 104.

56 See Rabossi: “Les Visites de Marinetti en Argentine”; Rabossi: “Marinetti en Sudamérica:
Crónica de sus viajes”; Saítta: “Marinetti en Buenos Aires.”
57 This organization was crucial in the introduction of avant-garde styles to Argentina, and No-
rah had individual exhibitions there in 1926 and 1940. See Artundo: Amigos del Arte, pp. 226–235
and Meo Laos: Vanguardia y renovación estética.
58 “No es todo y hay mejor: si además en Europa el futurismo no ha hecho más que sumarse
a los otros movimientos de vanguardia, tales como el cubismo o el expresionismo, en Italia, ha
tenido una influencia real, logrando crear allí toda una atmósfera nueva de lirismo, de color,
130 Eamon McCarthy
This praise is followed by the observation that “we have all mocked his aspira-
tion to carry on creating Futurists, although the war had put an end to all that”.59
Such a view, namely that Futurism has had its historical merits but had become
outdated by now, permeated the rest of the Martín Fierro issue and also reflected
Norah’s position in her first prints.
The following issue of Martín Fierro contained a report on the impact of
Marinetti’s visit and reproductions of works from the exhibition at the Asoci-
ación “Amigos del Arte” to mark his visit.60 Alberto Prebisch’s article frankly
engaged with the fact that Marinetti’s brand of Futurism “tastes of wine past its
best, according to the palates of the best sommeliers”.61 It is clear that Prebisch
favoured an eclectic engagement with avant-garde theories. He stated his posi-
tion unequivocally, saying that the paintings in the exhibition “show us that a
modern touch can be glimpsed in even the most contradictory of works, com-
pleted by artists with opposing styles”.62 None of the paintings reproduced with
his article reveal an overt engagement with Futurist art, yet they do represent a
range of avant-garde styles. The decision to exhibit the most contemporary paint-
ings by Argentina’s avant-garde artists must have been deliberate, since the three
artists included – Emilio Pettoruti, Xul Solar and Norah – worked in Europe, and
Pettoruti even produced a series of Futurist paintings while living in Italy.63
de misticismo, que, sin Marinetti, hubiera tardado mucho en salubrificar la poesía y el arte ital-
ianos”. Frank: “Marinetti”, p. 3.
59 “[…] todos nos hemos burlado de su pretensión de crear todavía futuristas, después de la
Guerra que ha concluido con todo”. Frank: “Marinetti”, p. 3.
60 The Exposición de pintores modernos at the Friends of Art venue (17–19 June 1926) was ded-
icated to Marinetti, who was travelling in Argentina at the time, and included works by Emilio
Pettoruti, Norah Borges, Xul Solar and Piero Illari, as well as designs of modernist architecture
by Ernesto Vautier and Alberto Prebisch. On the eve of the exhibition, Martín Fierro had organ-
ized a dinner of intellectual and artistic fraternity, dedicated to the poet F. T. Marinetti; on the
day of the opening, Marinetti gave a lecture about the Futurist art of Boccioni, Depero, Balla and
Prampolini.
61 “[…] sabe ya a vino pasado, según el paladar de los buenos catadores”. Prebisch: “Marinetti
en los “Amigos del Arte””, p. 3. I can only attribute the repetition of 30 in the issue number as an
error as all other issues, double and single, follow in sequential order without repetition.
62 “[…] nos demuestran que el acento moderno puede manifestarse bajo apariencias contradic-
torias, en obras reveladoras de los más opuestos temperamentos”. Prebisch: “Marinetti en los
“Amigos del Arte””, p. 3.
63 Sullivan: “Emilio Pettoruti”, pp. 31–57. See also Arestizabal: Due pittori tra Argentina e Italia:
Emilio Pettoruti ed Enzo Benedetto; Emilio Pettoruti. Special issue of Futurismo-oggi 25:1 (January
1993); Iglesias: “Pettoruti en contexto”; Meazzi: “Entre el futurismo y la Argentina: Pettoruti y
Bragaglia”; Nessi: Pettoruti: Un clásico en la vanguardia.
The three works by Norah reproduced with the article reveal the careful
geometric planning typical of her canvases and reveal her use of strong lines to
create a sense of internal dynamism within works that are otherwise tranquil.64
The angles glimpsed in these works are directly related to those seen in El via-
ducto and show the comprehensive blend of Renaissance, Expressionist, Cubist
and Futurist aesthetics that had emerged in Norah’s work in the 1920s. By way of
a conclusion, Prebisch noted that “the repetition of the design of abstract forms
that are seen in Pettoruti’s works, Xul Solar’s mysteriously symbolic works, and
the poetic and sweetly sentimental images in Norah Borges’s drawings, cause us
to be sceptical towards the principle that the limits and precise source of artistry
can be uncovered”.65 His final words unify the works of these three artists and
underscore the diverse nature of the Argentine avant-garde. It is hardly surpris-
ing that Norah and her fellow Argentine artists did not slavishly adhere to the
norms of any one of the European movements, but rather drew upon a variety
of approaches. Norah’s involvement in the exhibition in the Asociación “Amigos
del Arte” shows that the Futurist movement was important to her and that it had
a real impact upon her works. After her return to Argentina, Norah did not focus
on the creation of a unified aesthetic, but instead engaged in a broader process
of thinking about the purpose of art. The homage that Martín Fierro paid to Mari-
netti reveals a respect for the principles of Futurism and points to the important
rôle it played in the renewal of art, yet at the same time, the editors made it clear
that Futurism could not provide an exclusive basis for the Argentine avant-garde.
The impact of Futurism on Norah Borges
The influences of the Futurist movement are evident in Norah’s earliest works,
which were produced in Spain at a time when the aesthetics closely associated
with the movement were being discussed and used by artists from the Ultra circle.
These influences also left a trace in her later works, particularly in the way she
structured her images and emphasized the angles at which lines meet. Evidence
of Norah’s sustained interest in what she might take stylistically from avant-garde
64 The three paintings reproduced without dates or other details are: El medallón, El niño rubio
and Paisaje de Portugal.
65 “Los ensayos de arquitecturación de formas abstractas que preocupan a Pettoruti, el arte
misterioso y simbólico de Xul Solar, la intención poética y dulcemente sentimental de los dibujos
de Norah Borges, nos obligan a considerar con excepticismo [sic] los principios que pretend-
en fijar intransigentemente los límites y los fuentes precisas de la emoción artística”. Prebisch:
“Marinetti en los “Amigos del Arte””, p. 3.
132 Eamon McCarthy
movements comes to the fore in her manifesto, Un cuadro sinóptico de la pintura

(An Overview on Painting), published in Martín Fierro in 1927.66
In the manifesto, Norah sets out her own style of painting under four broad
headings – colour, form, tones and themes – which appear with lists of paintings
and some reproductions acting as examples for the theories contained in the text.
The examples she uses show the breadth of her knowledge, and the citation of
Picasso and Marie Laurencin shows her ongoing engagement with avant-garde
aesthetics. Futurism is not mentioned specifically, but Norah does refer to “Las
decoraciones rusas: María Goncharova” as an example of works which reveal the
“mystical colour of each object”.67 Confusion over her first name notwithstand-
ing, she was clearly referring to the Russian Cubo-Futurist Natalia Goncharova,
who, like Norah, successfully blended avant-garde styles in her works. However,
it is not Goncharova’s Futurist-inspired works that attract her attention, but her
stage and costume designs for the Ballets Russes production of Coq d’or (The
Golden Cockerel, staged in 1914 in London and Paris). Norah herself had pro-
duced a series of designs for this ballet, which were published in Martín Fierro,
and this undoubtedly drew her attention to this aspect of Goncharova’s work.68
The diversity of artists included in the manifesto and Norah’s ability to focus
on how specific works might illuminate her theories of painting point to her high
level of engagement with art as a discipline. It also shows her ability to draw widely
upon painters and art movements and to apply this knowledge to her own work.
This skill was already evident in her earliest works, where she adopted selected
features of Futurism in a manner that resonated with other ultraísta artists in
Spain and Argentina. Norah’s openness to various styles and movements and her
‘insider-outsider’ position as a woman artist allowed her to flirt with whichever
movements she pleased and to participate fully in the avant-garde. Norah used
the freedom she had learnt at the beginning of her career to create a body of work
that possessed a particular style of her own, undeniably enriched by her early
stylistic flirtations with Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism.
66 Borges: “Un cuadro sinóptico”, pp. 2–3.

67 “[…] color místico de cada cosa”. Borges: “Un cuadro sinóptico”, p. 3.
68 Four drawings were published along with a review of the production in Martín Fierro 2:20
(August 1925), front cover and p. 5.
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Alena Pomajzlová
Růžena Zátková: An Unorthodox Female
Futurist
Abstract: Růžena Zátková (1885–1923), a painter of Czech origin, is almost
exclusively known nowadays through her connection with Italian Futurism.
The reasons are easy to ascertain: in 1910, she moved to Rome, and her inter-
est in modern art soon led her to become active in the Futurist circle: she met
Umberto Boccioni, worked in the studio of Giacomo Balla, and cooperated with
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Enrico Prampolini. With Marinetti’s help, she put
together two solo exhibitions in Rome (in 1921 and 1922); in addition, she partici
pated in several Futurist group shows at the beginning of the 1920s. Despite this
avid involvement, she did not become a representative of the Futurist movement
in the true sense of the word. She did draw on many aesthetic concepts devel-
oped by the Futurists (e.g. multi-materiality, simultaneity of perceptions, focus
on spiritual states of mind); however, on the other hand, she did not want to be
exclusively identified with Futurism. Zátková felt attracted to Natalia Goncharova
and Michail Larionov’s form of Primitivism, which stemmed from the Russian
folk tradition and icon painting and focussed on a search for spiritual meaning,
but she did not wish to conform to any one artistic school. Therefore, she did not
sign any manifestos and freely chose between various styles and methods of artis-
tic expression. In her unorthodox approach to Futurism, she managed to create
works which, although moderate in number, were truly original.
Keywords: Primitivism, polymaterial sculpture, mixed-media paintings, abstract

art, the spiritual in art, spiritism and art
Introduction
“Růžena Zátková is an artist endowed with an astonishing sensibility and dili-

gence. [...] Her work reveals a striking, uncompromising artistic sensibility, not
often achieved even by the greatest artists, a sensibility that has a distinct fem-
inine quality in the best sense of the word.”1 This is how the journalist Arturo
Cappa, who was Zátková’s partner at the time, characterized the artist’s work
on the occasion of her first solo exhibition in Rome (Mostra di pitture e plast-
1 Grildrig [Arturo Cappa]: “Alla mostra di Ruzena Zatkova.”
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0009
ici dell’artista boema Rougena Zàtkovà, Sala Giosi, 6 April – 6 May 1921). At her
second show in the prestigious Casa d’arte Bragaglia (Rome) in November 1922,
Enrico Prampolini added: “She will guide you in her numerous works through
the unfathomable mysteries of the human psyche, she will show you new sculp-
tural and painterly insights into an inexhaustible world of perceptions.”2 Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti played a significant rôle in organizing Zátková’s first exhi-
bition, and was full of praise of her “pictures of a pure and ingenious art”,3 and
“many beautiful and very original things”.4 When, in 1921, Marinetti took the
Futurist Theatre of Essential Brevity on a tour to Prague,5 he concluded one of his
lectures with the following exclamation: “In the name of Růžena Zátková, long
live Futurism!”6
The above-mentioned statements were not just expressions of friendship. At
least in the case of Marinetti we can assume that he appreciated the high artistic
quality of Zátková’s work. It is therefore surprising that so little is known about a
person who was so highly regarded by leading members of the Futurist circle. Is
it because Zátková was a woman? Or a foreigner? Or because she died so young?
Perhaps there is a little truth in all these possibilities, but certainly the most
decisive factor was her untimely death at the age of 38, which interrupted her
promising art career in 1923, just when she was planning exhibitions in Prague
and in Berlin. After that, her works became scattered, often to unknown places, a
number of them still missing or lost forever.
For many decades, Zátková was an entirely unknown artist. The first to bring
her back to life were the art historians Enrico Crispolti7 and Maurizio Calvesi,8
while doing research on Italian Futurism. Due to the small number of Zátková’s
works known at the time, their interpretations and judgments were based on scant
evidence. Some subsequent publications9 sought to expand on the basic informa-
2 Prampolini: “Rugena Zatkova”, s.p. 

3 Marinetti in a letter to Zátková, dated 17 February 1921. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Yale University, New Haven. Marinetti Papers, GEN MSS 130, Box 1, Folder 16.
4 Marinetti in a letter to Zátková, [February 1921]. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University, New Haven. Marinetti Papers, GEN MSS 130, Box 1, Folder 16.
5 Syntetické divadlo, 12, 13 and 17 December 1921 at the Švandovo divadlo [Švanda Theatre].
6 Marinetti in a letter to Zátková, [14 December 1921]. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Li-
brary, Yale University, New Haven. Marinetti Papers, GEN MSS 130, Box 1, Folder 16.
7 Crispolti: Il secondo futurismo: 5 pittori + 1 scultore; Id.: Il mito della machina e altri temi del
futurismo.
8 Calvesi: L’informale in Italia fino al 1957; Id.: “Il futurismo”, in L’arte moderna 5.
9 Weller: Il complesso di Michelangelo; Vergine: L’altra metà dell’avanguardia 1910–1940; Ben-
tivoglio-Zoccoli: The Women Artists of Italian Futurism, etc.
138 Alena Pomajzlová
tion provided by Crispolti and Calvesi, but, generally speaking, they continued to
operate with unverified statements, erroneous dates and biased interpretations
of Zátková’s work. In their defence, it may be said that it was indeed impossible
to draw complete and accurate conclusions about Zátková from a highly limited
number of biographical documents and a small amount of surviving works.
A turning point came with a retrospective exhibition, Růžena: Příběh malířky
Růženy Zátkové (Růžena: Story of the Painter Růžena Zátková), which I curated
in 2011 at the Imperial Stables of Prague Castle, and a dissertation completed in
the same year by Marina Giorgini at the Università La Sapienza in Rome.10 They
brought to light a large number of documents scattered all over the world – from
California to Moscow, from Italy to Sweden. These papers filled in some of the
grey areas in Zátková’s biography and made it possible to build a more accurate,
although still hypothetical, chronology of the artist’s work. They also shed light
on an important fact which had not been considered before: that the work of
Růžena Zátková does not form a gradually evolving series of Modernist paint-
ings, sculptures and drawings. Rather, she constantly switched between formally
progressive and traditional methods; she often returned to themes previously
abandoned, or she would work concurrently on Realist, Primitivist, Symbolist
and Futurist projects. Operating with such a variety of artistic methods and con-
ceptions of art seems, in a sense, to be ‘anti-modern’. But her portfolio of Futurist
works also demonstrates that she was at the forefront of developments and must
be considered a high-Modernist painter.
Zátková was associated with some of the leading figures of Italian Futurism:
she knew Umberto Boccioni, reportedly she was a student of Giacomo Balla’s,
and she entertained close contact with Marinetti and Prampolini. However, the
appearance and conception of some of her works resist clear classification. This
may have had to do with the fact that Zátková was also friends with Natalia Gon-
charova and Mikhail Larionov and had great respect for their Primitivist œuvre.
These contradictory worlds, the dynamism of Futurism and the consistency of
forms stemming from the Russian folk tradition or Byzantine art, were continu-
ally combined in Zátková’s work, blending and often competing with one another.
This is why, in the broad spectrum of her œuvre, her Futurist works stand side by
side with works that are completely opposite in nature. Even during the period
of intensive collaboration with Marinetti, Zátková had critical reservations about
his movement. Her relationship to Futurism was complex and raises the question
of her position within the Futurist canon. Can she be considered a Futurist artist,
10 Pomajzlová: Růžena: Příběh malířky Růženy Zátkové = Růžena: Story of the Painter Růžena
Zátková; Giorgini: Růžena Zátková: Un’artista boema nel futurismo italiano.
when only some of her work can be identified with the movement? In the follow-
ing pages, I shall present Zátková’s complex life story, discuss her contacts with
the main figures of the European avant-garde, investigate her individual artistic
and intellectual approach, her intense drive for creative work and her ceaseless
quest for artistic excellence.
From Prague to Rome
Růžená Zátková came from a rich and cultivated family, the Zátkas of Southern
Bohemia. Her intellectual development was determined by a liberal education
focussing on studies and reading, rather than traditional handicrafts for women.
In addition to playing the piano, she also studied painting, first in Prague, and
for a brief period also in Munich. The goal was not to enhance her future marriage
prospects and to turn her into decorative host of social salons, as was common
practice at the time; rather, her education was meant to prepare her for a future
career. Having an example in her mother, Růžena began performing concerts
and, together with her sister Sláva, tried to establish herself as a painter in the
Prague art scene.
On 16 February 1910, she married a Russian officer, Vasily Bogdanovich
Khvoshchinsky (1880–1953), who, at the time, worked in the diplomatic service
of the Russian embassy in Rome. Her husband had a great love of art, maintained
a large collection of paintings and, together with Mario Salmi, published two
volumes about Tuscan painters of the 12th to 16th centuries11. All of this aroused
in Růžena a deeper interest in fine art, both old and new. She admired Egyptian
and Early Christian art, the Italian Trecento ‘Primitives’, and she sought out
Etruscan sites in the vicinity of Rome.
The first modern expression which appealed to her was the anti-classical,
wild and expressive artwork of the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, who was
working in Rome at the time. Zátková met him in 1912, and a notable sculpted
portrait of Zátková by Meštrović dates back to this year.12 She learned about the
latest trends in modern art that were coming to Rome. Although, at first, she was
sceptical, she later came to identify with them. She wrote to her sister Zdena:
11 Basile Khvoshinsky, and Mario Salmi: Primitivi. I pittori toscani dal XII al XVI secolo. Roma:
Ermano Loescher 1912; Id: I fiorentini del trecento. I pittori toscani dal XIII al XVI secolo. Roma:
Ermano Loescher 1914.
12 Bronze, height 100cm, Aleš’s South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou, now on per-
manent exhibition in the National Gallery in Prague.
As far as I’m concerned, I understand the modern trends completely and I feel very close to
them, since the abstract, spiritual world has always been closer and more real to me than
the real one. I found a genuine lively interest towards my work only after understanding and
mastering these trends.13
Fig. 1. Růžena Zatkova: Photograph of Ariete / Sensibilità, rumori e forze ritmiche della macchina
pianta-palafitte (The Ram / Sensibility, Noises and Rhythmic Forces of a Pile Driver, 1916).
13 Zátková in a letter to her sister Zdena, dated 29 October 1921. Private collection, Prague.
There were two periods in Zátková’s work that had a significant relationship
to Futurism. The first dates from approximately 1915–1916, when she made the
acquaintance of the Futurists, began following their work and made regular
visits to the studio of Giacomo Balla.14 The best work from this period is the
mixed-media sculpture, Ariete, also named Sensibilità, rumori e forze ritmiche
della macchina pianta-palafitte (The Ram / Sensibility, Noises and Rhythmic
Forces of a Pile Driver, 1916; see Fig. 1). The second period coincides with the
beginning of the 1920s, when she returned to Italy after several years of medical
treatment and convalescence in Switzerland, and rejoined the Futurist circle
around Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Benedetta Cappa and Giacomo Balla. This
is the period from which her most exhibited works today belong – the portraits
of Marinetti, the so-called Pitture luminose / Quadri-sensazioni (Luminous Paint-
ings / Painted Sensations, 1919–1920) as well as other remarkable, yet unrealized
projects.
The first Futurist period: Rome 1915–16
There is no evidence that Zátková was ever present at any of the Futurist events
that took place in Rome between 1911–14, for example Boccioni’s lecture at the
Circolo Artistico Internazionale di Roma, the first Futurist exhibition in the
Teatro Costanzi and the two Futurist serate held there, or the opening of the per-
manent Futurist gallery and its first exhibitions.15 However, we can assume that
these events did not pass unnoticed by her. She is known to have been present
at a demonstration of Russolo’s intonarumori in Marinetti’s apartment on Corso
Venezia in Milan, on 2 April 1915.16 The evening had been prepared for Diaghi-
lev’s Ballets Russes troupe and for Igor Stravinsky, who was working on the ballet
Liturgy at the time. Diaghilev had the idea of making use of various non-musical
14 I have been unable to verify whether she became Balla’s pupil or not, as the painter’s estate
is currently inaccessible.
15 Boccioni’s lecture was held on 29 May 1911; the exhibition at the Teatro Costanzi ran from
11 February - March 1913 and two serate were held there on 21 February and 9 March 1913; the
permanent Futurist gallery run by Giuseppe Sprovieri opened on 6 December 1913 and held
an Esposizione di pittura futurista (Exhibition of Futurist Painting) from February to March
1914, followed by an Esposizione libera futurista internazionale (International Free Exhibition
of Futurism) from 13 April to 25 May 1914, accompanied by several poetry recitations and gal-
lery performances.
16 Cangiullo: Le serate futuriste, pp. 227–238; 245–251. Phillips: Sergey Prokofiev: Diaries, 1915–
1923, pp. 27–30.
sounds and was therefore interested in the Futurist noise-intoners, which he had
heard in London in 1914 for the first time. Zátková had already met Diaghilev,
Bakst17 and Prokofiev18 at the beginning of 1915, so it is likely that she was invited
to Milan by them. There, she encountered Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto
Boccioni,19 Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Francesco Balilla Pratella and Francesco
Cangiullo. And her contact with the Futurists was not limited to this one meeting;
Zátková became involved with the activities of the Roman Futurists and remained
in contact with Marinetti and Balla. She also strengthened her connections to
Diaghilev and his troupe; she spent the second half of 1915 in Ouchy, Switzer-
land, when they were preparing the new season. It was during this period that
she encountered Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov’s work, which made
such a great impression on her.
In January 1916, Zátková rented a new studio in Rome and began working
on her most important works of this period. She capitalized on all the important
impulses she had received in the previous months. Her intellectual transforma-
tion was significantly influenced by the ideas of Spiritism and Theosophy, which
were widely debated in Futurist circles at the time. She took part in mediumistic
séances together with Giacomo Balla, Gerald Tyrwhitt and others. This had a pro-
found influence on her conception of art and led to a significant improvement in
her creations.
The first signs that Zátková was moving away from representational imagery
towards abstraction can be found in the series Sensazioni delle piante (The Feel-
ings of Plants), probably created at the beginning of 1916. It depicted “a variety of
decorative elements based on trees”, stemming more from the artist’s individu-
ality than from “the objective form which has produced them”.20 The works were
not meant to be “long analytical descriptions in the manner of the Old Masters
but on the contrary [...] immediate rich and essential sensations”.21 Instead of
direct representation of the external world, Zátková focussed on ideas of growth
and dynamics in Nature and related them to the rhythmic use of ornamentation.
These works were closely lined to the decorativism of Russian folk art rather than
Futurism. She may have been inspired by the inventive approach of Goncharova
17 Posse-Brázdová: Interludio di Sardegna, p. 81.

18 Phillips: Sergey Prokofiev: Diaries, 1915–1923, p. 21.
19 It is not known whether she had already met Boccioni in Rome; Boccioni only mentions a
meeting with Igor Stravinsky on 13 February 1915. See Garafola: Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, pp. 77–
78.
20 Zátková: Mostra di pitture e plastici dell’artista boema R. Zátková, p. 2.
and Larionov in their theatre designs.22 We cannot say for sure whether the works
from the series The Feelings of Plants were completed in Switzerland or in the
following year in Rome, but in any case, Zátková showed them at her first exhi-
bition in the Galleria Giosi under the title Studi di piante (Studies of Plants). They
included four variations of Sensazione di pino (The Feeling of a Pine) and two of
her Sensazione di castagno (The Feeling of a Chestnut). In her second exhibition
she included Forze ritmiche degli abeti (The Rhythmic Forces of Firs). The Rhyth-
mic Forces of Firs and The Feeling of a Chestnut were reproduced under the pseu-
donym ‘Signora X’ in the journal Roma futurista.23All the works of this series are
unaccounted for today.
The mixed media sculpture Sensibility, Noises and Rhythmic Forces of a Pile
Driver, created in the first half of 1916, represented a turning point in Růžena Zát-
ková’s œuvre. In this work, inspiration came not from the natural world but from
her physical experience of building activity in the neighbourhood of her new
studio: “Every day from early morning the whole area with all its forms shook
under the terrible blows of a steam machine, a ram, which thumped stiff, wide
piles as foundations for a new building, into the suffering ground.”24 The per-
ception of the constant vibration led to a sketch, similar to the decorative forms
in Rhythmic Forces of Firs, of abstract arabesques depicting the sensation of the
continuous violent pounding of the pile driver, the vibration of the ground and
the rhythmic repetition and the roaring sound of the machinery. Soon, Zátková
rejected the pictorial form of the sketch as it did not fulfil what she expected from
the work, and she decided to create a mixed-media construction. She used black
and grey leather, metal, glass, wood and cellulose in place of unavailable ivory.
The sculpture did not resemble a machine in any way; Zátková did not strive for
realistic depiction but sought to capture subjective sensations from the regular
pounding, the feeling of violence, the contrast of noise and silence, the ominous
anticipation of an impending catastrophe. She interpreted them through the
use of repeated abstract shapes, zigzag stripes, concentric circular sections, and
aggressive sharp points. The Pile Driver is a newly created object, a connection
between the seen and the experienced, a dynamic representation of motion and
noise, and a symbolic materialization of the idea of violence.
Zátková was completely absorbed in her work on the sculpture: “That thing
had its own inexorable laws, its own rhythm, its own material, its own propor-
22 Zátková tried her hand at stage design as well, for example designing some costume for
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Sadko (1896) in 1916.
23 Roma futurista 3:80–81 (25 April – 2 May 1920) and 3:84–85 (16–30 May 1920).
24 Zátková in a letter to her sister Sláva, dated 2 February 1918. Private collection, Prague.
tions, and not to have found them would have been laughably idiotic, for outside
of its own laws the whole of that construction was not justified by anything.”25
Zátková had never done work like this before. She was not a sculptor, which was
an advantage in this case as she was not burdened by preconceived notions of
correct sculptural methods. Futurism certainly influenced her decision to con-
struct a mixed-media sculpture, although she did not mention this connection
anywhere.
In the first place she must have been familiar with the Futurist manifestos,
particularly Boccioni’s Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture from 1912. Here,
Boccioni rejected classic themes, calling for the use of non-sculptural mate-
rials, colour, electric lights and even real motion. Perhaps Zátková was also
familiar with Boccioni’s sculpture, Cavallo + Case: Dinamismo plastico (Horse +
Houses: Plastic Dynamism, 1915). More likely, we can suppose she knew Balla’s
mixed-media sculptural assemblages (complessi plastici), which he was putting
together just at the time when Zátková visited his studio. In these constructions,
Balla implemented ideas contained in his and Depero’s manifesto, La ricostruzi-
one futurista dell’universo (The Futurist Refashioning of the Universe, 1915). They
were supposed to be models of a future mechanical and dynamic world, blending
together visual, tactile and sound perceptions. In addition to using non-tradi-
tional materials, the principle of simultaneity was also applied in them, just as
in Balla’s paintings Ritmo + rumore + velocità d’automobile (Rhythm + Noise +
Speed of Car, 1913), which used a similar artistic approach with its spiral motion,
overlapping zigzag lines, diagonals and sharp angles. Simultaneity was also one
of the main themes in Carlo Carrà’s manifesto La pittura dei suoni, rumori e odori
(The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells, 1913). It should be noted that, at
the time, the ideas of simultaneity and synaesthesia were also being taken up by
other artists of early Modernism.26
In the catalogue for her first exhibition, Zátková described the simultaneity of
perceptions in her machine. She used a Futurist vocabulary, such as the “dynamic
union of the forms of colour and rhythm that correspond to force + motion +
noise + environment transformed through a violent mechanical influence”.27 In
the second catalogue, Prampolini emphasized the mixed-media character of the
sculpture,28 and it was no coincidence that he reproduced a picture of the Pile
Driver together with Boccioni’s sculpture Horse + Houses. Plastic Dynamism in the
26 See Lista: L’Œuvre d’art totale a la naissance des avant-gardes 1908–1914.
27 Zátková: Mostra di pitture e plastici dell’artista boema R. Zátková , p. 3.
magazine Noi (April 1923). Marinetti considered Zátková’s sculpture to be her best
piece, he even referred to it as a “typically Futurist, strong and masculine feat”.29
For Zátková, it not only represented a transition in her conception of art as she left
behind the limiting conventions of traditional art, but it was also a symbol of her
liberation of spirit in a broader sense. She wrote to her sister Sláva:
Never in my life have I felt such a powerful feeling of creation and freedom [...]. After that
experience and the freedom I felt, I never went back again. Through it I had come to know
the legitimate reality of abstraction, its depth, its life, its beauty and its rights. I was set free
and in that I am happy.30
In the series, Stati d’animo / Studi psichici (States of Mind, Psychic Studies,
undated), she went further in her approach to abstraction. It is not easy to answer
the question when and how these works were created. Again, the originals are
unaccounted for and information about them is quite sketchy. Three photographs
are the only proof, together with information in catalogues and several descrip-
tions in contemporaneous texts. The sources disagree on the technique and date
of the works and, moreover, Zátková made no mention of them. In the catalogue
of the first exhibition the series was defined as coloured drawings, however the
second catalogue referred to them as oil paintings. Perhaps the series existed in
two variants, and they may have been created in two stages, first in the form of
coloured drawings, later, in the 1920s, as oil paintings. This is suggested by the
date 1916 written by Zátková on one of the photographs of a drawing from the
series Angoscia (Anxiety), also in texts by Arturo Cappa,31 who mentioned two
techniques and two different time periods. Finally, there are descriptions of the
works in a review of the second exhibition, which differ significantly from the
existing photographs of the drawings (they are spoken of as mixed-media paint-
ings, it is even likely that they had kinetic parts32).
Although the paintings cannot be considered definitive and finished, the
first conception of the series can most probably be dated back to 1916. They
were extremely reductive abstract works expressing psychic thoughts and events
through the use of shapes (circles, ellipses, and triangles) and expressive colours,
for example in Giuoco di influenze ossia la vittoria dello spirito più forte (Game of
29 Marinetti in a letter to Zátková, [February 1921]. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University, New Haven. Marinetti Papers, GEN MSS 130, Box 1, Folder 16.
31 Grildrig [Arturo Cappa]: “Alla Mostra di Ruzena Zatkova”.
32 O.L.: “Il futurismo a Bologna”. It is possible that the anonymous author is referring to another
painting, Acqua (Water) from 1919–1920.
Influence and / or Victory of the Strongest Spirit), Amicizia (Friendship), Attrazi-

one (Attraction), Estasi (Ecstasy), Angoscia (Anxiety), Catastrofe (Catastrophe),
Amore (Love) and Invasione (Invasion). Many factors influenced the genesis of
the series and made Zátková focus on a specific symbolic theme and on abstract
expression. Umberto Boccioni’s work was again a major influence. However, the
series States of Mind was much more rooted in Boccioni’s theoretical conception
of Futurist painting being reflections of states of mind than on his paintings of the
same title (Stati d’animo, 1911–12). This non-representational theme was meant
to correspond with the form of abstract art,33 partly realized in the triptych as a
second ‘plane’ over the stylized representative motiv and described in the fore-
word for the catalogue of the travelling exhibition of the Futurists in February,
1912.34 These ideas influenced the work of Giacomo Balla, for example Velocità +
Stato d’animo (Speed + State of Mind) and Dinamismo della sera + Stato d’animo
(Dynamism in the Evening + State of Mind), shown at the Galleria Sprovieri in the
International Exhibition of Futurism (13 April – 25 May 1914). At the same exhi-
bition, Arnaldo Ginna presented some paintings of psychic states that were even
more abstract and referred to two classics of spiritism and the occult sciences,
Charles W. Leadbeater’s books Man Visible and Invisible (1902) and Thought-
Forms, written with Annie Besant (1901).
There is no evidence that Zátková knew of the works and theories of Boc-
cioni, Balla, Ginna and Romolo Romani, but she did have her own experience
with spiritism. In the first half of 1916, she regular attended medumistic séances,
recording them in her diary and in a series of abstract drawings.
In the middle of February – like a wave that brings up unknown forms from the depths
– spirits appeared before me. My spirit was not bound with me so closely as before, it wan-
dered and explored. I think it was on the 12th: we had lunch at Tyrwhitt’s [...] in the evening
we sat at a little table in the dark and joined hands.35
Giacomo Balla also participated in the séances, and his work from the period
reflects his Spiritist experiences36. In addition to the experience itself, so-called
‘psychic portraits’ were created during the séances, consisting of simple abstract
33 Boccioni: Roman lecture of 29 May 1911, in Schiafini: Umberto Boccioni, p. 167.

34 Boccioni speaks about using “perpendicular lines, modulating and as it were worn out [...],
confused and trepidating lines, either straight or curved [...], horizontal lines fleeting, rapid and
jerky” for different states of mind. See Rainey, Poggi, and Wittman: Futurism: An Anthology,
p. 108.
35 Zátková: Spiritist diary, 1916. Archivio Marinetti, Milano.
36 See Benzi: “Balla e l’esoterismo”; idem: “Giacomo Balla e la teosofia”, parts 1 and 2; Matitti:
“Balla e la teosofia.”
drawings, internal ‘likenesses’ of some of the people. Over and above external
reality, which Zátková was continuously reaching out for, the method of abstrac-
tion offered to her a possibility to break through the surface of human conscious-
ness and to depict the world of the invisible. The fact that Zátková believed more
in the power of the subconscious, rather than ‘ghosts’ per se, is beside the point.
With some of the drawings it is difficult to define authorship – did the partici-
pants make them together? Who played the greater rôle? And is it even necessary
to know at all? The basic point is the thought that something like a state of mind
could be expressed formally, in a non-descriptive way, without any representa-
tional symbols, but only through the use of nonrepresentational artistic elements
– namely shape, colour, and line.37
Together with the psychic portraits (and the explanatory notes for them)
created during the séances, there were drawings expressing the conflict of ener-
gies or the polarity between the physical and the spiritual planes. Zátková real-
ized that, through the use of abstraction, she could express herself in ways that
were not possible by means of traditional methods. The drawings, which are
known to us from photographs, could be defined as projects, designs or concepts.
They were not considered to be art works in their own right. Even Arturo Cappa,
who knew Zátková intimately, doubted that these works counted as art. Zátková
reduced form to the most elementary geometrical shapes. Again, a similarity with
Boccioni comes to mind, especially the ways in which he established dynamic
relationships between two objects, a cone and a sphere, a cylinder and a pyramid:
Put a sphere and a cone next to each other and you will get a feeling of dynamic attack in
the former and static indifference in the latter. In the sphere, you will observe a tendency to
roll away and in the cone a tendency to become rooted. As is also the case with the cylinder
and the pyramid: [...] while the cylinder shows a spiral stretching in on itself, the pyramid
has a tendency to become rooted in the direction of its inclined sides. In the pyramid, the
convergence of the planes wins over the spheric dynamism ascending from the cylinder.38
Zátková produced several drawings in a similar spirit, such as La vittoria dello

spirito più forte (Victory of the Strongest Spirit, probably 1916). In the photograph
of the drawing Anxiety, the only one that is dated, we can even see a kinetic
element, but the question remains whether it was perhaps added later in the
1920s, when Zátková returned to some of her projects and thought them through
37 It is quite possible that Zátková also knew Kandinsky’s book, Über das Geistige in der Kunst.
We have no concrete information about it, but it is possible to deduce this from some formula-
tions in her letters.
38 Boccioni: Pittura e scultura futuriste, pp. 89–93.
again. The rotating element is more in line with her later work and will be exam-
ined further below.
Apart from kinetic motion, there was another issue that led Zátková away
from representational and towards abstract forms. She relinquished the optical
conception of painting and, instead, turned towards the idea that thought itself
could be the subject matter of art: “Formal simplification and freeing of the form
that increasingly seeks to express its immediate essence has led painting to a true
creativity, far from objective analytical-static forms, to the supremacy of thought
over vision.”39 The intentional non-painterly and non-artistic approach which
simultaneously stressed the importance of primary thought in States of Mind can
at best be characterized as an extremely innovative conceptual approach by the
artist. And yet it met with a high level of resistance, even from people in her per-
sonal life (Arturo Cappa, her sister Sláva). Perhaps because of the negative reac-
tions and the misunderstanding of her innovative conceptual approach, none of
these works have been preserved.
Turning aside: Leysin, 1916–1919
In the spring of 1916, Zátková left for San Sebastian in Spain to see Diaghilev’s
Ballet Russes. Soon after her arrival, she fell ill and, showing signs of tuberculo-
sis, Vasily Khvoshchinsky had her transported to a sanatorium in Leysin, Switzer-
land. Zátková spent three long years there. Suddenly, she was alone, separated
from her natural surroundings, from her friends and from her daughter. In the
beginning she was under terrible stress, fearful of possibly dying, and she found
spiritual solace by turning to religion. She read the Bible and studied the history
of Christianity. Nature was another support, which she perceived with extra
sensitivity. She was aware of the great silence around her, the magnificence of
the mountains and, in comparison, the insignificance of human beings. Slowly,
she returned to art, first only in thoughts and plans, later to actual work. The
illustrations, La vita del Re David secondo le leggende bibliche (The Life of King
David According to Biblical Legend) was the main work created during the Leysin
period. It combined bright watercolours with long passages taken from the Bible,
the script being structured in geometric patterns like those found in the Talmud
or in old Persian manuscripts. The King David cycle reflected her newly found
faith, inspired by ancient Christian art and Oriental miniatures, absolutely in
contrast to the idea of Futurist dynamism. She returned to the past, to timeless

symbols, to metaphors from the Old Testament. It can be said that The Life of King
David was, like her earlier work, the result of a search for fundamental meaning.
However, this time, in place of the conflicts of psychic forces, her driving inspira-
tion was “humility and reconciliation”.40
Zátková had not forgotten about the earlier experiments with abstraction.
In her letters from Leysin she mentions an abstract collage, Limoni (Lemons),
similar in technique to Balla’s work at the time. Nevertheless, Zátková felt that
form should follow function, and so she created traditional realistic portraits (for
employees of the sanatorium), while at the same time she was thinking about
formally progressive techniques. Many of her new projects (mixed-media sculp-
tures, for example) were left unfinished at the time. Later, she picked up some of
the ideas again in Italy, in the series Pitture luminose (Luminous Paintings). The
solitude in Leysin made her reflect more on the purpose and meaning of art, and
she came to connect it with her Christian faith and, consequently, she began to
be more critical towards various artistic trends, including Futurism: “I think a
lot about anarchy in art and how it breaks things down but does not build anew
– and it often seems to me that the Futurists are not so different”.41 Zátková’s
conception of art had changed again, now the main criterion was freedom. She
arrived at that realization when she suffered from the restrictions imposed on her
in the sanatorium and she had to find her inner freedom.
Those wretched Futurists are still calling for liberation, while they themselves are building
a new cage, as tight as the old one! ... Isn’t the beauty of movement exactly in that there is
also stillness, and vice versa? Is not the artist made up of meat and bones, and yet at the
same time also of mystery? May all be free! Earth and God! Form and mystery!42
This expressive, even exalted statement was brought to a parodic conclusion

when she was back in Italy and made a Futurist birdcage for her canary. Should
this cage also be listed among her Futurist works?
40 Zátková in a letter to Goncharova, dated 13 November 1916. State Tretyakov Gallery Archive in
Moscow. Larionov – Goncharova Collection No. 180.
41 Zátková in a letter to Larionov, dated November 1918. State Tretyakov Gallery Archive in Mos-
cow. Larionov – Goncharova Collection No. 180.
42 Zátková in a letter to Larionov, dated 26 April 1917. State Tretyakov Gallery Archive in Moscow.
Larionov – Goncharova Collection No. 180.
Second-wave Futurism and Zátková’s move to the Italian

countryside, 1919–1923
In the spring of 1919, Zátková returned to Italy. Due to her weakened condition
she did not return directly to Rome but stayed in the Italian countryside, first
in a small Alpine village, Macugnaga in northern Piedmont, later in Bricco sul
Castellaccio, close to Pegli in Liguria. Her personal life underwent many changes.
She got divorced from Vasily Khvoshchinsky and, in 1921, married Arturo Cappa,
a brother of Benedetta Cappa, the future wife of Marinetti. After having been
married to a diplomat from an aristocratic family, she chose a left-wing journalist
and a member of the Socialist party who was sometimes labelled “Marinetti’s red
brother-in-law” (Italian law, of course, did not recognize her divorce and the new
marriage). It appears that Zátková placed irreconcilable contradictions next to
one another, not only in art but also in her personal life.
Fig. 2. Růžena Zátková: Il pazzo (The Madman). Design of scene 3 (c.1920).
Zátková was soon hard at work again. In the early 1920s, perhaps thanks to
Arturo Cappa, she began collaborating with Marinetti again, and the rôle of
Futurism was once more strengthened in her work. Perhaps, surprisingly, the
most Futurist work of this period was not a piece of fine art, but a play script
called Il pazzo (The Madman; see Fig. 2), written some time in early 1920. It is
uncertain how much she knew of Futurist theatre manifestos such as Marinetti’s
Il teatro di varietà (The Variety Theatre, 1913), Il teatro futurista sintetico (The
Futurist Theatre of Essential Brevity, 1915, written by Marinetti, Emilio Set-
timelli and Bruno Corra), or Marinetti’s La danza futurista (Manifesto of Futurist
Dance, 1917). That she never saw any Futurist plays in performance is apparent
from a letter to her sister Zdena,43 and whether she was acquainted with Russian
avant-garde theatre is unclear. According to its subtitle, Teatro Ballo Pantomima,
the play was meant to be a fusion of drama, mime and dance. It consists of three
very short scenes, symbolizing slow motion (mime), immobility (theatre) and
dynamism (dance). She described the play in a letter to Michail Larionov:
It consists of three acts. The first, where the madman meets a man with whom he seems
to get along. They wander aimlessly here and there and so it continues. That is the ‘slow
movement’. The second, where the madman meets people who call him mad and he calls
them the same in return. That is ‘immobility’. And the third, where the madman meets a
madman. That is ‘dynamism’. It consists of a ballet duo for the two madmen and flamboy-
antly painted scenery.44
The important element was the brief duration of the play and its simplicity. The
third part of the play was, stylistically, the most ‘Futurist’, and it is no coincidence
that Marinetti praised it. The Futurist aspect was not only present in the ‘dance’,
which featured various jumps, turns and running, but also in the sets which
made use of coloured lights and ventilators blowing suspended strips of fabric
of different lengths. Also the musical accompaniment was meant to be Futurist
as well; it consisted of the hooting of ship horns and other sounds of the Futurist
intonarumori. The play was never performed, however.
Zátková main paintings of the early 1920s were the Pitture luminose (Lumi-
nous Paintings), sometimes referred to as Quadri-sensazioni (Paintings-Sensa-
tions). Scholars in the past have usually related them to Futurism, although in
fact they represent a reaction against it in the way they were created and in their
meaning. When in recent exhibitions, such as Futurismo, 1909–2009 (Milan:
Palazzo Reale, 2009), the paintings were presented together with Italian art from
the 1920s, they seem to confirm their distance from the Italian mainstream of
the inter-war period. In their technique, they refer to Futurism as they return to
43 Zátková in a letter to her sister Zdena, dated 6 December 1921. Private collection, Prague.
44 Zátková in a letter to Larionov, dated 18 June 1920. State Tretyakov Gallery Archive in Moscow.
Fig. 3. Růžena Zátková: Untitled (Futurist drawing, c.1920).
the mixed-media experiments Zátková had pursued since the 1910s, as well as
to the idea of mechanical motion. They were abstract collages or assemblages,
in one case even furnished with a rotating kinetic element and, thematically,
they focussed on natural phenomena (water, snow, fog and storms in the moun-
tains). As mentioned above, the ideas for the work first arose in Leysin. As early
as 1917, Zátková had written to Larionov about art capturing her inner feelings
about snow and rain. The first aesthetic impulses from Nature gradually meta-
morphosed into a search for elementary forms representing certain phenomenon.
This was an approach similar to the one Zátková had used in 1916, when she was
looking for the general features of a certain motif initiated by a subjective expe-
rience. “I have isolated the individual elements and searched in each of them for
its own character and its real function [...]. I have tried to capture the essence of
each of these elements.”45

This approach settled again for a superficial representation of the selected

phenomena, although the impression based on the initial visual perception did
act as a starting point. Zátková pursued a route to some kind of primeval, ata-
vistic basis which corresponded with an abstract formal language. This allowed
her to delve deeper within the changing aspects of natural phenomena to their
unchanging core, from the surface to the basic principles of Nature. Reading the
Canticle of St. Francis of Assisi may have influenced the choice of motifs. Zátková
explained: “[These are] remarkably beautiful verses such as the world has not
seen and will not see again, and although incredibly simple, the child-like words
clearly and fervently sing praise to all of God’s creatures”.46 Such a response was
completely non-Futurist, and instead refers to an inner transformation under-
gone in Leysin.
Fig. 4. Růžena Zátková: Aqua (Water, 1919–20).
46 Zátková in a letter to Larionov, dated 18 June 1920. State Tretyakov Gallery Archive in Moscow.
The best-known work from this series is Acqua (Water; See Fig. 4), an assemblage
made of cardboard, metal plates, corrugated and silvery paper, which Zátková
described as a dynamic, moving picture. Its main feature was a rotating disc
evoking a dynamic sense of motion, as a contemporary description of the photo-
graph testifies: “The disc with white and black stripes is movable so that it creates
the concentric circles of rippling water. A glimmering reflection is provided by
the silver paper.”47 They combine an awareness of the uninterrupted flow, which
we only sense under the seemingly stable surface of the water, with a motif of the
spreading of ripples on the surface, somewhat like Romolo Romani’s drawings of
drops falling on water.
Two opposing principles come together here, as we have seen with Zátková
before. The first principle was the motif of rotation; the second relates to Zát-
ková’s spirituality. The spinning motion was a common element in Futurist art
and constituted a basic form of dynamism in Balla and Depero’s manifesto, La
ricostruzione futurista dell’universo (The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe,
1915). Zátková made use of rotation in the painting Anxiety from the series States
of Mind. Unfortunately, the only information we have on this work is the artist’s
note on the back of the photograph (“red, blue and violet colours / metal blade,
movable”).48 It is possible that the painting was made in 1922, when Zátková
was preparing for her show at the Casa d’arte Bragaglia (November 1922). It was
described in a contemporary review,49 but without any explicit mention of the
kinetic element.
The central point of the painting Water is the centre of rotation, from which
beams radiate around the upper circle and to which the viewer’s attention is
drawn. It is a stable point from which all other motions originate. In a sense,
it represents the unchanging essence which Zátková sought in the first place.
For comparison, we can examine her drawing Mente umana fecondata di Dio
(The Human Soul Fertilized by God). It depicts concentric circles and rays of
light spreading from the centre to infinity. The drawing is similar in form to an
illustration from the book by Charles W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible
(1902), showing the human aura in various stages of spiritual growth. A similar
symbolism is found in another drawing entitled Profezia (Prophecy), which
Zátková made for Marinetti and which also acts as a critique of the Futurists. Two
47 Then attached to the photo, probably intended for publication. Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles. The work is nowadays kept in a plastic box, so we can only imagine the transformations
caused by the rotating disc.
48 Archivio Marinetti, Milano.
49 Vice: “La Zatkova.”
cones connected at their apexes represent the earthly (the lower cone positioned
on its base) and spiritual (the upper one, extending upwards) planes. For the
human soul to encompass the totality of being, it must be situated at the meeting
point between the two cones. The Futurists, according to Zátková, are found in
the area defined by the lower cone. Giacomo Balla also used the symbol of the
cone, a pyramid drawn from theosophical texts. He sent a postcard to Zátková in
Macugnaga, dated 8 August 1919, with a drawing of a symbolic mountain whose
‘spiritual peak’ can be reached on a spiral journey leading upwards.50
In addition to Water, there are other works from the same series that are still
extant (although damaged due to the fragility and instability of the materials
used): Neve (Snow), a collage made of paper and cellophane with little beads,
and an unlabelled collage of paper, tin foil, metal and glass fragments, which
could be identified with Luna (Moon) or Nebbia (Fog) and which was earlier
published as Ghiacciai (Glaciers). This group also includes a collage containing
representational motifs, Intemperia in montagna / Neve, pioggia, vento: Tempesta
in alta montagna (Storm in the Mountains), the location of which is unknown
today. Other works from this series are unaccounted for.
The works were exhibited both at the Giosi Gallery (1921) and Casa d’arte Bra-
gaglia (1922); Zátková also sent Neve, pioggia, vento: Alta montagna (Snow-Rain-
Wind in the Mountains) and Cascata / Cascate in montagna (Waterfall / Water-
fall in the Mountains) to a Futurist group exhibition that toured from Bologna to
Turin and Florence. In the aforementioned introduction to the catalogue of the
Casa d’arte Bragaglia exhibition, Enrico Prampolini described their importance
for modern art, pointing to the innovative use of materials and stressing that
Zátková “does not insist on the conventional means of expression in those cases
where they do not conform to the requirements of her intended concepts”.51 This
characteristic also corresponds to the unpreserved sculpture Sole (Sun), as the-
matically it belongs to the Canticles cycle of works based on natural phenomena.
In this work, Zátková intentionally used a different medium, sculpture, for the
bringer of light, the beginning of life and a symbol of God. She characterized
the sculpture as “a large free-standing ornament made of wood and metal and
gilded”52 and “a new machine-sun, very heavy and complicated to send and
position”.53 Prampolini describes it as “a magnificent monolithic block” and
50 These same ideas are perhaps reflected in Kandinsky’s vision of a pyramid with a lonely artist
standing at its apex. See Kandinsky: Über das Geistige in der Kunst.
52 Zátková in a letter to her sister Zdena, dated 28 January 1921. Private collection, Praha.
53 Zátková in a letter to Marinetti, 12 February 1921. Archivio Marinetti, Milano.
continues that “from the immaterial, light – painterly Impressionist – element of

the work she has created a voluminous, full, sculptural spiritual motif”.54 Today
we can add that the Luminous Paintings represent a synthesis of the artist’s work,
comprised of both Futurist elements and a deep spiritual concern. These works can
be considered the peak of her career and even regarded as precursors of the much
later art informel.55 Their experimental nature becomes clearer when we consider
that they were created high in the mountains far from the centres of modern art.
Zátková’s two solo exhibitions of 1921 and 1922
Zátková’s work was presented at the Esposizione d’arte italiana futurista (Exhi-
bition of Futurist Italian Art) in Bologna (Teatro Modernissimo, 21 January – 21
February 1922), Esposizione futurista internazionale (International Futurist Exhi-
bition) at the Salone del Winter Club, Galleria Subalpina, in Turin (27 March – 27
April 1922) and Esposizione futurista (Futurist Exhibition) in the Sala d’arte Mater-
azzi in Florence (12 June – July 1922). But the most important events for her were
two solo exhibitions.
To mount two solo exhibitions was no mean feat for a woman in Rome in the
early 1920s. Zátková’s model was clearly Natalia Goncharova, who had had a large
solo show in Moscow in 1913. Zátková turned to Michail Larionov and asked him to
help her with an exhibition in Paris.56 In the end, she abandoned the idea because
such a large project was too demanding. Instead, she focussed on Rome. Both of
the exhibitions would not have occurred without the support of Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, who found a space for the first exhibition (Galleria Giosi, via Sistina 133),
and, together with Giacomo Balla and Benedetta Cappa, chose the works and made
a speech at the exhibition. The show presented ninety-one works, out of which
almost a half are either extant today or identifiable. Many works were from the early
stages of her œuvre (1913–15): Isole Baleari (Balearic Islands), Campagna romana
(Roman Countryside), Capri. From Switzerland she showed Vita del Re David (The
Life of King David). The works more or less inspired by Futurist principles at the
show were Pitture luminose (Luminous Painting), Studi psichici (Psychic Studies),
the sculptures Polifemo / Il Mostro della guerra (Polyphemus / Monster of War),
Ariete (Ram; another title for Sensibilità, rumori e forze ritmiche della machina pian-

55 Šmejkal: “Futurismus a české umění”, p. 35.
56 Zátková in a letter to Larionov, 1 January 1920. State Tretyakov Gallery Archive in Moscow.
ta-palafitte) and Sole (Sun) as well as paintings and drawings, completely unknown
today, which at least suggest by their titles that they may have been related to Futur-
ism, e.g. Forme forze (Forms Forces), Espansione di oggetti (Expansion of Objects).
According to Zátková, the exhibition was such a success that she planned
another one soon. There were plans underway for a group exhibition in Rome at
the Casa d’arte Bragaglia with Czech avant-garde artists,57 including members of
the Devětsil group. In the end, the exhibition did not occur for reasons unknown.
Fig. 5. Růžena Zátková: Marinetti-Luce solare (Marinetti – Sunlight, 1921–22).
57 Zátková in a letter to Goncharova and Larionov, 27 November 1921. State Tretyakov Gallery
Archive in Moscow. Larionov – Goncharova Collection No. 180.
In November 1922, the most important exhibition of Růžená Zátková’s career took
place in the Casa d’arte Bragaglia. The Futurist aspect of the exhibited works were
highlighted by Enrico Prampolini in his catalogue introduction. Compared to the
first exhibition there were only fifty works; the number of paintings increased,
but there were no sketches. The emphasis this time was on finished works, mainly
paintings. In addition to the already mentioned Luminous Paintings and States of
Mind, the new works in the exhibition were the portraits, Marinetti moncroma-
tico (Marinetti – Monochromatic) and Marinetti-Luce solare (Marinetti – Sunlight;
see Fig. 5). In addition, a third portrait had been exhibited at the group show in
Turin, Marinetti- Luce elettrica (Marinetti-Electric Light), which is unaccounted
for today. The colour portrait was meant to be a kind of simultaneous vision of
different events: “An express train rushing at the viewer – the sun circling – a vol-
canic eruption – forming a new world drifting in infinity [...].”58 It depicts Mari-
netti’s face with his hypnotizing eyes circled by a whirl of waves and bursts of
energy. The only static element of the painting are Marinetti’s eyes with a spray
of overlapping colours and intersecting fragmented forms rotating around them,
and this dynamic motion leads the viewer into the core of the painting, towards
the gazing eyes.
In addition to the portraits, Zátková worked on other paintings: Lotta di
supremazia fra vari oggetti (The Struggle for Supremacy among Various Objects),
which is not a traditional still-life but a painting about conflicts between ani-
mated objects, which Zátková described in the form of a Futurist dialogue, too. 59
The painting, reminiscent of Boccioni’s style, used fragmentation, the intersec-
tion of planes, simultaneity, dematerialization through light, and the permeation
of energy through objects in space. A similar simultaneous shattering of forms
was probably used in the painting Galli di Bricco (Roosters from Bricco; see Fig.
6), of which only a sketch is preserved today. Works that are no longer extant
were mentioned as various ‘forces’: the paintings Forze meccaniche (Mechanical
Forces), Forze capricciose (Capricious Forces) and the sculpture Forze psichiche
(Psychic Forces). We can only assume that they were abstract works.
The activities of Růžena Zátková from the early 1920s are the best-known
part of her life and work today, certainly thanks to her exhibitions and contacts
to Marinetti. It was during that period that her reputation as a Futurist arose.
Indeed, the impulses of Futurism are apparent in Zátková’s work from this time,
58 Zátková in a letter to Benedetta Cappa, [February 1922]. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
59 Zátková in a letter to Benedetta Cappa, [February 1922]. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Fig. 6. Růžena Zátková: Galli di Bricco (Roosters from Bricco, 1921–22).
but she also concurrently acted critically against Futurism (and mainly the Futur-
ists). Her Futurist credentials are confirmed by the fact that Roma futurista pub-
lished some of her works, an opportunity offered to her by Marinetti. Zátková
accepted the offer only under the condition that she would not be mentioned with
her own name: “I can’t accept limitations. I don’t want to be filed anywhere. Fate
itself taught me that I am nameless, without any religion, without any family or
homeland, without inhibitions in thought.”60 Her works Study of a Tree – Pine:
Rhythmic Forces of Firs, Hypocrite, Study of a Tree: Chestnut and Machine, The
Sensibility, Noises and Rhythmic Forces of a Pile Driver were thus reproduced with
the pseudonym “Signora X” in three subsequent issues of the newspaper.61 Zát-
ková’s critical relationship to the Futurists came to the fore in the same letter
when she described the contradiction between a closed circle (the Futurists) and
an open spiral (her own attitude); she mainly blamed the Futurists for allying
themselves with what she saw as exhausted principles. On the other hand, she
admired the originality of Marinetti whose life she saw as “consistent in every
detail, free, a free spirit and creative”.62 Her critical relationship to the Futurists
becomes also apparent in an undated note:
You like the noise of the drum, the beating hoofs of loud squadrons, turmoil and the rumble
of ammunition cars and heavy trucks. I, on the contrary, prefer quiet thoughts, not phys-
ical strength but moral fortitude, not the closed circle but a stable centre around which
everything revolves [...] Language belongs to time, silence to eternity.63
Unorthodox Futurist, Free Woman
Růžená Zátková died on 29 October 1923 in Leysin. Although her life was short, she
lived it intensively. She spent the majority of her years abroad, and Italy became
her second homeland. She met a number of important figures in the world of
art there and, as the wife of a diplomat, also in political circles. As a beautiful,
educated and rich woman she could have led a comfortable life, but she chose a
different direction. That path placed many obstacles in her way, but she preferred
it to being “waterlogged in stagnant water”, as she called it.64
Her decision to focus her life on art proved to be irreversible. At first, Rome
was a decisive impulse for her activity; afterwards came her links to the Futurists
and the Russian avant-garde. Both worlds were important for her: the example of
Futurism helped her break free from the shackles of tradition, while the parallel
60 Zátková in a letter to Marinetti, dated 1 April 1921. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Li-
61 Roma futurista 3: 81–82 (25 April–2 May 1920), 3:83 (9 May 1920), 3:84–85 (16–30 May 1920).
62 Zátková in a letter to Marinetti, dated 1 April 1921. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Li-
63 Archivio Marinetti, Milano.
64 Zátková in a letter to her sister Zdena, dated 17 October 1921. Private collection, Prague.
incentive drawn from the Russian artists showed her a path heading away from
the dictates of modernity. From both tendencies Zátková chose freedom as the
highest value in both art and life. She realized this for the first time while working
on The Pile Driver in 1916. Curiously, freedom meant for her full submission to
the needs of the artwork itself, that it must be listened to and cannot have ideas
imposed on it from the outside. The second key moment was her enforced stay
in a sanatorium in Leysin, where, on the edge of death, she realized that art was
only an intermediate step on the way to the liberation of the spirit. Therefore, she
looked for a fixed point, a mystical centre, from which she could embrace the
universe. She sought to connect the material with the spiritual, art with faith. She
began to realize the relative value of art ‘-isms’, she understood the limitations of
Futurism. She wrote to Larionov:
I have decided I will not be what is known as a ‘contemporary artist’. I have become
extremely wary of this phrase and its lack of freedom [...] The work has its own laws, its own
knowledge and joy and it’s good not to disturb it with one’s own beliefs or, God forbid, with
so-called individuality.65
The third important point, if we move away from her personal life, were the Lumi-
nous Paintings from the early 1920s, which represented a synthesis of her previ-
ous work – dropping the learned stereotypes, working freely with new materi-
als, principles of motion and dynamic, the rhythm of Nature, spiritism and the
spiritual world. Her creative credo was linked to a vision of the whole as a union
of opposites.
It is necessary to understand Zátková’s affiliation with Futurism from this
perspective. Futurist principles were only a part of her work, but without it she
would not have reached the coveted vision of the whole. On the other hand, if she
had only immersed herself in the spiritual world, with no contact to lived reality,
it could have turned into an escape to purely imaginary worlds. For her synthesis,
she continuously strove to achieve a balance between both attitudes. Another
such equilibrium was achieved by her connection of life with art. The freedom of
art merged with her personal freedom, the path to personal freedom led through
the liberation of art.
65 Zátková in a letter to Larionov, dated 26 April 1917. State Tretyakov Gallery Archive in Moscow.
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aprile – 14 luglio 1990.
Verdone, Mario, Francesca Pagnotta, and Bidetti, Marina, eds.: La casa d’arte Bragaglia
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maggio. Milano: Mazzotta, 1980.
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Vice [pseud.]: “La Zatkova.” La tribuna (Roma), 1 December 1922.
Weller, Simona: Il complesso di Michelangelo: Ricerca sul contributo dato dalla donna all’arte
italiana del Novecento. Pollenza & Macerata: La Nuova Foglio, 1976.
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DuMont Schauberg, 1968.
Zátková, Růžena: “Polemiche sul tattilismo.” Cronache d’attualità 5 (May 1921): 57.
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Archival sources
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Marinetti papers.
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Archivio Marinetti, Milano.
Private collections, Prague, London, Basel, Arizona.
Natalia Budanova
Penetrating Men’s Territory:
Russian Avant-garde Women, Futurism
and the First World War
Abstract: This essay aims to shed light on a specific moment in the history of
Futurism in Russia – the art produced by Russian avant-garde women artists who
were engaged with Futurism during the First World War. Since the early 1910s,
Russian Futurists, women no less than men, widely adopted the rhetoric of vio-
lence in their anti-establishment public actions and readily represented motifs of
destruction and struggle in their visual work. However, the androcentric nature of
a real war seriously challenged the spirit of gender egalitarianism that previously
distinguished the Russian avant-garde. While the First World War became the
first military conflict in modern Russian history to involve a considerable number
of women in various war-related activities, the condition of total war did not facil-
itate in any serious degree the admission of women artists into the production
of war art, which was traditionally a male domain. Yet, this situation of virtual
exclusion did not prevent avant-garde women artists from engaging with subjects
inspired by the events of the Great War. Moreover, as women were not expected,
or invited, to take part in wartime propaganda, their art became less constrained
by the ideological clichés and restrictions imposed by established wartime
culture. As a result, works by women artists such as Natalia Goncharova, Olga
Rozanova and Maria Siniakova mark an important development in the history of
Russian art. In their capacity of active creators, women produced unique artistic
responses, displaying a subversion of both the mainstream war propaganda and
the notorious Futurist fascination with the idea of “war – the sole cleanser of the
world”.
Keywords: First World War in art, Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova, Maria
Siniakova, Lubok, Book illustration
Introduction: Futurism in the Russian artistic context
“We Russians are the least futuristic in this war, we are less adapted to its
machine-focused character, to its speed, to its swirling movement […]. We must
go beyond and overcome Futurism both in life and in art”, proclaimed Russian
religious philosopher Nikolas Berdyaev in his public lecture, Krizis iskusstva
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0010
Russian Avant-garde Women, Futurism and the First World War 169
(Crisis in Art) that took place in Moscow on 1 November 1917.1 The inner logic of
Berdyaev’s declaration confirms that Futurist tendencies were indeed prominent
in Russian art and life during the Great War, considering the philosopher’s appeal
to overcome them.
This essay aims to shed more light on a specific instance of Futurist history
in Russia by discussing activities and artworks by Russian avant-garde women
engaged with Futurism during the First World War. However, a few words
should be said beforehand regarding the use of the term ‘Futurism’ in a Russian
context. Indeed, the application of the words ‘Futurism’ and ‘Futurists’ in rela-
tion to Russian visual art during the first two decades of the twentieth century
is problematic for it is rather difficult to find a single work based entirely on the
principles of what might be called ‘pure’ Futurist art. Instead, Russian avant-
garde artists often concurrently availed themselves of a wide range of Modernist
approaches in their works. Together with Futurism, these also included Expres-
sionism, Primitivism and Cubism.
News about the Fondazione e manifesto del futurismo (Foundation and Mani-
festo of Futurism), published by F.T. Marinetti in the Parisian newspaper, Le Figaro,
on 20 February 1909, arrived in Russia on 8 March 1909, when the Saint-Petersburg
newspaper Vecher (Evening) reported on the event, explaining also the Manifes-
to’s main tenets. From that date on, major Russian magazines and newspapers,
including Apollon (Apollo), Russkie vedomosti (Russian Bulletin), Khudozhestven-
no-pedagogicheskii zhurnal (Art and Pedagogical Magazine) and others, closely
followed the developments of the new artistic movement by regularly publishing
information regarding its activities and publications. The neologism ‘Futurism’
was quickly introduced into contemporary Russian cultural discourse and was
put to use by the general public, press and art critics as a kind of an umbrella term
for describing art and activities of the new generation of aggressively iconoclastic
poets and artists, who were engaged in a radical innovation of culture. Hence-
forth, the use of the word ‘Futurism’ by the contemporary press and art reviewers
usually left aside any subtleties concerning stylistic differences between various
avant-garde groups, individual artists or, indeed, works of art. By and large, the
remarkable flexibility of the term also suited the artists concerned as well. A case
in point: Kazimir Malevich retrospectively described Russian Futurism as being a
“mix of all the forms that stirred up irritation in society”.2
1 Berdiaev: Krizis iskusstva, p. 23.

2 Malevich: “Glavy iz avtobiografii khudozhnika” in Malevich o sebe, sovremenniki o Maleviche,
vol. 1. p. 39.
170 Natalia Budanova
On the other hand, it should also be mentioned that the majority of Russian
avant-garde artists, al least at the beginning, did not particularly favour the name
‘Futurists’, and instead employed various other denominations that sounded
more genuinely Russian. These included Budetliane or Budushchniki (from
the Russian word budushchee, i.e. ‘future’), Gileitcy (from the art group Gileia
[Hylaea]),3 or Vseki (from the art style vsechestvo, developed by Mikhail Larionov
and Natalia Goncharova and meaning ‘everythingism’). In the course of time,
however, as Futurism became an established term in Russian cultural discourse,
some avantgardists reconsidered their attitude to what they previously rejected
as a term of abuse. For instance, by autumn 1913 the head of the Moscow art
group Hylaea, David Burliuk, decided that “to reject a name [Futurists], which
had been foisted upon us would only make the public more confused and antag-
onistic”.4 Hence, the group officially adopted the name Futurists and the new
appellation appeared on the title page of their newest miscellanea, Dokhlaia luna
(Croaked Moon, August 1913). Ex-Hylaea members went as far as to declare them-
selves in the subtitle “the only Futurists in the world”,5 thus asserting the abso-
lute autonomy of their œuvre as opposed to all other national and international
Futurist-inspired art groups.
To complicate matters further, in 1913 the term ‘Cubo-Futurism’ came into
common usage in the Russian press. At first (and rather paradoxically), it denoted
not a group of artists, but poets, for whom the prefix ‘Cubo’, coming from world of
visual arts, had little substance and served primarily as a tag to distinguish them
from their rival group, the Ego-Futurists. Interestingly, despite close collaboration
between certain Russian radical artists and poets, none of the artists rushed to
adopt the term Cubo-Futurism apart from Malevich, who in 1913 had proclaimed
Cubo-Futurism to be the only way to renew art.6 Nonetheless, for a couple of years
Russian avant-garde artists continued to use Cubism and Futurism separately
3 In the majority of contemporary English-written sources, Gileia is referred to as Hylaea. Gileia
is a Russian transliteration of the Greek name of a mythological land allegedly located in Scythia
region and mentioned in Herodotus’s History. In the English tradition, the same Greek word has
been transliterated as Hylaea. Gileia was suggested as the group’s name by Benedikt Livshitz
because the Burliuk family house, Chernianka, was located on the land believed to belong to
ancient Scythia.
4 Livshitz: The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, p. 93
5 Dokhlaia luna: Sbornik edinstvennykh futuristov mira!! Poetov Gileia. Stikhi, proza, stat’i, risun-
ki, oforty. Moskva [Kakhovka]: Izdatel’stvo literaturnoi kompanii futuristov “Gileia”, 1913. Sec-
ond, enlarged edn, Moskva: Izdatel’stvo “Pervogo zhurnala russkikh futuristov”, 1914.
6 Malevich: “Pis’mo M. V. Matiushiny i I. S. Shkolniku” (February–March 1913), in Khardzhiev:
Statii ob avantgarde, p. 131.
with reference to their French and Italian origins. Cubo-Futurism entered the
vocabulary of Russian artists only in 1915/16, by which time the Russian avant-
garde had already started a new chapter with Kazimir Malevich’s new movement
called ‘Suprematism’. Eventually, the term Cubo-Futurism was permanently (and
anachronistically) adopted into Russian art historical discourse after Nikolai
Punin, an art critic and champion of Russian avant-garde, used it in 1927 in his
book Noveishie techenia v russkom iskusstve (Newest Currents in Russian Art), to
denote the early period of Russian avant-garde art7.
Considering all of these historical and terminological complications, it
appears almost impossible to establish clearly and coherently to what degree
Russian women artists, whose war-inspired works are at the centre of this essay,
were in allegiance with Futurism. Therefore, I will abstain from indiscriminately
calling them (or indeed their paintings) Futurist or Cubo-Futurist. Instead, I will
address and discuss those characteristics in their war-time works that can be
securely traced back to the influence of and interest in Futurism as an interna-
tional art movement.
Rhetoric of violence and Russian women artists before the

First World War
Some six months before the start of the Great War, at the end of January 1914,
the leader of Italian Futurists, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, arrived in Russia on
a short visit.8 On the eve of his departure, an emblematic scene took place in
Moscow, Russia’s old capital. Roman Jakobson, a future founding father of Struc-
turalism, who in 1914 was a young fervent supporter of Russian Futurism, recalled
the episode in his memoirs:
The atmosphere in the Alpine Rose9 was very friendly. When we were getting ready to leave
there was a parting toast, and someone asked: “Will you come to visit us again soon?” Mari-
netti answered: “No, there will be a great war”, and said that “we will be together with you
7 For more information about the emergence and the use of the word Futurism and Cubo-Fu-
turism in Russia see several articles in Kovalenko: Russkii kubo-futurizm, including Sarabianov:
“Kubo-futurizm: Termin i real’nost” (Cubo-Futurism: Terminology and Reality), Romanovskaia:
“Kubo-Futurism” (Cubo-Futurism) and Bernshtein: “O veroiatnom predmete kubofuturistich-
eskogo delania” (On the Potential Subject of Cubo-Futurist’s Production).
8 F.T. Marinetti arrived in Moscow 26 January 1914. After a short visit to Saint-Petersburg, he left
Moscow on 17 February 1914.
9 Al’penroze (Alpine Rose) was a German-Russian restaurant in the centre of Moscow, not far
from Kuznetzkii Most Street.
against the Germans”. I recall how Goncharova, quite strikingly, raised her glass and said:
“To our meeting in Berlin!”10
The reaction of the painter Natalia Goncharova is remarkable given the complexity
of her attitude towards the founding father of Italian Futurism. One of the front
runners of Russian avant-garde art, she was far from being enchanted by Mari-
netti’s œuvre (at least in her public declarations) and even less so by his eager-
ness to be recognized as the global leader of Futurism. In fact, when asked by a
Moscow journalist whether she was going to greet Marinetti at the train station
on his arrival she answered categorically: “I have no interest in this individual!”11
Goncharova was also predictably annoyed by Marinetti’s repeatedly proclaimed
scorn for women. “There is no need to despise them [women]. In Russian, the word
chelovek (human being) designates human beings of both sexes which concerns
human relationships and our own nationality,” she argued in a letter to Marinet-
ti.12 The artist had a sound reason to challenge Marinetti with regard to his misog-
ynistic views on women. As a prominent member of Russian avant-garde milieu,
she belonged to an environment distinguished by a spirit of gender egalitarianism.
Working side by side with their male colleagues, Russian avant-garde women of
the early twentieth century made full use of creative opportunities by developing
their talents and potential “in an atmosphere of dizzy optimism and excitement”.13
The episode recorded by Jacobson confirms that the only point that Gon-
charova was prepared to share with Marinetti was “Futurist militarism”14 – a
strategy based on a rhetoric of violence, which was widely adopted by both the
Italian and Russian Futurists in their struggle against what they perceived to be
the old-fashioned and decaying culture of the past. However, it is noteworthy that
the Russian Futurists never fully subscribed to Marinetti’s idea of war as an ulti-
mate cleanser.15 Instead, Futurist belligerence in the last pre-war years was more
of a metaphor to express their attitude to contemporary society and the art estab-
lishment. That is to say, in the early 1910s, the Russian Futurists were conducting
a rhetorical war against their internal ideological and aesthetic enemies. Jacob-
10 Jakobson: My Futurist Years, p. 22

11 [Anon.]: “K visity Marinetti”.
12 Goncharova: “Pis’mo Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.” Manuscript in French in the Khardzhiev-
Chaga Cultural Foundation. Translated into English by John Bowlt: Amazons of the Avant-Garde,
p. 314.
13 Greer: The Obstacle Race, p. 9.
14 The phrase was coined by one of the leading Russian religious philosophers, Nikolai Berdy-
aev in 1918 when he asserted that: “Futurist militarism has no respect for the great values of the
old world, the old beauty, the old culture”. Berdiaev: Crizis iskusstva, p. 23.
15 Marinetti: “Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”. Marinetti: Critical Writings, p. 11–17.
son’s evidence is particularly interesting in this respect as it documents the first

instance of patriotic zeal being publicly voiced by a member of the Futurist circles
several months before the Great War.16 Jacobson found Goncharova’s gesture to
be “quite striking”. Arguably, he did not fail to grasp its deeper meaning, that is,
the fact that by raising her glass to the future “meeting in Berlin” Goncharova
radically switched focus from an internal enemy to an external one. In case the
presumed war would actually start, this new standpoint would have had the
potential to ally rebellious Russian Futurists with the very same national political
and cultural establishment they so far had opposed with great vigour. Maybe,
part of Jacobson’s astonishment was also due to the fact that of all people it was
no one else but Goncharova, a tireless iconoclast, to cross that bridge.
“Futurism was interesting for us, but there was no Futurism in Russian paint-
ing”, Malevich declared in his autobiography. “Futurism was mostly expressed
in actions, in an attitude towards the present state of the society. That is why
our Futurism was much more clearly articulated in public performances than in
works of art”.17 From this point of view, Goncharova’s allegiance to Futurism was
remarkable for she staged herself as a formidable agent provocateur, constantly
ruffling the public’s feathers. She actively took part in public discussions and,
together with her fellow artists, paraded the Moscow central streets with colour-
ful lines painted all over her face. On one occasion, she even slapped a member
of the public on the face and challenged him to a duel.18
Goncharova’s Futurist strategy of provoking public outrage also included
unconventional representations of female and religious subjects in her paintings.
A case in point was her apocalyptic Deva na zvere (Maiden on a Beast) from a
series of nine oil paintings called Urozhai (Harvest, 1911). The title of the painting
is conceptually related to the Whore of Babylon from the Revelation of St John
(17:3–6). Goncharova’s interpretation of the motif, while being true to the origi-
nal source in its spirit of the triumphant peril, nonetheless significantly differed
from the image described in the Bible. Instead of “a woman clothed in purple and
scarlet” the artist represented a completely naked woman with a swollen belly
sitting on a three-headed beast in a provocative pose. The artist’s unconventional
16 For a couple of years before the episode in question took place Natalia Goncharova already
set out to publicly promote the national quality of Russian avant-garde art, which she perceived
as being truly independent from contemporary Western art movements. In this sense she had
already established herself as a patriot of the independent Russian avant-garde.
17 Malevich: “Glavi iz avtobiographii khudozhnika.” Malevich o sebe, sovremenniki o Maleviche,
p. 39.
18 The episode was reported on 21–22 October 1913 by several Moscow newspapers, including
Moskovskaia gazeta, no. 279, Stolichnaia molva, no. 333 and Rannee utro, no. 243.
interpretation of religious subjects as well as the supposedly ‘pornographic’ rep-

resentations of the female body got her into various sorts of trouble, including
even a public trial for indecency.19 However, the incidents did not seem to dis-
courage Goncharova from her tactics of public provocations.
It is not for nothing that the Futurist poet and critic Benedikt Livshits coined a
special epithet for Russian avant-garde women calling them “real Amazons, Scyth-
ian riders”.20 Indeed, in her confrontational public image and her preoccupation
with war rhetoric, Goncharova was by no means an exceptional case. Another
representative example was Olga Rozanova, Goncharova’s younger colleague,
who played a prominent rôle in the activities of the Saint-Petersburg avant-garde
group, Soiuz Molodezhi (Union of Youth).21 As the author of the group’s manifesto,
published and distributed in March 1913 on the occasion of a public debate that
took place on 23 March 1913 in the Troitskii Theatre in Saint-Petersburg, Rozanova
employed the language of military confrontation declaring “war on all the jailers
of the Free Art of Painting who put it in the chains of the commonplace: of politics,
literature, and the horror of psychological effects.”22 The manifesto’s closing lines
sounded uncompromisingly belligerent: “We shall not be forgotten as long as we
are alive, since we shall give no peace to the lazybones – we will summon ever
newer forces to join the eternally new and eternally wonderful struggle. Here is our
motto: ‘The Future of Art is in continuous renewal!’”23
The same Futurist spirit of fighting and destruction distinguishes some of
her visual works from the pre-war period. Pozhar v gorode (Fire in the City, 1913)
unmistakably represents a moment of intense struggle, as the cold blue hues cov-
ering the margins of the painted surface fiercely contrast with the hot reds in
the middle, where the fire consumes the buildings of the city. As if the scale of
the destruction on the streets was not enough, the fire’s dangerous glare reaches
19 During Goncharova’s first solo exhibition, held for one evening, on 24 March 1910 at Obsh-
chestvo Svobodnoi Estetiki (Society of Free Aesthetics) in Moscow, two of the artist’s paintings,
both called Bog (The God), were accused of ‘pornography’ by the newspaper Golos Moskvi (Voice
of Moscow) and the police was called to confiscate them (see Utro Rossi [Dawn of Russia], Mos-
cow, issue of 27 March 1910). The incident led to Goncharova being tried for pornography, an
accusation of which she was eventually acquitted. Goncharova’s religious paintings were also
removed by the police from Oslinii Khvost (The Donkey’s Tail) exhibitions of 1912 and from Gon-
charova’s solo exhibition at Nadezhda Dobychina’s “Khudozhesvennoie Buro” (Art Bureau) in
Saint-Petersburg in March 1914.
20 Livshits: Polutoraglazyi strelets, p. 84. The book was first published in 1933 in Leningrad.
21 Olga Rozanova was one of the five members on the Union of Youth executive board.
22 Rozanova: “The Union of Youth Manifesto”. Sankt-Petersburg, 24 February 1913. Tshepik:
Olga Rozanova, 1886–1918, p. 17.
23 Rozanova: “The Union of Youth Manifesto”, p. 17.
out towards a train speeding along the horizon. The composition, based on
dynamic intersections of energetically curved black lines, boldly accentuates the
disturbing tension of the artist’s palette. However, Rozanova’s depiction of the
city assertively rejects the positive visions of Italian Futurism.24 Indeed, the ‘city’
trope, central to the Italian Futurists’ vocabulary both in literature and art, in
its Russian context received an ambiguous interpretation and developed into a
locus of both modernity and peril – a distinct quality that would influence their
representations of war in Russian avant-garde art during World War I.
Both Goncharova and Rozanova were actively engaged in collaborative book
projects involving avant-garde poets and artists, which were even more provoca-
tively anti-establishment in content and visual appearance than the avant-garde
easel works. Rozanova’s contributions to Alexei Kruchenykh’s book of transra-
tional poetry, Vzorval (Explodity, 1913), emphasized their radical and disruptive
quality already in their titles: the lithographs were called Vzriv (Explosion) and
Kon vstavshii na dibi (A Rearing-up Horse). Moreover, the title of the book in ques-
tion was a deliberately incorrect transformation of the verb ‘to explode’ (vzorvat’)
into a neologism, vzorval’. It easily evokes associations with the Russian radicals’
deadly attacks against Russian officials and the terrorist acts that killed, amongst
many others, Tsar Alexandr II in 1881. No less defiantly provocative were the titles
of the graphic works and texts provided by other avant-garde artists and poets,
who participated in this publication.25
What happened when the real war started on 1 August 1914? Did the Russian
Futurists align themselves with Goncharova’s recent public display of uncondi-
tional patriotism? Did the war make them revise their earlier strategy of public
provocation and fighting? Did the wartime ideological emphasis on notions of
male heroism and masculinity alter in any way the condition of gender equality
within Russian avant-garde circles? And, finally, did avant-garde women engage
with subjects inspired by the real war instead of a war of rhetoric?
24 For discussion of the Futurists’ view of the city as a symbol of modernity, see, for example, Di
Capua: Metropolitan Scape, Loos: ‘Città macchina gigante’, and Gurianova: Exploring Color. On
Rozanova’s treatment of the theme of the city see also Viazova: “Ikonografiia goroda u kubofu-
turistov” and Ichin: “Obraz goroda v tvorchestve Ol’gi Rozanovoi”.
25 Other artists who contributed to the publication were Natalia Goncharova: Chert (The Devil)
and Novie stseni iz “Igri v ady” (New Scenes from “Games in Hell”); and Kazimir Malevich: Smert’
cheloveka odnoveremenno na aeroplane i zheleznoi doroge (Death of a Man Simultaneously on an
Aeroplane and the Railway). Alexey Kruchenykh’s texts bore the titles Noni: Umertviteli (Noni:
Slaughterers) – ‘noni’ being a non-sensical word, invented by Kruchenickh, and Pugal’: Pistolet
(Scarety: A Pistol) – ‘scarety’ was another neologism by Kruchenykh, a word invented from mak-
ing the verb ‘to scare’ into a noun.
Art and gender in wartime Russia: Opportunities in adversity
Given the Futurists’ notorious fascination with themes of battle and violence,
their position with respect to the real war excited curiosity (not devoid of a tangi-
ble degree of sarcasm) among the less radical representatives of the Russian art
world, press and general public. In October 1914, a Moscow newspaper published
an article containing interviews with Russian avant-garde artists (called here
simply ‘Futurists’) on the subject of the First World War:
The Futurists were quite fond of talking about the war before the war started. So relentlessly
did they glorify its huge cultural force and aesthetic value that one is genuinely interested
to know what they think of it now [...]. [Goncharova] believes that the current war is actually
necessary and that Germans must not only be defeated, but exterminated. At the same time,
Goncharova thinks that the present war poignantly raises questions about the introduction
of a general conscription for women. In her opinion, such conscription is positively needed
and could provide a huge benefit. If young women of conscription age were engaged in the
army service year on year preparing surgical dressings and bandages for the wounded etc.,
there would be no need, as there is now, to rely on emergency aid provided by society.26
Natalia Goncharova’s answer, tinted by her usual taste for provocation, showed
her acute perception of anything novel and up-to-date in society. The artist
was quick to grasp one of the newest developments brought about by the total-
ity of the international military conflict, i.e. that the First World War had seri-
ously changed the rigid demarcation of gender rôles by involving a considerable
number of women in various war-related activities. They became military nurses
or munitions workers, and in Russia they even enrolled in active military service
as soldiers.27 Although general conscription for women, as Goncharova had sug-
gested, was never introduced in Russia, the suspension of rigid gender bounda-
ries during the war had a tangible impact on the professional life and creativity of
Russian avant-garde women.
Since the onset of the Great War, the Russian press appealed to artists to
take part in civil mobilization by producing works that would render dramatic
26 Vick: “Futurizm i voina.”

27 Women soldiers were a purely Russian phenomenon, as a certain number of women volun-
teers actually participated in battles, some were promoted to higher ranks and awarded med-
als and military orders for bravery. In 1917, the first women-only Russian military battalion was
formed – it was called the Death Battalion, because women soldiers were determined to fight the
enemy to the death. It comprised 200 women volunteers. The photos were published not only in
Russia, but also abroad, for instance in Great Britain in the book by Stephens: The Soul of Russia
and in the New York magazine The Literary Digest.
wartime events in the form of fine art. These pleas were based on the assumption
that the highest civic virtue of an artist in times of war would be to create an aes-
thetic record of major historical moments and to excite feelings of national pride.
In general, though, Russian painters were reluctant to engage with war-inspired
subjects.28 At the same time, a significant number of them, including avant-garde
artists, were caught in the widespread feeling of patriotic enthusiasm that distin-
guished the initial phase of the First World War in Russia. Vladimir Mayakovsky,
the Futurist poet, painter and cultural extremist with left-wing political convic-
tions, extolled the war in the short article, “Rossia, Iskusstvo. Mi” (Russia, Art.
We, 1914), as a powerful force and suggested that the Great War would eventually
put an end to the perilous apocalyptic essence of the modern world.29 Mayak-
ovsky declared Futurists to be natural leaders in the process of global transfor-
mation, as not only did they predict a world war, they also were the only art group
that had given adequate expression to war in their art. Furthermore, he suggested
that the new breed of young Russian artists – Goncharova, Burliuk, Larionov,
Mashkov, Lentulov and others – were uniquely fit to produce art infused with a
deep Russian identity, in contrast to Realist or Symbolist painters whose work
was based, in Mayakovsky’s words, on “either the frivolous flippancy of Paris or
the macabre boniness of Germany”.30
The emerging picture of the Russian art-world in wartime was, however,
much more complex. Multiple factors dramatically affected artists’ creativity
and determined their professional choices. To begin with, the war led to a severe
disruption in the patterns of international artistic exchange, forcing the major-
ity of Russian artists living and studying abroad to return home, or preventing
others from leaving their country of residence. Avant-garde artists were badly hit
by this sudden isolation, as in a decade preceding the Great War many of them
had developed a deep interest in the newest achievements of European Modern-
ism and sought to experience them first hand by studying abroad and staying
28 Alexandr Benois, a leading figure of the World of Art group, and some other prominent fig-
ures of Russian art world, including Zinaida Serebriakova, Ilia Mashkov and Alexei Kruchenykh,
vehemently opposed the war, arguing that it was antithetical to art in principle. According to
occasional interviews published in the Russian war-time press under the headings ‘War and Art’
or ‘War and Artists’, the majority of Russian artists either shared his view, or believed that one
needed more time to be able to come to terms with such an overwhelming event before any val-
uable art work inspired by war could be created. However, a few paintings on war subjects had
been created during the conflict, including Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s Na linii ognia (In the Line of
Fire, 1917) and Pavel Filonov’s Germanskaia voina (The German War, 1914–15).
29 Maiakovskii: “Rossia. Iskusstvo. Mi”, in Maiakovskii: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1, p. 318.
30 Ibid.
for longer periods in Paris, Munich or Berlin. Those cities were popular desti-
nations for aspiring young artists, who enrolled in prestigious Parisian private
academies including the Académie Julian, La Palette, Colarossi, and De la Grande
Chaumière in Paris, as well as the Munich art schools of Anton Ažbe and Simon
Hollósy. Some became even more closely involved with the international avant-
garde by keeping art studios and participating in exhibitions abroad.
From the beginning of the twentieth century, women formed an important
part of this group. Consequently, in the list of those who hurried back home,
the names of Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov and Ivan Puni were joined
by those of Natalia Goncharova, Alexandra Exter, Vera Mukhina and Ksenia
Boguslavskaya. All of them had to leave behind promising prospects in terms of
art training and career, while the professional opportunities back home appeared
grim due to a new and uncertain war-time environment. David Burliuk, the
self-appointed ‘Father of Russian Futurism’, summed up the situation in autumn
1914 when he asked: “Today is in fact the winter of the arts – who has time for art
now, when human life is in danger…?”31
War completely overturned the life and work of Alexandra Exter, a cosmopol-
itan artist who divided her time between Ukraine, Russia, France and Italy. Being
an active member of the Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde, she often travelled
abroad and stayed for long periods in France, Italy and also Switzerland, gradu-
ally becoming an important agent in the process of artistic interaction between
West-European artistic centres and Russia. Having lived in Paris for long periods
from 1907, Exter experienced the latest artistic trends first-hand. In 1907, she
made the acquaintance of Guillaume Apollinaire, who introduced her to Pablo
Picasso, Georges Braque and Max Jacob and, thus, to Cubism. Shortly afterwards
she also befriended Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes.
She acquired knowledge of the colour theories of Orphism directly from Robert
Delaunay and his Ukrainian-born wife Sonia, who was Exter’s close friend.
Finally, it was in Paris that Exter met Ardengo Soffici in 1912. Soon after, they
became partners both in art and life and spend the next two years almost exclu-
sively in Paris, sharing the same studio in rue Boissonade in the heart of Mont-
parnasse. Together, they started to investigate the pictorial potential of Futurism,
towards which Soffici was at first rather dismissive.32 However, very soon he
became thoroughly imbued with Futurist ideas, began a regular correspondence
31 Burliuk: “Pis’mo Andriu Shemshurinu” [Letter to Andrei Shemshurin], Gurianova: Exploring

Color, p. 152.
32 Soffici: “Ancora sul futurismo” [On Futurism Once More] in Cavallo: “Aldengo Soffici et le
cubo-futurisme”, p. 74.
with Umberto Boccioni and visited Gino Severini in his Parisian house, accompa-
nied by Exter. Circulating between the avant-garde milieux of Paris, Kiev, Moscow
and Rome, Exter acted as an important emissary and exchanged information on
the newest art trends both in Russia and in the West, spreading not only stories
picked up in conversations, but also photographs, art magazines and exhibition
catalogues.
This exposure to the international avant-garde was of pivotal importance to
Exter’s professional career. Apart from being involved with many avant-garde
initiatives in Russia, she participated in several important group exhibitions
abroad. These included the Salon des Indépendants (Paris, March 1912 and
March–May 1914), La Section d’Or (Paris, October 1912) and the International
Free Futurist Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture (Rome, April 1914). In the latter,
Exter exhibited together with three fellow Russians – Nikolai Kulbin, Alexandr
Archipenko and Olga Rozanova33. “Thanks for Rome!”, wrote Exter in a letter to
Kulbin. “I sent three works which I had just finished, and they satisfied even the
Futurists.”34
The cosmopolitanism that permeated the artist’s life determined not only
Exter’s professional choices, it formed the core of her œuvre. Writing about Exter’s
art, the Russian art historian Georgii Kovalenko noted that “she could render an
Italian city in a Cubist and even Simultanist manner [...], while also including
references to the colourful patterns of Ukrainian Easter eggs”.35 Significantly, the
very titles of many of the artist’s dynamically constructed and vibrantly bright
cityscapes related to various places Exter had visited and admired: Notr Dam i
sad arkhiepiskopa (Notre Dame and the Archbishop’s Gardens, 1910), Most-Sevr
(The Bridge-Sèvres, 1912), Genuia (Genoa, 1913), Moskva (Moscow, 1913), Florent-
sia (Florence, 1914).
The importance of the artistic cross-fertilization enacted by Exter was
clearly perceived by her contemporaries. In February 1914, Exter organized
with some Ukrainian colleagues the first exhibition of the art group Kol’tso
(The Ring) in the Kalfa Department Store on Kreshchatik Street in Kiev. Nikolai
Kulbin, the Petersburg artist and important supporter of the early Russian
avant-garde, declared in a review for a Kiev newspaper: “Exter’s success in
Russia, France and Italy mark the beginning of an independent school of Kiev
painters. Her works show a convincingly calm strength of form wedded to great
33 Russian participants were invited to take part in the exhibition by Marinetti during his short
visit to Russia in winter 1914.
34 Kovalenko: Aleksandra Exter: Put khudozhnika, p. 192
35 “Alexandra Exter” in Bowlt and Drutt: Amazons of the Avant-Garde, p. 133.
virtues of colour and rhythm.”36 When hostilities broke out in August 1914, Exter
was forced to hurry back home from Paris, leaving behind friends and profes-
sional contacts. She had to close her well-appointed art-studio in Paris and to
store her works in a warehouse. Soffici took her to the station, and years later he
remembered in his memoirs: “I was to enter the war and that war put an end to
a world.”37
No less dramatic were the changes in the personal lives and careers of the
artistic couple Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov. The spring and summer
of 1914 introduced a particularly successful chapter in Goncharova’s professional
life. After the great success of her stage designs for Diaghilev’s production of Le
Coq d’Or in Paris, some of her drawings featuring costume designs were bought
by the French Government for the nation. Larionov, not only a talented artist but
also an efficient entrepreneur, organized a joint exhibition of their paintings and
graphics at the Gallerie Paul Guillaume in June 1914. The event attracted the atten-
tion of international patrons and members of the Parisian avant-garde, including
Picasso and Léger.38 Interestingly, Guillaume Apollinaire, a well-known cham-
pion of Cubism, called Goncharova the “leader of the Russian futurist school”.39
He also underscored her link to futurism in the introduction to the exhibition
catalogue, praising her ability to combine successfully a love of Russian folk art
with “the modern harshness contributed by Marinetti’s metallic futurism” and
“the refined light of Rayism,40 a non-figurative style pioneered by Larionov and
Goncharova in 1911.
The success of Goncharova’s stage designs and the reception of Larionov
and Goncharova’s joint exhibition in Paris helped the couple to expand and
consolidate important professional contacts in the West-European art scene.
Herwarth Walden, director of Der Sturm magazine and the homonymic gallery
in Berlin, had invited Goncharova in September 1913 to take part in a group
show called Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon (First German Autumn Salon). He
now offered the couple his gallery for their first joint German exhibition. Early
36 Kul’bin: “Vistavka Kol’tso.”

37 Soffici: “Autoritratto d’artista italiano nel quadro del suo tempo: Il salto vitale. Fine di un
mondo” in Opere. Vol. 7b, p. 793. The full passage in Italian reads: “Aissa [the nickname Soffici
used for Exter, NB], infatti, dopo avermi dato da Odessa le ultime notizie di sé, era scomparsa
nella tormenta della guerra [...] Entravo nella guerra: e con quella guerra finiva anche un mondo.”
38 Goncharova exhibited fifty-five paintings, not counting numerous graphic works.
39 Apollinaire: “Futurisme et Ballets Russes”, translated in Breunig: Apollinaire on Art, p. 394.
40 Apollinaire: “Natalie de Gontcharowa et Michel Laionov.” Esposition Natalie de Gontcharova
et Michel Larionov. Paris: Galerie Paul Guillaume, 17–30 June 1914, p. 2, translated in Breunig:
Apollinaire on Art, p. 413.
in July 1914, Larionov and Goncharova’s works, which included paintings and
graphics, were sent from Paris to Berlin. However, the exhibition project was
never realized. When the First World War broke out, the paintings were stored
by Walden in Germany and were returned to the artists only after the war had
come to an end. Larionov and Goncharova had to hurry back to Russia, trav-
elling via Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Constantinople. Undoubtedly, the
German exhibition, had it taken place, would have been a major opportunity
for promoting their art abroad. Instead, Larionov was called up and sent to the
Eastern Front. He was soon heavily wounded and, in early 1915, dismissed as
an invalid from the army.
The events that followed drastically overturned artistic careers and signif-
icantly influenced subsequent developments of the Russian avant-garde. As it
happened, after Larionov’s invalidity the couple accepted the invitation of Sergei
Diaghilev to join the Ballets Russes company in Switzerland. In June 1915, Gon-
charova and Larionov left Russia – a rare case of being able to travel abroad con-
sidering the complicated and shifting wartime circumstances. As it turned out,
the couple never returned to Russia, as war and revolution prevented them from
ever returning.
Larionov and Goncharova’s departure epitomized an important wartime
shift in gender dynamics within the Russian avant-garde. Indeed, Larion-
ov-Goncharova’s dual leadership, forged by a mutually beneficial collab-
oration between a man and a woman, where Larionov played the rôle of an
accomplished organizer and Goncharova of a prolific creator and vigorous
campaigner, was a natural outcome and a symbol of the Russian avant-gar-
de’s gender egalitarianism. Goncharova became the first Russian avant-garde
artist who had a full-scale solo exhibition in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg
less than a year before the war (Vystavka kartin Natalii Sergeevni Goncharovoi,
1900–1913, at the Khudozhestvennii Salon, Moscow, 30 September – 5 Novem-
ber 1913; Goncharova, at Nadezhda Dobychina’s Khudozhestvennoe Biuro,
Saint-Petersburg, March – April 1914). She exhibited an astonishing 760 works.
Arguably, by the beginning of the Great War, Goncharova became one of the
most prominent and influential figures of the Russian avant-garde, and the
couple’s joint success reached an apex. Thus, Larionov and Goncharova’s cre-
ative partnership continued to represent a rôle-model for other avant-garde
artists, especially women, even after the couple had left Russia. Nadezhda
Udaltsova, who in the war-years was at the initial stage of establishing a pro-
fessional career, wrote in her diary in January 1917:
I wonder if Goncharova exists at all outside art, I mean, not solely in forms of art itself, but
also in the midst of those forms that surround art. In most peoples’ eyes she is not a woman,
and even when she is seen as a woman she is considered above all a woman-artist. Larionov
managed to promote her like that.41
This type of artistic collaboration – the woman as an artist and the man as a sup-
porter and promoter – was embodied in the Goncharova-Larionov tandem and
clearly proved attractive to Udaltsova, whose diary describes her striving for pro-
fessional recognition and success during the war years. In one of her entries for
September 1916, she exclaims with exasperation: “Couldn’t a woman fight her own
new way in life unassisted?”42 Apparently, Undaltsova arrived at a negative answer
to that rhetorical question, as between 1915 and 1917 her diary records the young
artist’s constant attempts (both conscious and unconscious) to forge a successful
and mutually beneficial professional union with a ‘soul-mate’ from amongst her
male avant-garde peers.43 In pursuing her goal, Udaltsova started as an active sup-
porter of Vladimir Tatlin, only to become quickly disillusioned and as a result to
invest her hopes in the rising star Kazimir Malevich. In late 1916, she wrote:
I can only say that if Malevich stayed in Moscow for two months we would completely over-
turn Moscow. And we would do all from nothing, including a series of lectures, and a mag-
azine, and a club, and a theatre. And all of Moscow would acknowledge us, and Petrograd
would follow the trend, because an exhibition would be held there as well. It is such a
pleasure to work with him. We grasp each other’ ideas in a single flash.44
Larionov and Goncharova left the country at the very moment when the Russian
avant-garde was gathering momentum. The mass-repatriation of many Russian
artists triggered by the war, however traumatic and disadvantageous on a per-
sonal level, produced a positive side-effect on the evolution of Russian modern
art. In fact, it “marked the onset of the heyday for the Russian avant-garde”,45
because such a high concentration of vigorous, creative and ambitious person-
alities, counting practically as many women as men, was destined to invigorate
artistic life in Russian capital cities and reinforce the avant-garde tendencies in
Russian artistic culture.
This fertile environment, unexpectedly created by wartime restrictions, bore
abundant fruit and led to two major Futurist exhibitions in Petrograd in 1915. In
41 Note of 31 January 1917 in her diary. Udal’tsova: Zhizn russkoi kubistki, p. 31.
42 Udal’tsova: Zhizn russkoi kubistki, p. 28.
43 It must be stressed, however, that in Udaltsova’s case this search for a ‘soul-mate’ was com-
pletely free from any sentimental associations. During the Great War, she was a happily married
woman and sought a purely professional companionship.
44 Udal’tsova: Zhizn russkoi kubistki, p. 30.
45 Degot’: Russkoe iskusstvo XX veka, p. 21.
the spring, Pervaia futuristicheskaia vistavka Tramvai V (The First Futurist Exhi-
bition Tram V) took place in the Imperial Society for the Promotion of the Arts
(3 March – 2 April 1915). It was followed in the winter by Posledniaia futuristich-
eskaia vistavka kartin 0,10 (nol-desiat) (The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting
0,10 [zero-ten]) at Nadezhda Dobychina’s Khudozhestvennoie Biuro (19 Decem-
ber 1915 – 19 January 1916).46 It is notable that the number of male and female
artists in both Futurist exhibitions was more or less equal. This contrasted with
the general tendency in all other wartime exhibitions in Russia, where the advent
of the war did not influence at all the proportion of women participants (as before,
they represented no more than 10–15 percent of the total number of exhibitors),
and suggests that the war served as a catalyst consolidating an egalitarian ten-
dency for gender equality already underway in the immediate pre-war years. On
the other hand, the dynamics of the acute struggle for a position of leadership
confirms that the Russian avant-garde was undertaking a significant gender-re-
lated turn, and this was finally completed by the time of the Last Futurist Exhibi-
tion 0,10. Indeed, despite the fact that both Futurist exhibitions were sponsored
and organized by two aspiring artists, Kseniya Boguslavskaya and Ivan Puni,47
this ambitious young couple failed to fit into the place of prominence left vacant
by Larionov and Goncharova. Instead, in the changed environment of wartime
Russia, characterized by the accentuation of andocentric values, the leadership
within the avant-garde was claimed by two men – Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir
Tatlin. Remarkably, their competition was so fierce that, allegedly, it led to an
actual fight during the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10.
The exhibition marked an important stage in the history of Russian art as it
publicly inaugurated the birth of two new important artistic schools, based on
a non-figurative idiom. These were the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich and
‘corner contra-reliefs’ of Vladimir Tatlin, the latter often considered in art-his-
torical literature as a proto-Constructivist development. Both men, aspiring to
a leadership within the avant-garde milieu, organized two groups of supporters
from amongst the other artists who were participating in the exhibition. Need-
less to say, the two competing groups entered into an open conflict with each
other. Given the high percentage of women participants, a considerable number
46 The titles of both exhibitions, proclaiming the start and the end of the Russian Futurism
in the course of only nine months, were aimed at both provoking the public and announcing
independence of the Russian avant-garde from Italian Futurism, which was now considered an
outdated style.
47 Alternative spelling of these two names in art historical literature is Xenia Boguslavskaja and
Jean Pougny.
Fig. 1. Ivan Puni and Vladimir Tatlin at

the Tramvai V exhibition, surrounded
by Olga Rozanova, Alexandra Exter and
Ksenia Boguslavskaya. Source: Golos Rusi
(Petrograd) 422 (12 March 1915), p. 4.
of Malevich’s or Tatlin’s supporters were indeed women. This fact immediately

attracted the attention of the contemporary audience and was used in the press
to ridicule and insult Futurist endeavours, as is evident in a contemporary cari-
cature that features participants of the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 (see Fig. 1).
It represents Ivan Puni, the exhibition’s organizer and sponsor, and Vladimir
Tatlin surrounded by a rather reverential group of women artists, including Olga
Rozanova, Alexandra Exter and Ksenia Boguslavskaya. The iconography of the
image was clearly based on dominant gender stereotypes: two men, however
ridiculous and grotesque, are represented as leaders (although, as it has already
been said, Puni did not stand a chance against Malevich), while female sub-
jects act as gendered signifiers of both general public and women artists – the
implication here being that Futurist art is such nonsense that it attracts only silly
female crowds and incompetent, untalented female dilettantes as its devoted
followers. “The cataclysm demands either something new or a solid support of
tradition”,48 postulated Vladimir Mayakovsky in late 1914. The troubled time of
total war pushed the Russian avant-garde towards a patriarchal authority that
they had relinquished in peace-time.
Path-breakers: Women artists depicting the war
The unexpected sway of conservative tendencies was not only manifest in the
Russian avant-garde, it also affected the production of works on the topic of
war. Civil mobilization called for an effective visual underpinning and thus
encouraged professional opportunities for artists of various stylistic inclinations
48 Maiakovskii: Polnoie sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1, p. 406.

to engage with the production of wartime propaganda images. The war never
became a popular subject with contemporary Russian artists, and the wartime
press denounced this as the absence of noble patriotic feelings. The situation
was nonetheless different with respect to Russian radical artists, whose most
successful public initiative during the first months of the Great War was realized
in the field of wartime propaganda.
Fig. 2. Kazimir Malevich: Shel avstriets v

Radzivily, da popal na bab’i vily (An Austrian
Was Marching to the Town of Radzivil, but
Fell onto a Peasant Woman’s Pitchfork, 1914).
Chromolithography on paper, Obiedinenie
“Segodniashnii Lubok”, Moscow.
In striking contrast to war paintings, in Russia there was no shortage of visual

propaganda in the form of patriotic posters and postcards. At the very beginning
of the Great War, the Russian Cubo-Futurists assembled a group of artists and
poets under the name Obiedinenie “Segodniashnii lubok” (Contemporary Lubok
Company).49 They produced satirical war prints accompanied by short rhyming
captions, called lubok or, in the plural, lubki. Many prominent avant-gardists
engaged in the project, including Mayakovsky, Malevich, Lentulov, Filonov and
others (see Fig. 2). The series was distinguished by a simplified style close to
magazine caricature, vivid colours and jingoistic flag-waving content bordering
on chauvinism. The Contemporary Lubok Company participated in the exhibi-
tion Voina i pechat (War and the Press) in Petrograd (20 November – 4 December
1914) and then in Moscow (8 January – 1 February 1915). Although the critical
response was mixed – some praised the cheerful inventiveness of the radical
artists, while others believed that the founding of the Contemporary Lubok was
no more than an ill-conceived attempt to emulate the centuries-long tradition of
national popular art – the very fact that the production by radical artists had been
perceived as a part of the public mobilization in art heralded an important step
49 Lubok is a Russian word for a special type of inexpensive coloured woodcut or lithographical
print, accompanied by texts explaining the images. The target audience of lubki included peas-
ants and low-income city dwellers.
forward in the history of avant-garde. It presented an excellent opportunity to

overcome marginalization and acquire a public ‘voice’.
Surprisingly, though, no woman artist contributed to the production of the
Contemporary Lubok. Considering the well-known belligerent standpoint of the
Russian ‘Amazons’, it is unlikely that they purposefully ignored the subject of the
war – actually, they did not (as I shall show below). Still, the only woman artist
who can be associated with the activities of the Contemporary Lubok Company is
Vera Shekhtel. A close friend of Vladimir Mayakovsky at that time, she executed a
preparatory drawing in colour congruous with the style that distinguished other
works produced by Russian Cubo-Futurists. However, her sketch remained unfin-
ished and was never published. Apparently, the gender construct of war as an
exclusively male territory was still strong enough to act as a barrier and to repel
the anti-establishment and anti-patriarchal tendencies that characterized the
Russian avant-garde in the immediate pre-war years.
Nonetheless, the First World War became an event to stimulate creative
responses from women of the Russian avant-garde, who proved strong-minded
enough to remove some stumbling blocks of age-old prejudice. Significantly,
the resulting works did not fit easily into the conventional canon of war art. No
one expected or, indeed, invited women artists to become part of wartime prop-
aganda enterprises. Their gender-identity, i.e. femininity, would not have been
endangered had their vision of war lacked militaristic attitudes (in contrast to
male artists who in a similar situation might have been accused of the improper
‘female’ attitude). Ultimately, women were less constrained by the ideological
clichés and restrictions imposed by wartime culture, which allowed them more
intellectual and creative freedom in depicting the sensitive issues of war.
Natalia Goncharova’s Mystical Images of War
Unsurprisingly, Natalia Goncharova was the first among Russian avant-garde

women to produce a work inspired by war in the first months of the conflict. At the
same time as her male peers were involved with the Contemporary Lubok, Gon-
charova made the lithographic album Misticheskie obrazi voini (Mystical Images
of War), published in Moscow in 1914. It was based on a deep sense of national
identity, yet also represented a striking contrast, both visual and conceptual, to
the boisterous gaudy nature of lubki by the Contemporary Lubok Company and
the more conventional wartime prints. Just as the lubki were dynamic and colour-
ful, Goncharova’s 14 lithographs (a reference to the year when the war started)
followed a severe black-and-white scheme in which all movements appear either
in slow motion or as frozen. The majority of war prints depicted real events at the
front, but Goncharova’s imagery was based on a complex mixture of apocalyp-

tic themes and national symbols. Finally, traditional Russian war prints as well
as avant-garde lubki always had a text complementing or explaining the image,
while Goncharova’s folios had only numbers. The print’s titles were published
on a separate sheet and thus allowed (or even forced) the viewer to interpret the
topic without the aid of a verbal explanation.
From 1913 onwards, Goncharova professed her allegiance to the new
artistic method of vsechestvo (everythingism).50 As it is evident from the term
itself, vsechestvo operated with a deliberate heterogeneity of sources for artis-
tic creations, asserting the artist’s right to borrow and mix styles taken from
different historical and cultural contexts. The approach allowed the artist a
remarkable freedom to navigate across various cultures, artistic systems and
Modernist ‘-isms’ (including Primitivism, Cubism and Futurism) without an
exclusive commitment to any one of them. The spirit of vsechestvo underlying the
Fig. 3. Natalia Goncharova: Misticheskie obrazi voini (Mystical Images of War, 1914).
Lithographs on paper. Left folio 10: Angeli i aeroplani (Angels and Aeroplanes);
Right folio 11: Grad obrechennii (Doomed City).
50 For more information about vsechestvo and its ideology see Sharp: Russian Modernism be-
tween East and West, pp. 254–260; Bykova: Goncharova: The Russian Years, pp. 16–17; Parton:
Goncharova, pp. 216–218.
Mystical Images of War helped Goncharova escape the trappings of straightfor-

ward wartime propaganda. Instead, she created a rich polyphony, where feelings
of national self-identity and heroism were wedded to apocalyptic visions, mysti-
cism and compassion for human losses. Futurist motifs played a significant rôle
in this work.
Two of her fourteen prints, Angeli i aeroplani (Angels and Aeroplanes, folio
10), and Grad obrechennii (Doomed City, folio 11), evoke strong Futurist associa-
tions (see Fig. 3). The motif of the folio 10 – an air fight between two aeroplanes
– was widely exploited in Russian wartime propaganda, although none of those
works bore any particular connection to the Futurist style apart from the subject
matter. Goncharova’s lithograph both engages and contrasts Futurist fascina-
tion with the machine as the highest expression of modernity. The composition
is constructed along powerful intersections of straight lines, reminiscent of the
Futurist ‘lines of force’ that delineate aeroplanes and angels’ wings, as well as
the imaginary traces of their movement in space. However, the visual and con-
ceptual effect achieved through this device is potentially antipathetic to the
Futurist message. In Goncharova’s lithograph, the dangerous precariousness of
the roaring machines is juxtaposed with the easy glide of the giant angels, who
are completely determining the outcome of the battle. It is the heavenly force and
not the tiny puppet-like pilots who are in control of life or death. Instead of the
celebration of modernity and feats of industrial progress, Goncharova instils the
motif with an agonizing sense of the precariousness of human fate in the face of
superior forces.
The Doomed City continues the subject of heavenly interference in modern
life, representing a shocking scene of a city’s destruction enacted by implaca-
ble angels throwing down stones. Here Goncharova recycled the motif used in
the oil painting Angeli metaiushchie kamni v gorod (Angels Throwing Stones on
the Town; Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow), a part of the polyptych, Sbor urozhaia
(Harvest, 1911), which was based on the subject of the Apocalypse. Evidently, the
reference served to evoke the prophetic value of the artist’s earlier œuvre. It also
confirmed Goncharova’s ambivalence towards the topic of the city – locus of both
modernity and peril – which characterized Russian Futurist art before the war.
Significantly, in the 1914 lithograph, Goncharova re-elaborated the general com-
position, switching focus from angels to the city. The representation of the latter
was given more prominence, and the lithograph was re-named The Doomed City.
Goncharova’s work sparked controversy in the contemporary press. The
prominent art critic Iakov Tugendkhold, a champion of modern Western and
Russian art, was rather sceptical. In his view, Goncharova’s Images of War lacked
“a consciously designed wholeness”, while “the best of her lithographs could
have been used as a subject matter for ‘war gingerbread’, had the latter had exist-
ed”.51 On the other hand, Sergei Bobrov, the leader of the Futurist group Tsentri
fuga (Centrifuge), was very enthusiastic. “A genuine victory of the spirit over the
sluggishness of pictorial matter emerges in front of the spectator!”, exclaimed
Bobrov in his review. “One can neither add nor detract anything in Goncharova’s
lithographs, their greys, blacks and whites are complete and unfading.”52
Goncharova intended to continue her exploration of the subject of war,
announcing her plans to create new cycles of lithographs each dedicated to the
‘war landscape’, the ‘war’s horrors’, and ‘war’s everyday realities’.53 The projects
remained unrealized as in summer 1915 the artist left Russia for France, never to
return.
Olga Rozanova’s transrational War cycle
Olga Rozanova engaged with the theme of war in 1915. An album of fifteen
linocuts called Voina (War) was produced in collaboration with the pioneer of
trans-rational poetry, Alexei Kruchenykh, and published in January 1916. At first
sight, this work – a set of war-inspired images accompanied by short verses –
seems to conform with the format adopted by Mayakovsky and others. However,
Rozanova’s innovative visual language, punctuated by elements in a non-figu-
rative idiom to accompany the zaum’ (trans-rational) poetry by Kruchenykh,
endows the whole work with a distinct touch of absurdity, a hint of the nihilistic
spirit that distinguished the anti-establishment stance of Russian Cubo-Futurists
before the war.
Stylistically, Rozanova and Kruchenykh’s work was a more radical project
than Goncharova’s Mystical Images, even if the latter, undoubtedly, served as a
source of inspiration for some of Rozanova’s album’s motifs. Created at a time
when the Russian army started to suffer heavy loses and society experienced food
shortages and wartime hardship, Rozanova’s work is a grim portrayal of devas
tation. As in some of her pre-war paintings, the city in the album is the place of
deadly danger where a merciless enemy destroys buildings and their inhabitants
by cannons, bombs and bullets. Aeroplani nad gorodom (Aeroplanes over the City,
folio 4), Bitva (Battle, folio 5), Bitva v gorode (Battle in the City, folio 11), Poedinok
(Duel, folio 12), Bitva v trekh sferakh, na sushe, na more i v vozdukhe (Battle in the
51 Tugendkhol’d: “N. Goncharova: ‘Misticheskie obrazi voini’”, p. 7.

52 Bobrov: “Natalia Goncharova: Voina”, p. 92.
53 Serpukhovsskii: “Misticheskie obrazi voini”, p. 3.
Three Spheres: On the Land, on the Sea and in Mid-air, folio 14) are eloquent titles
that faithfully describe the linocuts’ motifs.
Fig. 4. Olga Rozanova: Aeroplani nad gorodom (Aeroplanes over City), folio 4 from the album
Voina (War), 1916. Collage, linocuts on paper.
In contrast to the conventions of war propaganda, which require explicitness

and accessibility, Rozanova did not seem to be concerned with conveying any
straightforward patriotic message. Instead, her vision, rendered in a strictly
laconic style, was one of universal bloodshed which has the potential to destroy
the whole human race. Still, Rozanova appears as a true Futurist in the sense that
in her war-inspired work she aimed above all at artistic innovation, despite the
sensitive nature of her subject matter. One of the album’s folios, which similar to
Goncharova’s work is based on the popular motif of a battle between aeroplanes,
displays a radical experimentation with the collage technique and non-figurative
representation. Aeroplanes over City (folio 4; see Fig. 4), is a collage made up of six
cut-out pieces, including three linocuts and three geometric shapes. The biggest of
the three linocuts represents a black-and-white image of the dynamic interaction
between fragments of aeroplanes and a cityscape. The two smaller ones are sim-
plified outlines of a human body and an aeroplane, both helplessly floating in the
void of a white background. These three figurative elements are complemented by
the three non-figurative geometric shapes: a dark-blue triangle, a black circle, and
a scarlet-red polygon. All six cut-outs, glued at various angles in relation to each
other onto brownish paper are hovering over the folio’s surface. Ultimately, the
artist offered a visual parallel to Kruchenykh’s method of the zaum’ poetry based,
as it was, on a complex semantic and phonetic construct bringing together actual
words and invented combinations of sounds with the intention of creating new
associative meanings. In the case of Rozanova’s collage, its figurative (conceptu-
ally equating with words) and non-figurative (equating with invented clusters of
sounds) components evoke a peculiar perception of space and action, while at
the same time transcending the rules of conventional visual descriptiveness. As a
result, the ideological pathos inherent in the motif of air fight has been seriously
played down by the artist’s radical experimentation. Unsurprisingly, Rozanova
and Kruchenykh’s War attracted no critical attention of the time. Subsequent
drastic political changes in Russia made the First World War and its culture fade
into historic limbo. Therefore, for many years, the album remained known only to
the limited number of experts of the Russian avant-garde.
Maria Siniakova’s Bomb, War and Expulsion from Eden
Compared to Natalia Goncharova and Olga Rozanova, Maria Siniakova remains

an obscure and understudied figure, only occasionally mentioned in studies of
the Russian avant-garde. Yet, she undeniably played a visible rôle in many avant-
garde activities being “the main catalyst for introducing Futurism to Kharkov”.54
Siniakova studied in the art studios of Kharkov and Moscow and, like Rozanova,
she was a member of Soiuz Molodezhi (Union of Youth). Her family’s estate,
Krasnaia Poliana (Beautiful Glade) near Kharkov was a summer meeting place for
many artists and poets involved with Russian Futurism including, among many
others, the Burliuk brothers, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Bogdan
Gordeev (known as the Futurist poet Bozhidar), Boris Pasternak and Nikolai Aseev.
According to Vladimir Markov, the preeminent historian of Russian Futurism, in
summer 1914, Krasnaia Poliana became the birthplace of the Russian Futurist
group called ‘Liren’ (Lyroon).55 The same year, Liren engaged in producing its
own collections of Futurist poetry, and it was Maria Siniakova who illustrated the
group’s books. These included Aseev’s zaum’ compilation Zor and Buben (Tam-
bourine) by Bozhidar. In the middle of the Great War, in 1916, Siniakova together
54 Mudrak: The New Generation and Artistic Modernism in the Ukraine, p. 67.
55 Markov: Russian Futurism: A History, p. 245.
with Velimir Khlebnikov, Bozhidar,56 Grigorii Petnikov and Nikolai Aseev, pub-
lished the Futurist manifesto, Truba marsian (Trumpet of the Martians).57
Siniakova’s preferred medium was watercolour, and before the war her
favourite subjects were flamboyantly polychromatic pastoral scenes rendered in
a Primitivist style. In her art, the influence of modern French painting, especially
that of Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse, formed a synthesis with her strong inter-
est in native folk art traditions. Siniakova’s closest involvement with Futurism,
which started right on the verge of the Great War, had a considerable impact on
her artistic response to this historic event. Four surviving watercolours on paper
created by Siniakova between 1914 and 1916 are believed to be studies for an unre-
alized graphic or lithographic cycle similar to Goncharova’s or Rozanova’s. The
unique style of these watercolours was rightly called Primitivist-Futurist.58 Two
works both called Voina (War) (1914, watercolour on paper, Moscow: Collection
Parnis; and 1916, watercolour on paper, Kiev: Collection Dytschenko), as well as
Bomba (Bomb) (1916, pencil, watercolour on paper, Kiev: Collection Ivakin) and
Izgnanie iz raia (Expulsion from Paradise) (1916, watercolour on paper, Kiev: Coll-
ection Dytschenko) represent an unorthodox mixture of the cheerful naivety of
peasant art with calculated references to the Futurists’ fascination with energy of
movement, aggression and destruction.
At first sight, Siniakova’s dynamic watercolours appear close in style to
the lubki, produced by her male Futurist colleagues. However, a closer inspec-
tion reveals a considerable conceptual gap between them. A watercolour Voina
(War) (see Fig. 5) is of particular interest as it seems to engage with Malevich’s
popular war print, Shel avstriets v Radzivily, da popal na bab’i vily (An Austrian
Was Marching to the Town of Radzivil, but Fell onto a Peasant Woman’s Pitchfork,
1914; see Fig. 2). In fact, the main motif in both works is essentially the same
– a mighty cheerful figure (a peasant woman in Malevich’s case, and a German
soldier in Siniakova’s) with a fork (Malevich) or a lance (Siniakova). They are
killing an ‘enemy’ (an Austrian soldier in Malevich’s lubok and a naked woman
56 Strictly speaking, Bozhidar (Bogdan Gordeev) could not possibly sign Khlebnikov’s mani
festo, given that he committed suicide in September 1914, that is, nearly two years before Trum-
pet of Martians was published. Khlebnikov included his name posthumously as a homage to the
tragic young poet, who was only twenty years old when he died.
57 The Manifesto represented a four-folded scroll and was published in June 1916 in Kharkov.
It contained a number of Khlebnikov’s ‘decrees’. The first, signed ‘King of Time, Velimir I’, pro-
claimed that “the glorious participants of budetlianins’ publications have been transferred from
the class of humans to the class of Martians”. Translated into English in Khlebnikov: The King of
Time, pp. 126–129.
58 Danzker, Jassenjawsky, and Kiblitsky: Avantgarde & Ukraine, p. 20.
Fig. 5. Maria Siniakova: Voina (War), 1916. Pencil and watercolour on paper.
in Siniakova’s watercolour) by piercing the victim’s torso and lifting it in the air.
Both Malevich and Siniakova produced a piece of war propaganda here, in which
there is a clear-cut division between the evil Germans and Austrians ‘others’ and
the good ‘we’ who go against them. However, the messages conveyed by Malevich
and Siniakova are different. Malevich represents an instance of patriotic triumph
when the enemy soldier is easily defeated by a cheerful civilian, moreover, by a
peasant woman. In his lubok, the act of killing loses all its inherent barbarity due
to the prey being depicted as a scaled-down absurd figure stripped of any associ-
ation with a real human being. Siniakova chose a much grimmer scenario. In her
work, a German soldier kills a civilian, who is, on top of that, a naked defenceless
woman. The depiction of the victim’s death is distressingly graphic. In contrast to
the light-hearted mockery of the Contemporary Lubok, Siniakova’s watercolour
represented the sheer horror of the bloody massacre. This is the war seen through
the terrified eyes of a citizen who experiences, at best, expulsion from the secu-
rity of an established everyday existence, or at worst a horrid death.
Siniakova’s cycle never came to be completed, and it is still unclear how she
envisaged the final images to look like. However, it seems fair to conclude that
the artist’s main focus was the portrayal of an unprecedented scale of human suf-
fering and the obliteration of the world’s beauty through war. Her watercolours
showed the collapse of an earthy paradise populated by happy young people,
into a hellish spectacle of men and women being brutally killed for no apparent
reason. In Siniakova’s works, modernity appeared in the likeness of a ruthless
military force, well organized and efficient in killing people and ravaging the
world’s harmony. The artist offered a rare interpretation of war, in which Futurist
engagement with a violent refashioning of the old ways of life was entangled with
the artist’s deep commitment to native folk art and rural traditions.
Conclusion
The period of the First World War, however short, proved to be intense and influ-
ential for the gender dynamics at work within Russian Futurist circles. A combi-
nation of wartime predominance of androcentric values coupled with the unfore-
seen circumstances of Goncharova and Larionov’s emigration marked a virtual
end to the brief period when a special form of artistic collaboration, based on the
reciprocally supportive, complementary activities of the artistic couple, served
as a benchmark for the Russian avant-garde. From the war period onwards, the
leadership within the Russian avant-garde was taken over and exercised only by
male artists. The trend that emerged during the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 soon
became an unwritten rule. Although the mutually beneficial union of creative
men and women was to become a special paradigm of the Russian avant-garde
in the early post-revolutionary years – one can list Olga Rozanova and Alexei
Kruchenykh, Ivan Puni and Kseniya Boguslavskaya, Nadezhda Udaltsova and
Alexander Drevin, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova – none of these
couples would ever acquire the standing comparable to that achieved by Lari-
onov and Goncharova in the years preceding the war.
In contrast, another important development was the loosening of the restric-
tions on women artists’ creativity. Women’s depiction of war had been sadly
lacking from Russian visual art. However, in their capacity as active creators,
female avant-garde artists successfully challenged old traditions and established
new conventions by producing important and original examples of war art. At
the moment when Futurist stylistic idiom and its rhetoric of violence and pre-
occupation with war became widely adopted by the Russian avant-garde in the
last pre-war years, Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova and Maria Siniakova
managed to escape in their war art the traps of extreme nationalism and belli-
cosity. Their works represented unique and innovative responses and subverted
both the mainstream propaganda clichés and Futurist modes, themes and motifs.
These avant-garde women successfully asserted their right to be called the ‘Scyth-
ian riders’ in times of war as well as in times of peace. With great vitality and
originality, they managed to penetrate what had so far been an exclusively all-
male territory.
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Tshepik, Tatiana, ed.: Olga Rozanova, 1886–1918. Helsinki: Helsingin kaupungin taidemuseo,
1992.
Christina Lodder
Olga Rozanova: A True Futurist
Abstract: This essay argues that the painter Olga Rozanova (1886–1918) was a
major figure in the Russian Futurist movement. It will suggest that she made a
substantial contribution to the Russian assimilation of the theory and practice
of Italian Futurist painting and to the distinctive body of work that is gener-
ally known as Russian Cubo-Futurism. The discussion embraces her theoretical
statements, as well as her paintings, drawings and illustrations for the series of
Russian Futurist books published in Russia between 1912 and 1916. The chief
focus is on Rozanova’s works and the way in which they combine distinctly
Russian ideas such as “everythingness”, zaum’, and the fourth dimension with
more general Futurist notions such as force lines, simultaneity, states of mind
and concepts of memory. Throughout, the emphasis is on Rozanova’s own devel-
opment and hence several major paintings, such as Metronom (Metronome) are
analysed in depth. Although this essay examines continuities between Rozano-
va’s early Futurist paintings and her Neoprimitivist canvases, it also suggests
the rôle that Futurism played in her move towards abstraction. I argue that
Rozanova’s work on illustrating and subsequently designing the Futurist books
(with their emphasis on the word as both sound and letter) and especially her
experiments with collage ultimately led her to adopt a totally abstract idiom
and to embrace Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism. Above all, I shall argue that
Rozanova’s fundamental approach to art can be considered Futurist because
she was relentless and indefatigable in her pursuit of new approaches to artistic
creation.
Keywords: Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Russian Futurist books, Neoprimi-

tivism, Zaum’, Union of Youth group
Rozanova’s early contacts with Futurism
“Rozanova was born a Futurist. Had she not found the movement ready for her,
she would have had to invent something similar to it in form and identical in
essence.”1 So wrote the critic Abram Efros in 1919 in his obituary of the artist Olga
Vladimirovna Rozanova (1886–1918). Of course, by the time of her death from
diphtheria on 8 November 1918, aged only thirty-two, Rozanova was no longer
1 Efros: “Vo sled ukhodiashchim”, p. 21.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0011
200 Christina Lodder
producing paintings that could be characterized as ‘Futurist’. A few years earlier,

in 1915, she had started making collages of abstract shapes, and by early 1916,
she had developed a totally abstract pictorial language based on simple geomet-
ric forms and saturated colours. Although in 1916 she wholeheartedly embraced
abstraction, Futurism and Futurist ideas played a highly significant rôle in her
overall evolution as an artist, and her contributions to Russian Futurist painting
and Futurist books were immensely important, especially during the period 1913–
1915, when she was still in her twenties. The Futurist poet Benedikt Livshits con-
sidered that “she was an outstanding individual […] who really knew what she
wanted in art”,2 while for her fellow artist Ivan Kliun “she was one of the leading
fighters for new ideas in art”, pursuing “a never-ending quest” and possessing “a
rebellious fighting spirit”.3 Indeed, her works from 1911 onwards epitomize the
Futurist spirit that inspired the declaration that she wrote in 1913 for the Union of
Youth group in Saint-Petersburg: “The Future of Art is uninterrupted renewal!”4
A commitment to experimentation seems to have been present from the very
beginning of her career. In 1905, after leaving school in Vladimir, where she had
been brought up, the eighteen-year-old Rozanova moved to Moscow where she
studied painting at the school of Anatolii Bolshakov (1906), and then with the
Impressionist Konstantin Yuon (1907–1910).5 In Moscow, Rozanova was exposed
to a wide variety of artistic styles including Symbolism, Post-Impressionism,
Fauvism and Neoprimitivism. Her own work at this time reflected this rather
eclectic experience.6
It was only in 1911 that Rozanova began to develop a distinctive style, started
to exhibit her work and make her mark as an artist. That year, she moved to
Saint-Petersburg and entered the Zvantseva School, where Leon Bakst, Mistislav
Dobuzhinskii and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin were all teaching. More importantly, she
joined the Union of Youth group, which had only recently been organized.7 Its
members cultivated a broad range of intellectual and cultural ideas, were open to
new concepts (aesthetic, philosophical and scientific) from Western Europe and
elsewhere that could help to regenerate art, and were committed to uniting poetry,
music and the fine arts. Initially, they shared certain idealistic and Symbolist
2 Livshits, The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, p. 128.

3 Kliun: “Predislovie”, p. 1; English translation in Chepik: Olga Rozanova 1886–1918, p. 18.
4 “Union of Youth Manifesto” in Gurianova: Exploring Color, p. 187.
5 For Rozanova’s chronology, see Gurianova: Exploring Color, pp. 135–182; and Rozanova: “Le-
fanta chiol…”, pp. 289–336. Wherever there are discrepancies between the two, I have tended to
use the latter, since it is the most recent publication.
6 For reproductions of Rozanova’s early works, see Gurianova: Exploring Color.
7 For a detailed history of the group, see Howard: The Union of Youth.
notions, but these gradually gave way to more experimental and innovative ideas
related specifically to Cubism and Futurism.
It was through the Union of Youth group that Rozanova seems to have become
acquainted with the essential ideas of Futurism. In June 1912, the group’s journal
published translations of two manifestoes by the Italian Futurists: “Futurist Paint-
ing: The Technical Manifesto” and the statement “The Exhibitors to the Public.”
issued by Umberto Boccioni and his colleagues on the occasion of their show at
the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris in February 1912.8 This prompted the artist
and poet David Burliuk to compose Russia’s own Futurist manifesto, Poshchechina
obshchestvennomu vkusu (A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, 1912), which was pub-
lished that December and demanded: “Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc.,
etc., overboard from the ship of Modernity”.9
By the following year, Rozanova and several colleagues in the Union of Youth
group had embraced Futurist ideas. This new outlook was enshrined in the March
1913 Manifesto of the Union of Youth Group, written by Rozanova.10 For Nina Guri-
anova, this is perhaps “the only manifesto of Russian painters directly connected
with the documents of Italian Futurism”.11 Emulating the forceful tones of her
Italian colleagues and reflecting their ideas, she announced: “We declare war on
all the jailers of the Free Art of Painting”: “The Future of Art is uninterrupted
renewal!” and “Enough of this cult of cemeteries and corpses.”12 The Italians’
“universal dynamism” was expressed as “the impetuous rush of time”, while
their call “to free the lyrical power of the human race from shackles and from reg-
ulations”13 was echoed in her appeal to “view the world open wide”.14 Like Mari-
netti and his colleagues, Rozanova rejected the past and sentimentality, asserting
that “freedom of creativity is the first condition of originality.” and “We value only
works whose novelty generates a new individual in the viewer.”15
8 Boccioni, et al.: “Manifest futuristov” and “Eksponenty k publike”.

9 Burliuk, et al: “Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu”; English translation in Lawton: Rus-
sian Futurism through its Manifestoes, 1912–1928, p. 51.
10 “Union of Youth Manifesto”, in Gurianova: Exploring Color, pp. 185–187.
11 Gurianova: Exploring Color, p. 25.
12 “Union of Youth Manifesto”, in Gurianova: Exploring Color, pp. 185–187.
13 Marinetti: “Destruction of Syntax – Untrammeled Imagination – Words-in-Freedom”, p. 130.
14 “Union of Youth Manifesto”, in Gurianova: Exploring Color, p. 186.
15 “Union of Youth Manifesto”, in Gurianova: Exploring Color, p. 186.
Influences of Futurism, Cubism and Neoprimitivism
Like many of her compatriots, Rozanova became acquainted with the theory and
practice of the Italian movement through various means: first-hand accounts, lec-
tures with lantern slides, the manifestos that were translated into Russian, arti-
cles in the press and discussion with her colleagues – both artists and writers.
No Italian Futurist paintings were shown in Russia, but descriptions of works
appeared along with translations and paraphrases of important manifestos.
Marinetti’s Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, published in Le Figaro on
20 February 1909) was published in Russia just a month later,16 while “Futur-
ist Painting: Technical Manifesto” of April 1910 was paraphrased in July 1910 in
the Saint-Petersburg art journal Apollon,17 and two years before a full translation
was published in the Union of Youth magazine, Soiuz molodezhi.18 As early as
1910, the Futurists were discussed in Apollon,19 while there were reviews of the
1912 Futurist exhibition in Paris as well as of Umberto Boccioni’s Paris show at
the Galerie La Boëtie (20 June – 16 July 1913).20 On 8 April 1913, the writer and
theoretician Ilya Zdanevich gave a lecture on Futurism at the Tenishevsky Hall in
Saint-Petersburg, at which he read Futurist manifestos and showed reproductions
of Futurist paintings.21 Such information was complemented by artists like Alexan-
dra Exter, who travelled regularly between Russia and France, had become a per-
sonal friend of Ardengo Soffici and provided her friends with first-hand reports of
Futurist developments.22
16 E. Sem-v.: “Futurizm: Literaturnyi manifest.” Nasha gazeta 54 (6 March 1909): 4; Panda
[pseud.]: “Nabroski sovremennosti: Futuristy.” Vecher 269 (8 March 1909): 3, and R. Rabov: “Fu-
turizm: Novaia literaturnaia shkola.” Vestnik literatury i izvestiia knizhnykh magazinov tovarish-
chestva M. O. Vol’f po literature, naukam i bibliografii 5 (May 1909): 120–140. On the early reac-
tions to Italian Futurism in the Russian press see Basner: “‘It is we who are blind; they see the
new sun’: Futurism and the Futurists in the Mirror of the Russian Press of the 1910s” and De
Michelis: “Il primo manifesto di Marinetti nelle sue versioni russe.”
17 Buzzi: “Khronika. Pis’mo iz Italii. Zhivopis’.’’
18 Soiuz molodezhi of June 1912 printed Boccioni, et al.: “Manifest futuristov” and “Eksponenty
k publike”.
19 Kuzmin: “Futuristy.”
20 See Tugendkhol’d: “Pis’mo iz Parizha” and Sillart: “Khronika. Pis’mo iz Parizha”. English
translations in Dorontchenkov: Russian and Soviet Views of Modern Western Art, pp. 131 and
156–157.
21 Howard: The Union of Youth, pp. 158 and 182, n.17. Zdanevich apparently also lectured at the
Union of Youth on 18 January 1912, and read Futurist manifestoes. See Geiro: “Predislovie”, p. 9.
22 For details on Exter’s mediating rôle, see Jordan Tobin’s essay in this volume: “Alexandra Ex-
Rozanova’s espousal of Futurist ideas appears to have led her to exhibit several
works, including Zavod i most (The Factory and the Bridge, 1913) at the Sprovieri
Gallery in Rome in June 1914 as part of the Prima exposizione libera futurista interna-
zionale. There is very little documentation to indicate how this came about, but she
probably met Marinetti personally during his visit to Saint-Petersburg in January
1914, as suggested by a photograph that shows Rozanova at a gathering he had with
a number of Russians.23
At the same time as Rozanova and the Union of Youth embraced Futurist
ideas, she also became interested in the theory and practice of Cubism. Indeed,
so tightly bound up were these two West-European movements in Russia that
the resulting mixture of styles came to be called ‘Cubo-Futurism’. The term had
first been coined by Kornei Chukovskii in 1912 to describe poetry, but it was
rapidly adopted by critics and artists alike as a convenient label to describe
the new art. The painter Kazimir Malevich, for instance, wrote in spring 1913
that “the path of Cubo-Futurism is the only way out” of the current impasse in
Russian painting.24
As these developments in 1913–14 suggest, Russian Futurist painting in
general and the work of Rozanova in particular did not simply echo the Italian
movement. The sense of a distinct identity is reflected in the use of alternative
terms to Futurist such as budetlianin and budushchnik, both of which might be
translated as ‘Futurian’, ‘person of the future’ or ‘Futurist’.25 Indeed, although
Russian Futurism adopted certain theories from the Italian movement, it also
fused these with other ideas and concerns to develop its own distinctive charac-
ter. One of these concepts was the theory of vsechestvo (everythingness), which
allowed (and even encouraged) artists to experiment simultaneously with various
artistic traditions and styles. Zdanevich seems to have conceived the notion,
which was accepted by Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, who stated in
1912: “We acknowledge all styles as suitable for the expression of our art, styles
ter 1908–1914: Futurist Influences from Russia and the West”, Livshits: The One and a Half-Eyed
Archer, p. 44, and Bowlt: Alexandra Exter, p. 43.
24 “единственным выходoм вижу кубизмофутуристический путь.” Kazimir Malevich. Let-
ter to Mikhail Matyushin, undated [between 12 February and 7 March 1913], in Vakar and Mikh-
ienko: Malevich o sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche, vol. 1, p. 48.
25 Velimir Khlebnikov and the Hylaea group of poets used the term budetlianin (plural budetli-
ane) in tandem with the label Futurist. See Markov: Russian Futurism, p. 27. Mikhail Larionov
and Natalia Goncharova used the term budushchniki in their manifesto, Luchisty i budushchniki
(Rayists and Futurists). See Bowlt: Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, pp. 87–91.
existing both yesterday and today”.26 Hence Rozanova, like other Russian artists
associated with Futurism, mixed Italian ideas not only with Cubism but also with
Neoprimitivism.
Neoprimitivism (c. 1909–12) had tried to develop a new pictorial language
rooted in the traditional Russian art forms of the icon and the lubok (or popular
print). Profoundly nationalistic, it was also inspired by the aesthetic freedom and
innovative work of French Post-Impressionism and Fauvism. Indeed, Russian
artists who became involved in Futurism took over from the earlier movement
a tendency towards the cultivation of a crude and primordial vitality. As Nikolai
Berdyaev observed “[Russian] Futurism […] has barbaric crudity, barbaric whole-
ness and barbaric ignorance”.27 At first sight, the differences between Neoprim-
itivism and Futurism seemed irreconcilable: Marinetti’s idea of a technological
world embodying the future differed so fundamentally from the culturally nostal-
gic Russian “vision of a mythical and timeless Russia, of Scythian settlements on
the Black Sea, Vikings on the Volga, Siberian shamanism and Asian invasions”.28
Yet, the two groups shared a profound disdain for aesthetic conventions, a rabid
hatred for the constraints of the Academy, an ardent nationalism, a fervent com-
mitment to innovation, and a passionate desire to renew the artistic culture of
their respective countries.
Rozanova’s Futurist works
Around 1912, Rozanova began to adopt and develop Futurist ideas in her work.
As for other Russian artists, these notions often acted as springboards for the
development of her own conceptions. She embraced the new subject matter of
modernity and the contemporary urban environment, seeking like the Italians
to express the technology, speed and excitement of the new age. As she later
stressed: “Futurism expressed the character of our contemporaneity”.29 Nina
Gurianova has suggested that Rozanova’s “path to Futurism lay exclusively
26 Larionov and Goncharova: “Rayonists and Futurists”, in Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Gar-
de, p. 90.
27 “В нем есть варварская грубость, варварская цельность и варварское неведение.” Ber-
diaev: Krizis iskusstva, p. 26.
28 Milner: A Slap in the Face! Futurists in Russia, p. 10.
29 “Футуризм выразил характер современности с наивысшей проницательностью и
полнотой.” Olga Rozanova: “Kubizm, futurizm, suprematizm”, p. 335; English translation:
“Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism”, in Gurianova: Exploring Color, p. 195.
through Neoprimitivism”,30 and certainly in some ways the focus on everyday

reality represented a continuity with the type of subject matter encountered in
Neoprimitivism, which had celebrated the everyday life of ordinary Russians.
Rozanova’s work Kuznitsa (The Smithy, 1912) epitomizes this approach.31 The
modest rural scene is painted with bold black outlines defining the forms, bright
colours, and little sense of modelling to convey sensations of volume or space.
The rough and deliberately crude brush strokes stress the materiality of the art
work and capture a sense of immediacy and primitivism. In Futurist works, these
qualities became even more exaggerated and were used to communicate a sense
of vitality and indicate movement, the vigour of the brush stroke imbuing the
painting with a further element of dynamism. This is particularly true of Pozhar
v gorode (Fire in the City, also known as Gorodskoi peizazh (Cityscape, 1914; see
Fig. 2), discussed below.
The stylistic continuities with Neoprimitivism are very strong in some of
Rozanova’s earliest works with a Futurist theme, such as Postroika doma (The
Building Site, 1913)32, which shows men at work. They are faceless, like cogs in
a machine, although the zig-zagging forms of the building possess the dynamic
quality of a living organism, producing a contrast between the mechanical men
and the active structure on which they move.33 The contours are in black, the
brushwork is gestural and the image is arranged flatly, although the colours are
more muted and the drawing less deliberately crude than in The Smithy.
Rozanova’s exploration of Futurist ideas also went hand in hand with an
interest in Cubism. The fusion of pictorial concepts from these two movements is
particularly evident in Pozhar v gorode / Gorodskoi peizazh (Fire in the City / City-
scape, 1914) in which the subject is emphatically Futurist, although the treatment
is essentially Cubist.34 The components in the composition (the buildings, bridge,
lights, chimneys and clouds) are predominantly geometric and rectilinear, while
Rozanova has used inconsistent lighting, passage (linkage of elements in differ-
ent spatial planes), muted tones (especially ochres and greys), and faceting to
create a sense of volume and space without disrupting the integrity of the picture
plane. These features recall early Analytical Cubist paintings, and the overall
effect is one of stasis.

31 Reproduced in Olga Rozanova 1886 – 1918, p. 50.
32 Reproduced in Gurianova, Exploring Color, plate 9
34 Reproduced as City (Industrial Landscape) in Chepik: Olga Rozanova 1886–1918, 48; but ti-
tled simply Gorodskoi peizazh (Cityscape) in Olga Rozanova “Lefanta chiol...”, 73.
Fig. 1. Olga Rozanova: Fabrika i most (The Factory and the Bridge, 1913).
A very different approach can be detected in Fabrika i most (The Factory and the
Bridge, 1913; see Fig. 1), where Rozanova has arranged different elements of an
industrial complex (such as the chimneys, the glazed areas, and the solid walls
of the machine halls) at conflicting and intersecting angles to create a sensation
of dynamism. In this work, Rozanova exploited the Cubist principle of fragmen-
tation, but used it in relation to the composition as whole (breaking up the coher-
ence of the scene into distinct entities) rather than shattering individual objects.
At the bottom of the composition, the openwork engineering construction seems
to denote a bridge (as evident from the title), although its sweeping curvilinear
forms also recall the enormous wheels that are found in turbines, suggesting the
inner workings of the factory, in tandem with its external features. In the way that
she combined different views of the complex into one whole, Rozanova excluded
the horizon and recession into the distance, making the image more immediate,
as if it were advancing towards the viewer. Throughout the composition, white
accents tend to dematerialize the objects rather than suggesting volume or solid-
ity, and this use of white paint reinforces the evocation of dynamism and flux.
Here, Rozanova adopted to various degrees (and adapted) the Italian practices of
repeating forms to evoke movement, breaking up forms to avoid any sensation of

stasis and dividing the space into various geometric areas.
Fig. 2. Olga Rozanova: Pozhar v gorode / Gorodskoi peizazh (Fire in the City / Cityscape, 1914).
Rozanova’s Pozhar v gorode / Gorodskoi peizazh (Fire in the City / Cityscape, 1914;
see Fig. 2) is much more dynamic. The critic and collector Nikolai Khardzhiev
considered that it was one of the few purely Futurist works produced by a Russian
artist, presumably because of the intense sensation of dynamism and the absence
of any overt allusions to Cubism or Neoprimitivism.35 It is a far more ambitious
painting than The Factory and the Bridge, because it attempts to capture the
entirety of the urban environment, producing a strong overall impression of the
constant movement, flux and the excitement of the city. Rozanova adopted a
high viewpoint, so that the panoramic scene completely fills the picture surface,
without any horizon line. The factory chimneys, bridges and buildings are broken
down into jagged fragments, some of which are difficult to identify with specific
35 Khardzhiev: “Cubo-Futurism”, p. 81.

structures. The shards are arranged on various overlapping diagonals which

roughly meet in the centre. Although the dominant colours are grey, black, brown
and white, the streaks of red, orange, yellow and white add a strong sense of
electricity and dynamism.
This sensation of movement is emphasized by the emphatic brush strokes.
While these have affinities with the Italians’ linee-forza (force-lines),36 Rozano-
va’s brushstrokes are deliberately crude and the pigments are applied thickly. The
lines of paint possess a strong tactile quality and operate as material elements
independent of the image, thus adding textural interest to the composition. To
reinforce the industrial ethos of the work, Fire in the City was painted on tin. One
of the chief objects that can be identified is a train that streaks through the com-
position from bottom left towards the centre. Symbolic of modernity, the machine
and the beauty of contemporary life, the train itself acts like a powerful line of
force within the painting. Although there is a configuration at the bottom left,
which might suggest a figure, it is the urban structures themselves that are the
protagonists of the composition and generate all the action.37 Movement is not
described, but the whole composition is in a state of flux and conveys a vivid
sensation of dynamism to the viewer. The image is rendered extremely intense
and emotional by its expressive use of forms and colours. Highlighting the psy-
chological intensity of works such as this, Efros called Rozanova an “intimate
Futurist”.38
Immersion in the frenetic life of the modern city is also reflected in Pivnaia
(Auktsion) (The Pub [The Auction], 1914, see Fig. 3). The title and subject as well
as the congestion, busyness and inherent dynamism of the composition indicate
a Futurist inspiration. Yet the fragmented, collaged and closely interlinked forms,
set against the large geometric planes surrounded by white stippling, suggest
that a strong visual stimulus may also have been derived from Synthetic Cubism.
Certain components are easily identified, while other objects are disjointed to the
point of illegibility. A small head, with a grey face and black bowler hat is just
discernible towards the top of the composition, accompanied by a fainter image
above and to the right. Larger and more prominent are the green bottle and a grey
drinking glass, which are placed in the frontal plane towards the bottom of the
canvas. Other features are more difficult to identify. To the left of the small table is
a white and blue configuration that suggests an opening – a door, window or even
a mirror. The large irregular red elements with a design in black reminiscent of
36 They were first presented as a key elements of Futurist painting in The Exhibitors to the Public.
37 Gurianova: “Olga Rozanova”, p. 214.
38 Efros: “Vo sled ukhodiashchim”, p. 4; Chepik: Olga Rozanova 1886–1918, p. 21.
Fig. 3. Olga Rozanova: Pivnaia (Auktsion) (The Pub [The Auction], 1914).
crenulated battlements (merlons) or Greek key patterns (meander) might denote

an awning, a parasol or a tablecloth.
A study for this painting, entitled Inter’er pivnoi (Pub Interior, 1914) makes it
slightly easier to identify the different items in the picture.39 It indicates that the
glass and bottle were originally conceived to be standing on a circular table. The
residue of this configuration remains in the curvilinear elements surrounding the
bottle and glass, although they also serve to suggest the interpenetration of the
solid forms with the surrounding space and the movements within objects. The
pole going diagonally through the drawing is attached to a boldly curved element
and suggests that the red fragments might indeed be a parasol.
Rozanova was of the view that “Futurism provided art with a unique expres-
sion – the fusion of two worlds – the subjective and the objective […] the desire
39 Reproduced in Rozanova: “Lefanta chiol...”, p. 146.

to convey the total reality of the object via the prism of pure subjectivity”.40 This
remark is particularly apt in the context of this painting, where the forms possess
an elusive identity and the lettering serves to emphasize the objective reality of
the pub, as well as to envelop the observer in the atmosphere, and hint at more
enigmatic and personal associations. The orange and yellow letters, which are set
at different angles against the green and yellow bands at the top, read as ‘ПИВНЯ’
(bar) and identify the location. In contrast, the blue letters against the pink are
difficult to read. They seem to be the mirror image of the word ‘PAR[IS]’ with the
‘IS’ above and to the left. Rozanova also added some collaged elements, using
newspaper print. The largest piece contains the word ‘АУКЦИОНЪ’ (Auction). A
piece of wallpaper to the bottom left suggests the walls of the bar, while a piece of
faux bois indicates the floor. Scraps of newspapers also represent reading matter
for the bar’s patrons. As a whole, the composition suggests the interpenetration
of the objects with their environment, and the resulting synthesis of forms and
fragments evokes sensations of simultaneity, and the aura of a public house, its
occupants and their activities.
While The Pub is rooted in everyday city life, Metronom (Metronome, 1914; see
Fig. 4) is ostensibly a musical subject, although its main interest seems to be time
and space, memory and travel as a physical and mental activity. A metronome is
a device that produces regular ticks or clicks that enable musicians to maintain a
consistent beat when playing an instrument. It literally marks time, and so here
it may be acting not just as an aid to performing music but also as a symbol of
time, both as historical time and infinite time, and thus combining notions of the
moment and the eternal.41 Rozanova depicted (with a fair degree of accuracy) the
internal workings of a mechanical metronome: the key, the pivot, the escapement
mechanism, the fixed weight and even the sliding weight as well as more cursory
indications of the pendulum bar, the case and the tempo scale. The hook at the
top is like the one on the Maëlzel metronome (originally patented in 1815) which
keeps the cover in place. At the top right of the composition, Rozanova has sug-
gested the arc that the pendulum describes when in motion, while various circu-
lar lines and planes imply the movements of various elements within the casing.
This description of the mechanics of time is accompanied by an indication
of geographical space. The artist has incorporated the French names of various
40 “футуризм дал единственный в искусстве по силе, остроте слияния двух миров –

субъективного и объективного [...].” Olga Rozanova: “Kubizm, futurizm, suprematizm”,
p. 335; English translation: “Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism”, in Gurianova: Exploring Color,
p. 195.
Fig. 4. Olga Rozanova: Metronom (Metronome, 1914).
countries broken up and arranged on zig-zag planes around the whole: Amerique,
Belgique, Hol[l]ande, Angleterr[e] and Fra[nce]. When viewed in conjunction
with these names, the wheels and various moving parts of the metronome evoke
the machines associated with travel – the component larger wheels, rails and
pistons of the engines on trains and ships. This association is reinforced by the
lettering in the centre which has visual affinities with the appearance of tickets.
The hook at the top centre, which is quite prominently displayed, is clearly
related to the case of the metronome, but it is the kind of hook that was also
found on cupboards and in trunks and other elements of baggage at the time. In
the context of the painting, it may also serve to evoke notions of travel, as well as
acting as a visual clue to unlocking and reading the composition. Rozanova has
shown the metronome in both a closed and an unlocked state, revealing simulta-
neously its outer shape and inner mechanism, perhaps as a visual metaphor for
our inner, subjective notion of duration and the exterior, objectively measurable
units of time.
The word ‘Paris’ is located below this, acting as a fulcrum around which the
names of the other countries appear to rotate. This seems to emphasize the city’s
importance in geographical, but also artistic terms. Paris lies roughly mid-way
between Russia and America, while its influence on the artistic culture of all the
countries named is and has been profound. On this level, the painting might be
seen to be about art and composition, as well as about time and space.
In compositional terms, Rozanova seems to have been obeying the injunctions
of the Futurist manifesto The Exhibitors to the Public (1912) which extolled “the dis-
location and dismemberment of objects, the scattering and fusion of details, freed
from accepted logic, and independent from one another, within a Futurist, simul-
taneous environment.”42 The text had been published in a Russian translation in
Soiuz molodezhi in June 1912, and Rozanova would have undoubtedly been aware
of it.43 Through this fusion of different spaces and the evocation of movement over
time, she might also have been trying to capture Boccioni’s stati d’animo (states
of mind).44
It is also possible that she was also interested in eliciting sensations of the
space-time continuum and the fourth dimension, which had been so closely
connected with Cubism by Mikhail Matyushin in March 1913.45 Responding to the
publication of two Russian translations46 of Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger’s Du
“Cubisme” (published in Paris in 1912), Matyushin had combined extracts from Du
“Cubisme” with long quotations from Peter Ouspensky’s writings on hyperspace
philosophy, notably Tertium Organum (The Third Canon of Thought, 1912).47 Maty-
ushin announced: “Cubism has raised the banner of the New Measure – of the new
doctrine of the merging of time and space”,48 and emphasized that art could play
an important rôle in promoting a new perception of the world and revealing the
nature of reality. Such statements served to make a firm connection between art
and the fourth dimension, understood variously as time, a different spatial dimen-
sion, and a higher intuition. Rozanova was certainly aware of Matyushin’s article,
42 Boccioni, et al.: “The Exhibitors to the Public” in Apollonio: Futurist Manifestos, p. 47.
43 Boccioni et al: “Eksponenty k publike.”
44 Boccioni’s Stati d’animo was a trilogy of paintings exhibited in 1912, and a complex theory
attached, first outlined in The Exhibitors to the Public (1912).
45 Matiushin: “O knige Mettsenzhe – Gleza ‘O kubizme’.” English translation in Henderson: The
Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, pp. 368–375.
46 Gleizes and Metzinger Du “Cubisme” appeared in Sankt-Peterburg in a translation by Ekaterina
Nizen (1913) and in Moscow by Maksimilian Voloshin (1913).
47 Matyushin: “Of the Book by Gleizes and Metzinger ‘Du Cubisme’”, in Henderson, The Fourth
Dimension, pp. 368–375. See Uspenskii: Tertium Organum: Kliuch k zagadkam mira; English trans-
lation Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought. A Key to the Enigmas of the World.
48 “Кубизм поднял знамя Новой Меры – нового учения о слиянии времени и
пространства.” Matiushin: “O knige Mettsenzhe – Gleza ‘O kubizme’.” English translation in
Henderson: The Fourth Dimension, p. 368.
since she was a member of the executive board of the Saint-Petersburg Union of
Youth group at the time, and she herself published in the group’s journal, where
Matyushin’s text had appeared. She had also worked on a Russian translation of
Du “Cubisme”.
In her painting Metronome, the fragmented forms, the dislocated names of
countries, and the amassing of conflicting lines and angles create a vivid visual
equivalent for movement through time and space, and in this respect a height-
ened awareness of the fourth dimension. The names of the different countries
are painted on distinct blue planes, which serve to reinforce the notion of other
spatial dimensions. At the same time, the composition could be interpreted as a
memory – reflecting the Futurists’ interest in Henri Bergson’s notion of capturing
the continuous stream of time in our consciousness.49
The abstract qualities of Metronome also reflect Rozanova’s thinking about
art as expressed in her article of 1913: “The Bases of the New Creation and the
Reasons Why It Is Misunderstood”.50 In these theoretical reflections, she rejected
the notion of copying reality, arguing that art was an abstract expression of the
world, i.e. the world perceived through the intuitive impulse, transformed by the
personality of the artist and the “constructive processing” or conscious handling
of pictorial elements such as colour, tone, line, the plane, linear and planar dis-
placement, dynamism, volume and equilibrium. “How does the world reveal
itself to us?” she asked, “how does our soul reflect the world? In order to reflect,
it is necessary to perceive. In order to perceive, it is necessary to touch and to see.
Only the Intuitive Principle introduces us to the World […] And only the Abstract
Element – Calculation – as the consequence of the active aspiration to express
the world, can build a Picture”.51
49 Henri Bergson argued in Matter and Memory that time is not composed of discrete units but
only exists as pure duration, durée, to which we best gain access through the consciousness of
our mental life. Boccioni was citing these ideas when he wrote in Fondamento plastico della
scultura e pittura futurista: “Any dividing up of an object’s motion is an arbitrary action [...] Every
movement, inasmuch as it is a passage from rest to rest, is absolutely indivisible.” English trans-
lation “Plastic Foundation of Futurist Sculpture and Painting.” Rainey, Poggi, and Wittman: Fu-
turism: An Anthology, p. 141.
50 Olga Rozanova: “Osnovy novogo tvorchestva”; Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde,
pp. 103–110.
51 “Как раскрыает себя нам мир? Как отражает мир наша душа? Чтобы отражать – надо
воспринять. Чтобы воспринять – конуться – видеть. Только Интуитивное Начало вводит
в нас Мир. И только Абстрактное начало – Расчет, как следствие активного стремления
к предаче мира, строит Картину.” Rozanova: “Osnovy novogo tvorchestva”, p. 228; translated
in Bowlt: Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, p. 103.
Fig. 5. Olga Rozanova: Na ulitse (Teatr modern) (In the Street [The Art Nouveau Theatre], 1915).
Na ulitse (Teatr modern) (In the Street [The Art Nouveau Theatre], 1915; see Fig. 5)
epitomizes Rozanova’s creative approach. The sign ‘ТЕАТРЬ МОДЕРН’ acts as an
identifiable element, indicating meaning, but also emphasizing the flat plane of
the canvas. Gurianova identifies this as “The Moderne Movie Theatre”,52 although
another translation of the title is “Art Nouveau Theatre”. As a real two-dimen-
sional element, the lettering serves to highlight the abstract qualities of the com-
position as a whole, highlighting the flat plane of the canvas and throwing into
relief the various movements within the composition. While ‘Modern Theatre’
could be an actual sign, the other writing is more elliptical. It is presented in a
more handwritten form, and the content seems to relate to shops. The first few
words are clear and seem to be associated with a jeweller’s shop because they
read: “ЧАСЫ ЗОЛОТО СЕРЕБРО КАМНИ” (Clocks, gold, silver, stones). These
are followed by just a few syllables which could denote various words and it is
52 Gurianova, Exploring Color, plate 20. I am using the title in Polatovskaia “Lefanta chiol…”, p. 54.
difficult to associate them with a single emporium – at least not logically. They
could be interpreted as “ПРИНИМ[АЕМ] ПОЧИ[НИМ] РОЯЛ[Ы] ВЕЛО[СИПЕДЫ]
И ОВ[ОЩИ]” (we accept, we repair, grand pianos, bicycles and vegetables).
The legibility and non-legibility of the words reflects the legibility and
non-legibility of the forms. While some elements are clearly identifiable, such as
the back of the black vehicle with a wheel, some brickwork, a section of cobbles,
a large comb and a bottle, other components seem to be completely abstract. The
composition is concentrated in the centre of the canvas and is placed on and is
surrounded by a blue ground. This tends to isolate the composition and divorce
the imagery even more from the real world. Overall, the composition conveys the
confusion of impressions received by an observer in the street, in which frag-
ments of objects, signs and buildings are melded together, not in a rational but
in an irrational way. The painting is like the memory of a walk. The sign also sug-
gests that the street is the stage upon which modern drama is played out.
This kind of painting can be perhaps best understood within the poetic
concept of zaum’, which literally means beyond the mind or beyond reason and is
often translated as the transrational or beyonsense.53 It was first coined in late 1912
to describe a literary theory that was subsequently developed during 1913 by two
poets, Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov. Zaum’ involved the complete
rejection of rational thought along with the conventional relationship between
words and their meanings. By isolating sounds, developing new combinations of
syllables, inventing words, and giving them entirely new meanings, the poet could
produce a kind of universal language that would be comprehensible to all men,
being rooted in primary sounds and emotions that were common to all languages.
Likewise, by abandoning the accepted norms of narrative structure and subverting
established rules of grammar and syntax, the poet could create “a new understand-
ing of the world” and generate “a new deepening of the spirit”.54
This spiritual aspect drew on the mystical experiences of speaking in tongues
common to some Russian sects as well as the heightened states of mind cultivated
by Eastern religions and Yoga. Not surprisingly, Kruchenykh identified the destruc-
tion of conventional linguistic structures with Cubo-Futurism’s destruction of tradi-
tional visual languages and that advanced level of consciousness or “higher intui-
53 ‘Beyonsense’ was coined by Paul Schmidt to convey the essence of the Russian neologism
zaum’. See Khlebnikov: The King of Time, p. 3.
54 Kruchenykh: “New Ways of the Word (The Language of the Future, Death to Symbolism).”
Lawton and Eagle: Russian Futurism through its Manifestoes, 1912–1928, pp. 75 and 77. For a more
detailed discussion of the zaum’ technique see Janecek: Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Rus-
sian Futurism.
tion” celebrated by Ouspensky. Rozanova was aware of these ideas because, in 1913,
the Hylaean Futurist poets joined with the Union of Youth group, and Rozanova
met Kruchenykh, with whom she subsequently developed a close personal and
creative relationship. The illogical complexity of In the Street, appears to have
benefited from this new encounter.
Rozanova’s collaboration with Futurist poets
It has been said that Russian Cubo-Futurism was really formed from the combina-
tion of Russian poets and Cubist painters.55 This collaboration is most evident in the
series of Russian Futurist books, which were appearing from 1912 onwards. Indeed,
the distinctive qualities of Russian Futurism are nowhere more apparent than in
these publications, which were produced by writers and artists working together.56
In 1914, Kruchenykh dedicated Vozropshchem (Let’s Grumble) to Rozanova “the
best artist in Petrograd”.57 Their collaboration clearly benefited from the fact that
she was sympathetic to the theory of zaum’ and, in 1915, she started writing such
poetry herself. As a result, her illustrations for Futurist books do not overwhelm
the poems, but complement and operate in tandem with them, enhancing their
impact. She did not necessarily view poetry as pure graphics, but she did recognize
that the visual aspect of poetry was important. Kliun described them as “witty and
sonorous poems with the underlying principle: ‘a word is a combination of sound
and letter’”.58 It is therefore not surprising to find that Rozanova was one of the
leading artists occupied in creating Futurist books. It was certainly an aspect of
Russian Futurism to which she made an enormous contribution.59
Initially, Rozanova supplied merely one or two appropriate illustrations. In
her drawing for Let’s Grumble,60 the fluid lines are sometimes grouped together
and suggest but don’t describe form, so that the content is rather elusive. The
sketch hints at buildings, vegetation and a human face. It reflects the content of
55 Bobrinskaya: Futurizm i kubofuturizm, p. 30.

56 See Dorofeeva: Budetlianskii klich!: Futuristicheskaia kniga; Greve: Writing and the ‘Subject’:
Image-text Relations in the Early Russian Avant-garde and Contemporary Russian Visual Poet-
ry; Kovtun: Russkaia futuristicheskaia kniga; Rowell and Wye: The Russian Avant-Garde Book,
1910–1934.
57 “Первой художнице Петрограда О. Розановой.” Kruchenykh: Vozropshchem, p. 1.
58 “Острые звучные ее стихи итересные по принципу слово есть звук и буква”. Kliun:
“Predislovie” in Chepik: Olga Rozanova 1886–1918, p. 18.
59 See Leahy: Ol’ga Rozanova: Book Designer of the Russian Avant-Garde.
60 Reproduced in Gurianova: Exploring Color, p. 35.
Kruchenykh’s poem in which he talks of love, being “united by the lake when an
interesting woman appears.” and he even mentions “O.”, which almost certainly
refers to Rozanova.61
Along with Goncharova and Malevich, Rozanova supplied illustrations for
Kruchenykh’s Vzorval (Explodity, 1913). The fragmented, dislocated and explod-
ing forms of her designs echo the deliberate dissonance of Kruchenykh’s poems.62
Rozanova played a more active rôle in the visual presentation of Kruchenykh
and Khlebnikov’s Bukh lesinnyi (Forestly Rapid, 1913), which represents her
first experiment with the overall graphic design of a book. For this publication,
Rozanova handwrote the lithographed text, designed the cover and provided
three illustrations, although the portrait of Kruchenykh was executed by Nikolai
Kulbin (who was also associated with the Union of Youth).63
Rozanova had not been involved in the first edition of Kruchenykh and Khle-
bnikov’s Igra v adu (Game in Hell), which had been published in August 1912 with
illustrations by Goncharova, but Rozanova did provide over twenty compositions
for the second edition published in 1914. Vignettes of demons, devils, witches
and werewolves are scattered throughout the text, intruding into the writing, dis-
rupting the orderly arrangement of the lines, and subverting the conventional
relationships between text and illustration.64 Unlike Goncharova’s organization,
which was based on the format of medieval manuscripts, Rozanova adopted an
approach that was more deliberately anarchic and recalls the way that incidental
marginalia are sometimes present in ancient texts.65
The idea that the visual message could parallel and enhance the poetry was
further developed in Kruchenykh’s Utinoe genedyshko … durnykh slov (Duck’s
Nest … of Bad Words, 1913), for which Rozanova supplied a variety of illustra-
tions and visual accents to Kruchenykh’s poems which she had written out by
hand.66 Some drawings stand alone, whereas others are integrated with the text.
Some are figurative, while others are abstract. A few are quite detailed while
others consist of a few sketchy lines. A couple of them are Neoprimitivist in spirit,
while several comprise dislocated forms suggesting urban or industrial imagery
and evoking movement. Sometimes lines of colour sweep over the text, creating
61 See Gurianova: Exploring Color, p. 37.

62 Reproduced in Gurianova: Exploring Color, plate 14.
63 Hellyer: A Catalogue of Russian Avant-Garde Books, p. 43, no. 212.
64 See reproductions in Gurianova: Exploring Color, 45, 46, 49.
65 Gurianova: Exploring Color, pp. 41–42.
66 For a reproduction of the complete book in colour, see Gurianova: Exploring Color, plates
12–13. Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov’s manuscript “The Word as Such” states that Rozanova wrote
out the text for Duck’s Nest. See Markov: Manifesty i programmy russkikh futuristov, p. 61.
structures that interact with or are totally independent of the writing. This use
of colour does not define form but simply creates an abstract and autonomous
component in the design and as such is highly innovative. Overall, the variety
of treatments produces a book that conveys several different emotional moods
and constantly surprises and engages the viewer as it unfolds. Since the book is
a poetic biography, this deliberate diversity of graphic approaches is particularly
apt, reflecting and capturing the flow of action and emotion.
Fig. 6. Olga Rozanova: “Three Poems” for Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov: Te Li Le
(Saint-Petersburg, 1914).
Eventually, Rozanova became more involved in the presentation of the text itself
and thus in the book’s overall design. Her illustrations of Khlebnikov and Kruche-
nykh’s Te Li Le (1914; see Fig. 6) fused the processes of drawing and writing. Illus-
tration and text were no longer distinct but formed a single entity which has
been called “coloured handwriting”.67 The way that Rozanova had written the
poem out by hand reflected Khlebnikov’s perception that the manuscript was
an indispensable vehicle for expressing the poetic impulse. Handwriting echoes
67 Gassner: “Olga Rozanova”, pp. 234–235.

the poet’s mood and, in turn, communicates that mood to the reader. In Te Li
Le, Rozanova’s written text and drawing act as autonomous means of expres-
sion, conveying emotion independently, or in parallel to the actual content of
the verses. She also dispersed elements of colour, almost as quasi-autonomous
components of the design, among the drawings and texts, unifying the whole,
transcending the conventional distinctions between text and illustration, and
creating a synthesis of colour and sound, the visual and the verbal, the painterly
and the poetic.68
Rozanova had used the same approach of fusing words and form in the
poster that she had produced for the Union of Youth’s avant-garde productions of
Pobeda nad solntsem (Victory over the Sun) and Vladimir Maiakovskii: Tragediia
(Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy) in December 1913.69 It is a confusing image
dominated by the curved body of a Futurist figure (identified by the top hat at the
upper-most left-hand corner) which embraces a confusion of jagged forms and
lettering “ФУТУР ТЕАТР” (Future Theatre).
Rozanova seems to have used collage for the first time in Zaum’naia gniga
(The Transrational Boog, 1915), which contained poems by Kruchenykh and Ali-
agrov (Roman Jakobson) and had a cover with a heart cut from glossy red paper
attached by means of a real button. The alogical combination of a genuine button
and the paper heart visually captured the iconoclastic and irrational spirit of the
poems within.70
The Russian Futurists had not greeted the First World War with the same
enthusiasm as the Italians did.71 Rozanova was not alone in being anxious about
the fate of loved ones. She confided in Kruchenykh that she had had nightmares
in which she dreamed that he had died in her arms.72 Indeed, an attitude of
horror at the killing rather than a spirit of celebrating military glory permeates
the ten linocuts and the two collages that she produced to accompany Kruche-
nykh’s five poems for Voina (War), which was published in Petrograd in 1916; see
Fig. 4 on p. 190).73 The linocuts were created during November and early Decem-

69 Reproduced in Gurianova: Exploring Color, 63.
70 Reproduced along with the cover of War and other Futurist books in Gurianova: Exploring
Color, p. 55. For a reproduction of the cover in colour see Rozanova “Lefanta chiol…”, p. 119.
71 See in this volume the essay by Natalia Budanova: “Penetrating Men’s Territory: Russian
Avant-garde Women, Futurism and the First World War” and the report by Ekaterina Lazareva on
the conference, The First World War and Avant-garde Art held in Zagreb.
72 Rozanova, letter to Aleksei Kruchenykh [October 1914], cited in Gurianova: Exploring Color,
p. 74.
73 War is reproduced in full in Olga Rozanova...: Uvidet mir preobrazhennym, pp. 121–139. For
ber 1915 while Rozanova was in Vladimir, but due to the lack of coloured paper
she was only able to complete the album after her return to Petrograd.74
On the whole, the linocuts are using the idiom of the lubki and thus continue
the concerns that were integral to Neoprimitivism. Sometimes the motifs are
even adapted from the popular prints, such as Bitva (The Battle; sheet 5), which
shows figures on horseback fighting with spears. A figure is shown here falling
to the ground, clearly smitten during the battle, to join the dead lying beneath
the horses. Other linocuts contain more modern imagery, such as Vo vremia
razstrela (During the Execution; sheet 9) or C uzhasom vspominaet (Remember
with Horror; sheet 8), which were based on newspaper reports and show people
being shot, along with contemporary soldiers and a corpse. Despite the modern
content, these also include rather crudely cut writing in the manner of the lubki.
Among the linocuts there are one or two exceptions to these archaic echoes. Raz-
rushenie goroda (The Destruction of the City; sheet 2), for instance, recalls the
dynamic shards and explosive sensations of Fire in the City (Cityscape). As in the
painting, the direction of movement goes from bottom right to top left, with the
guns’ nozzles replacing the speeding train.
In contrast to these figurative images, the collage on the cover is completely
abstract, while the other collage in the album, Aeroplany nad gorodom (Aero-
planes over the City; sheet 4), combines abstract and figurative forms; see Fig.
7). Irregular pieces of black and red paper (often with the addition of blue paper)
have been arranged asymmetrically together with pieces of paper printed with
figurative imagery: an aeroplane (printed using black ink),75 a figure (printed
using red ink) and a scene of aeroplanes, propellers, wings, struts and an explo-
sion (also printed in black). The disposition of the elements varies from album to
album, but always creates a vivid impression of space, while the red shiny quad-
rilaterals contrast strongly with the black circle to evoke sensations of dissonance
and unease.76 Accompanying the listing of this work on the contents page is a
short poem entitled “Prig s aeroplana” (A Jump from an Aeroplane) suggesting
a strong emotional resonance to the collage. The thin and smooth paper of the
cut-out forms contrasts with the rougher texture of the paper to which they have
been attached. Similarly, the texture of the print in the linocuts contrasts with the
another version of War and variants on some of the images, see Mason: Guerres: Trios suites
insignes sur un thème 1914–1916, pp. 31–47; 70–77.
74 Terekhina: “Voina”, in Olga Rozanova...: Uvidet mir preobrazhennym, p. 120.
75 The small print of an aeroplane is not present in all versions of Aeroplanes over the City, see,
for instance, Mason: Guerres: Trios suites insignes sur un thème 1914–1916, pp. 36 and 74–75.
76 Gur’ianova: “Voennye graficheskie tsikly N. Goncharovoi i O. Rozanovoi”, p. 88.
smooth paper on which they are printed and the varied textures of the collages.
By using assorted styles and approaches linked to different periods in her own art
as well as to different historical periods, Rozanova makes War not just about the
First World War, but about war in general, and not just about Russia but about
conflict and the human condition. It is a statement of horror and compassion.
War also epitomizes the various currents in Rozanova’s artistic practice at
the point where she began to abandon figuration and adopt a completely abstract
vocabulary in her painting. It therefore marks the point at which she left the world
of Futurism for the world of objectlessness and absolute painting. The mixture of
approaches in War exemplifies the concept of vsechestvo (everythingness), which
characterized the perpetual experimentation of her Futurist period and underlay
her move into non-objectivity. It also indicates the rôle that the Futurist books
(embodying the concept of zaum’ and exploring the technique of collage) had
played in her development towards abstraction.77 In visual terms, her non-fig-
urative work had emerged directly from her experimental work with paper col-
lages, which Charlotte Douglas has identified as one of the “earliest appearances
of abstraction in Russia.”78 Before War went to press, Rozanova exhibited several
abstract works in Petrograd, comprising at least one painting and four sculptures,
including the reliefs Avtomobil’ (Automobile, 1915) and Velosipedist (chertova
panel’) (Cyclist [Devil’s Footpath], 1915), at Poslednaia futuristicheskaia vystavka
kartin 0,10 (nol’-desiat’) (The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10 (Zero-Ten),
19 December 1915 – 17 January 1916).79
From 1916 onwards, Rozanova choose to concentrate on abstraction, but
up to this time she had been producing both figurative and non-figurative work
concurrently. Alongside her bold and enigmatic Cubo-Futurist canvases, she had
produced a series of paintings and prints in a Neoprimitivist idiom which were
based on playing cards, epitomizing notions of chance, but also both celebrat-
77 The completely abstract collages in Universal War have often been attributed to Rozanova.
Now, however, the concensus seems to be that Kruchenykh was the main creator of the images,
although she may helped him. See for instance Polatovskaia. “Lefanta chiol…”, p. 166.
78 Douglas: “The Art of Pure Design”, p. 100.
79 For a discussion of Rozanova’s sculptures, see Lodder: “Sculpture at The Last Futurist Exhi-
bition of Paintings 0.10 (Zero Ten)”. Although not listed in the catalogue, Rozanova told Kruche-
nykh that she was exhibiting four sculptures. See Rozanova, letter to Kruchenykh of December
1915 in Gur’ianova: “Pis’ma O. V. Rozanovoi v arkhive Khardzhieva”, p. 76. Automobile and Cyclist
were reproduced in Ogonek 1 (3 January 1916). Drawings of these works plus two others exist in
the Costakis Collection, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. For reproductions,
see Rudenstine: Russian Avant-Garde Art: The George Costakis Collection, p. 455, nos. 1036–1038.
ing and subverting popular imagery.80 Subsequently, she discarded vsechestvo

(everythingness) and became firmly associated with Kazimir Malevich’s Supre-
matism. She joined his Supremus group and wrote a contribution to his journal
Supremus.81 Yet she herself recognized that her own development had been inde-
pendent of his, observing to Kruchenykh that “the whole of Suprematism is com-
pletely my paste-ups”.82 Matyushin described Rozanova’s new abstract work as
“a carefree leap towards space”,83 but it had, in fact, been anything but carefree.
It had been based on an intensive creative quest that had involved experimenting
with several artistic directions simultaneously, as well as an inventive assimila-
tion and rigorous exploration of Futurist ideas and a diligent, Futurist-inspired
pursuit of “constant renewal”. Rozanova was, indeed “a true Futurist”.84
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63–88.
—: Exploring Color: Olga Rozanova and the Early Russian Avant-Garde, 1910–1918.
Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 2000.
Greve, Charlotte: Writing and the ‘Subject’: Image-text Relations in the Early Russian
Avant-garde and Contemporary Russian Visual Poetry. Amsterdam: Pegasus, 2004.
Hellyer, Peter, ed.: A Catalogue of Russian Avant-Garde Books. London: The British Library, 1994.
Howard, Jeremy: The Union of Youth: An Artists’ Society of the Russian Avant-garde.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992.
Khardzhiev, Nikolai: “Cubo-Futurism.” John E. Bowlt, and Mark Konecny, eds.: A Legacy
Regained: Nikolai Khardzhiev and the Russian Avant-Garde. Saint-Petersburg: Palace
Editions, 2002. 81–82.
Khlebnikov, Velimir: The King of Time: Poems, Fictions, Visions of the Future. Trans. Paul
Schmidt, ed. Charlotte Douglas. Cambridge/MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Kliun, Ivan V. : “Predislovie.” Katalog posmertnoi vystavki kartin, etiudov, eskizov i risunkov
O. V. Rozanovoi 1918–1919. Moskva: V. Ts. V. B., Otdela izobrazitel’nykh iskusstvo, Nar.
[odnyi] kom.[isariat] po prosveshcheniiu, 1919. i-iv. English translation “A Foreword
to the Catalogue of the Posthumous Exhibition of Paintings, Studies and Drawings by
Olga Rozanova in 1918–1919.” Tatiana Chepik, ed.: Olga Rozanova 1886–1918. Helsinki:
Helsingin kaupungin taidemuseo, 1992. 18.
Kovtun, Evgenii F.: Russkaia futuristicheskaia kniga. Moskva: Kniga, 1989.
Kruchenykh, Aleksei: “New Ways of the Word (The Language of the Future, Death to
Symbolism).” Anna Lawton, and Herbert Eagle, eds.: Russian Futurism through its
Manifestoes, 1912–1928. Ithica /NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. 69–77.
Kruchenykh, Aleksei: Vozropshchem. Sankt-Peterburg: EUY, 1913.
Kuzmin, Mikhail Alekseevich: “Futuristy.” Apollon 2:9 (February 1910): 20–21.
Larionov, Mikhail, and Natal’ia Goncharova: “Luchisty i budushchniki: Manifest.” Mikhail
Larionov, ed.: Oslinyi khvost i “Mishen’”. Moskva: Miunster, 1913. 9–48. English
translation: “Rayonists and Futurists: A Manifesto.” John E. Bowlt, ed.: Russian Art of the
Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism. New York: Viking Press, 1976. 87–91.
Leahy, Catherine P.: Ol’ga Rozanova: Book Designer of the Russian Avant-Garde. BA Thesis.
Canberra University, 1986.
Livshits, Benedikt: Polutoraglazyi strelets: Stikhotvoreniia, perevody vospominaniia.
Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo pisatelei, 1933.
—: The One and a Half-Eyed Archer. Trans. and ed. John. E. Bowlt. Newtonville/ MA: Oriental
Research Partners, 1977.
Lodder, Christina: “Sculpture at the Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings ‘0.10’ (Zero-Ten).”
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Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso: “Destruction of Syntax – Untrammeled Imagination – Words-in-
Freedom.” F.T. Marinetti: Critical Writings. Ed. by Günter Berghaus. New York: Farrar,
Markov, Vladimir: Russian Futurism: A History. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1969.
Markov, Vladimir, ed.: Manifesty i programmy russkikh futuristov. München: Fink, 1967.
Matiushin, Mikhail: “O knige Mettsenzhe – Gleza ‘O kubizme’.” Soiuz molodezhi 3 (March 1913):
25–34. English translation “Of the Book by Gleizes and Metzinger ‘Du Cubisme’.” Linda
Dalrymple Henderson: The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art.
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Gallery, Newcastle University, 23 June – 18 August 2007. London: Wilson, 2007.
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des Estampes, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, 2003. Paris: Biro, 2003.
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The Museum of Modern Art, 2002.
Rozanova, Ol’ga Vladimirovna: “Kubizm, futurizm, suprematizm.” Andrei D. Sarabianov,
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chastnykh kollektsii. Moskva: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1992. 333–334. English translation
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futurizm: Teoriia, praktika, kritika, vospominaniia. Moskva: Nasledie, 1999. 228–231.
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Sillart [pseud.]: “Khronika. Pis’mo iz Parizha. Vystavka futuristicheskoi skul’ptury Bochchoni.”
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Terekhina, Vera N.: “Voina.” Evgeniia A. Polatovskaia, Vera N. Terekhina, and Viktor A.
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2007. 120–121.
Tugendkhol’d, Iakov A.: “Pis’mo iz Parizha.” Apollon 6 (1912): 69–70. English translation “A
Letter from Paris.” Ilia Dorontchenkov, ed.: Russian and Soviet Views of Modern Western
Art 1890s to Mid-1930s. Berkeley/LA: University of California Press, 2009. 156–157.
Uspenskii, Petr Dem’ianovich: Tertium Organum: Kliuch k zagadkam mira. Sankt-Peterburg:
Trud, 1911. English translation Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought: A Key to the
Enigmas of the World. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1923; 2nd edn 1934.
Vakar, Irina A., and Tat’iana N. Mikhenko, eds.: Malevich o sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche:
Pis’ma. Dokumenty. Vospominaniia. Kritika. Vol. 1–2. Moskva: RA, 2004.
Bela Tsipuria
Tatiana Vechorka: A Futurist Poetess
in Tbilisi, Baku and Moscow
Abstract: Tatiana Vechorka may not be famous today, but she was one among
very few female figures in the history of Russian Futurism. Her biography demon-
strates how artists from a variety of literary environments developed an interest
in Futurism, and how political realities could influence the unfolding of literary
ideas and practices. Tatiana Vechorka’s name appeared in a large number of lit-
erary journals in Tbilisi in the late 1910s, which suggest that she was a notable
female figure on the art scene there. Newspaper reports and announcements on
posters mention her name in connection with various events and artistic gather-
ings, thus allowing us to reconstruct her rôle in the artistic life of Tbilisi and to
chronicle her artistic development from a young Romantic to a Futurist poetess
and essayist. It appears that she was welcomed in Tbilisi art circles and became
very popular amongst writers and painters of the day. Together with a few other
women artists and writers she created a female voice that diversified the cultural
production in Tbilisi and, a few years later, in Baku. After 1924, Vechorka con-
tinued her literary activities in Moscow. However, the politicized cultural reali-
ties in the Soviet capital made her suppress her Futurist interests and direct her
attention to other styles and aesthetics.
Keywords: Futurism in Georgia, Tbilisi avant-garde, Futurism in Baku, Russian

Futurism, Sovietization of literature
Introduction
Tatiana Vechorka (1892–1965) was a poetess and prose writer, whose rôle in
Russian Futurism is now rarely remembered. Her name finds only few mentions
in scholarly works. Tatiana Nikolskaya included an essay on her biography and
poetry in a book on the Russian avant-garde in Tbilisi;1 Vladimir Markov in his
Russian Futurism discusses some Futurist images from her book Tret’ dushi; 2
Gerald Janecek’s study on Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism
1 See Nikol’skaia: “Tvorcheskii put’ Tat’iany Vechorki”, pp. 89–97.

2 See: Markov: Russian Futurism, p. 365.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0012
alludes to her name in a few notes; 3 and Stephen Foster judged that “the influ-
ence [of Futurism] was notable also in the poetry of T. Vechorka”.4 Vechorka was
a pen name, her family name being Efimova and her married name Tolstaya.
These three names also symbolize different periods in her personal and artistic
life: Efimova is a name of a young girl who tried to develop her artistic iden-
tity under a nom de plume.5 Early on in her career, Tatiana Vechorka became
involved with the Russian avant-garde in Tbilisi and Baku and became an active
member of the Futurist circles there.
Tatiana Efimova was born in 1892 in Baku, into the family of a Russian ‘chi-
novnik’ (civil servant) of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property, serving
in Azerbaijan and, later, in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, which under the name of
Tiflis had become part of the Russian Empire and developed into a political and
cultural centre of Transcaucasia. In 1910, Tatiana Efimova graduated from the
First Grand Duchess Olga Feodorovna Women’s High School and in 1913, together
with her mother and brother Aleksey, left for Saint-Petersburg, where she studied
with the actor and drama teacher, Andrey Petrovsky (1869–1933) and began her
poetic activities. The vivid cultural life of the Russian capital during the Silver
Age made a great impression on her. She became an admirer of Alexander Blok
and had her first poems printed in 1914–15.6 After her return to Tbilisi in 1917, she
became an active member of Tbilisi’s multicultural avant-garde environment. At
the end of 1919, she became engaged to Boris Tolstoy and married him in 1920.7
From now on, she published her poetic works under the pseudonym Vechorka; it
was only at a later stage that she started issuing her writings under her married
name Tolstaya, as a sign of a detachment from her avant-garde biography and
œuvre, and of an enforced adaptation to the cultural realities of the Soviet Union.
3 See Janecek: Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism, pp. 401, 426.
4 Foster: The Eastern Dada Orbit, p. 168.
5 The name Vechorka is derived from вечер, Russian for ‘evening’. As Vechorka’s daughter, Lyd-
ia Libedinskaya indicates in her memoirs, the word reminded her romantically inclined mother
of beautiful sunsets. Another reason for choosing the name was the female character Vechorka
from a Russian fairy tale. See Libedinskaia: Zelenaia lampa: Vospominaniia, p. 9.
6 In her autobiography, Vechorka mentions that her poems were published in the Saint-Peters-
burg journals Solntse Rossii and Vershini, and in his comments to this text, Parnis mentions her
first poetry publications in Lukomorie nos. 18, 21, 22, 26 (1914). Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez
retushi, pp. 18–21.
7 See the Avtobiografiia (Autobiography) in Tolstaia: Portrety bez retushi, pp. 18–22. This biogra-
phy, dated 24 September 1951, was written in the Soviet era and was addressed to Soviet officials
for the sake of obtaining an academic pension. Therefore, only the facts acceptable to the régime
were mentioned and her Futurist past was entirely erased.
228 Bela Tsipuria
From now on, she was no longer identified as a Futurist poetess, but as a Realist
prose writer.
Although Tatiana Vechorka was an ethnic Russian and an author writing
in the Russian language, her artistic formation was rooted in the cultural sit-
uation of Tbilisi and Baku. In these two cities, she became a Futurist; here,
she met fellow poets, befriended them and established a mutually fruitful
co-operation with them. The cultural boom in Transcaucasia during the short-
lived period of independence was an essential, although brief phase in her
life. In the mid-1920s, Bolshevism and Soviet dictatorship terminated the free
cultural and political development in these cities, as well as in Moscow, were
she moved in 1924.
Cultural life in Tbilisi in the years of the Georgian Democratic

Republic
In 1918, Tbilisi gained independence from the Russian Empire. Consequently, the
city became a unique avant-garde topos, a “bohemian space in which literature
is performed, consumed, and lived.”8 Due to historical circumstances, artists of
various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds joined with Georgian authors in a cre-
ative fellowship, of which Vechorka also became a part.
In the turbulent times of revolutions and civic war in Russia, and while large
parts of Europe were torn apart by the First World War, Georgia regained political
freedom and established herself as a free democratic State. In November 1917,
the government of independent Transcaucasia was formed in Tbilisi, few months
later, three South-Caucasian nations formed the Transcaucasian Democratic Fed-
erative Republic, lasting from February to May 1918, with Tbilisi as its capital.
Soon afterwards, on 26 and 28 May 1918, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia
declared their independence in the former Caucasus Vice Royal Palace in Tbilisi.
The Democratic Republic of Georgia, led by the Georgian Social Democratic Party
(Menshevik), was only of brief duration (26 May 1918 to 23 February 1921), cut
short by the Russian Bolshevik’s occupation of the country.9 However, during this
period, the liberal and multi-party government succeeded in creating an environ-
ment in which the arts were flourishing, equality of the sexes, including woman’s
8 Ram: “Modernism on the Periphery”, p. 378.

9 When the Bolsheviks occupied Georgia, a government was imposed by Moscow (25 February
1921), and in December 1922, all Transcaucasia had become integrated into the newly formed
USSR.
suffrage, was established, and civic liberties such as freedom of speech and reli-
gion were guaranteed.10
The thriving cultural scene in Tbilisi was fully oriented towards European
Modernism and avantgardism. Although some Georgian authors had been fol-
lowing Modernist tendencies since 1890, the full-scale process of modernization
had only set in with some delay and had reached a peak with the formation of
the Georgian Symbolist group, Tsisperi Qantsebi (The Blue Horns, founded in
1915). Within a couple of years, this association of some leading Georgian poets
managed to change the cultural atmosphere and instigate a number of literary
initiatives. The Blue Horns prepared a fertile soil also for Russian emigrés escap-
ing from the Revolution and Civil War. Some of them possessed family roots in
Georgia, but most of them came to enjoy some reprieve from devastation and per-
secution. However, Tbilisi became not only a safe haven, but also a place where
they could carry on with their artistic activities.
So, within a short while, a number of Georgian and Russian avant-garde
groupings were established in Tbilisi, including The Blue Horns (Georgian),
Tsekh poetov (Poets’ Guild) and Kolchuga (The Chain Mail) – both Russian –
and 41° (mixed). The posters, rapports and chronicles of the time inform us that
these groups of poets and artists were quite inseparable; together, they organized
gatherings and soirées in cafés and theatres, engaged in lively disputes that also
involved the general public. The literary journals published in Tbilisi were never
exclusive to individual groupings but open to contributions from members of the
other associations; jointly, they prepared book projects, in which multicultural
dialogue and modernist unity was celebrated.11 This cooperation was indeed a
decisive factor in creating a unique atmosphere that allowed Tatiana Vechorka
to lead an adventurous life and to form many long-lasting friendships. She con-
tinued to keep company with Alexei Kruchenykh. From the autobiography by her
daughter, Lydia Libedinskaya, we learn that the door of her home in Moscow was
always open to her writer friends. In Tbilisi, she also translated some poems by
Georgian Symbolists Grigol Robakidze, Titsian Tabidze, Paolo Iashvili, and the
Armenian Futurist Kara-Darvish.12
10 See Urushadze: Bolshevism-Menshevism, p. 21.

11 The avant-garde period of Tbilisi has been studied, with a special focus on the Russian cul-
tural activities between 1918 and 1921, in Magarotto, Marzaduri and Pagani: L’avanguardia a
Tiflis; Nikol’skaia: Avangard i okresnosti and Fantasticheskii gorod; Markov: Russian Futurism,
pp. 336–337; Janecek: Zaum, pp. 223–289.
12 See: Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, pp. 74, 76, 154, 155.
230 Bela Tsipuria
Tatiana Vechorka’s name was mentioned in the reviews of a large number

of artistic gatherings, which suggest that she was a notable female figure in the
Tbilisi art scene from the end of 1917 until the end of 1919. Literary journals,
newspapers and posters announcing various events enable us to reconstruct the
intense artistic life in Tbilisi of those years and to chronicle Vechorka’s artistic
development from a young romantic to a Futurist poet and essayist. It appears
that she was welcomed in Tbilisi art circles and became very popular amongst
writers and painters of the day. Together with a few other women she created
a female voice that diversified the cultural atmosphere in the city and was
greatly appreciated by their male fellow poets. On 18 June 1918, Aleksei Kruche-
nykh held a lecture, “O zhenskikh stikhakh” (On Female Poetry) at a Kolchuga
soirée, in which he discussed the work of Mirra Lokhvitskaya, Anna Akhmatova,
Olga Rozanova, Tatiana Vechorka and others. Vechorka herself took part in the
ensuing discussions, together with some fourteen other disputants.13
In the 1920s, when the vibrant Tbilisi multicultural avant-garde had come
to an end and the country was being sovietized, modernist/avant-garde tenden-
cies were not yet fully suppressed in Georgia. Some interesting female figures
appeared on the scene and made a valuable contribution to Georgian art, cinema
and literature, which goes to show that Vechorka and other women were, without
doubt, an inspiring influence on the next generation.
Tbilisi avant-garde poetesses and Futurism
Elene Dariani: Before The Blue Horns had been established, Georgia possessed
few female poets. There was no lack of young ladies who acted as muses, and
beautiful girls who attended literary gatherings. Georgian poets were not only
dedicating their poems to them, but were also expressing the need for a poetess
who could introduce a new, a feminine voice to Georgian literature. For that
reason, Paolo Iashvili (1894–1937), one of the leaders of The Blue Horns, invented
in 1915 a fictitious persona, Elene Dariani, on behalf of whom he wrote some
poems, recited them in large auditoria while apologizing to the public for her
absence, saying that the modest lady preferred to keep her identity a secret.
Paolo Iashvili was possibly inspired by other literary mystifications, such as
Cherubina de Gabriak, a literary forgery by the young Russian poetess Elizaveta
Dmitrieva (1887–1928) and the Symbolist Maximilian Voloshin (1877–1932). The
“Elene Dariani” poems did indeed bring a new voice to Georgian poetry and diver-
13 Note from the newspaper, Tiflisski listok (Tbilisi Paper), 21 June 1918.
sified the literary production of The Blue Horns. The whole group was supporting
the hoax, and it only happened once that one of the leaders, Grigol Robakidze,
hinted at the fact that Elene Dariani was a female face of one of the male initiators
of Georgian Modernism.14
After the Sovietization of Georgia, Paolo Iashvili was forced to stop writing
Symbolist poems, including poems by “Elene Dariani”. The Elene Dariani corpus
was later included in Paolo Iashvili’s first poetry collection, published posthu-
mously in 1955. The romantic figure of the poetess gained such a popularity, and
the ruse worked so well that, until today, there are speculations about the identity
of “Elene Dariani”.15
Sophia Melnikova (1890–1980) was an actress who, at the end of 1917, like other
Russians, chose Tbilisi as her place of exile. Her presence not only added more
beauty and artistry to the city, she also inspired the Futurists and the whole
avant-garde community there to publish a unique book, a masterpiece of Futurist
book art, Sofii Giorgievne Mel’nikovoi (To Sofia Giorgievna Melnikova, 1919). This
189-page anthology united almost the whole spectrum of the Tbilisi avant-garde.
Twenty poets and artists of four nationalities – many amongst them Futurists –
contributed to this collection of poetry and graphics.
The book united the works of the poets of various nationalities in the way that the entire
collection was perceived as a unified artistic organism. Characteristic of such a synthesis is
the fact that the peculiarities of various textual and artistic solutions only make the book
more versatile, “revive” the book, making its structure and architectonics more mobile and
flexible, and the book itself is represented as a visual art object. […] In summary, here again
is the certain synthesis and unity of poetry and drawing, bearing different national features.
One can say that “Sofia Melnikova’s Miscellany” is a unique phenomenon in the history of
the art of the Futurist book, where poetic works of absolutely different artistic styles and
varied artistic forms alternated with each other and combined in one integral unity. 16
All of the contributors to the anthology were active participants in the gather-
ings at the Fantastiuri Duqani (Russian: Fantasticheskii Kabachok17; Fantastic
14 Robakidze: Gruzinskii Modernism, p. 49.

15 One of Iashvili’s contemporaries, Elene Bakradze, claimed in her memoirs that there was
indeed a real person behind the pen name, although literary historians have not agreed with her.
See Lomjaria’s preface to Paolo Iashvili’s poetry anthology of 2001, published under the pseudo-
nym “Elene Dariani”, Leks’ebi, pp. 3–14.
16 Chikhradze: “The Futurist Book”, p. 313.
17 “Kabachok” (Кабачок) is modern Russian spelling, while older contemporary sources spell
it Кабачекъ (“Kabachek”).
232 Bela Tsipuria
SYNDICATE OF FUTURISTS
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TIFLIS BRANCH
On Friday, January 19, at 9 o’clock in the
evening
In the dining hall “Imedi” [Hope] (Pushkin
Street, former Seminaria)
Zaum’ Poetry Soirée
Programme:
Ilia Zdanevich
Lecture
Zaum’ Poetry and Poetry in General
S. G. Melnikova
Reciting
Works by: D. Burliuk, V. Gnedov, E. Guro, I.
Zdanevich, A. Kruchenykh, V. Khlebnikov and
others.
After the lecture
= Dispute =
Chaired by
Sandro Kancheli
Participants: S. Valishevsky, Sergey
Gorodetsky, V. Gudiev, Yu. Degen, L. Japaridze,
G. I. Diasamidze, Kara Darvish, Gr. Robakidze,
T. Tabidze, N. Cherniavsky, Paolo Iashvili and
others.
Entrance fee 4 rubles.
Tickets: In dining hall “Imedi”, at the exhibition
of K. Zdanevich, Georgian “Chashka Chaia”
[Cup of Tea] and office of the newspaper
“Respublika” [Republic].
-----------------------------------------------------------------
No posters and announcements.
Fig. 1. Poster of the soirée of the Syndicate of Futurists, Tiflis Branch, in the “Imedi” restaurant
in Tbilisi, 19 January 1918.
Tavern), an avant-garde café in Tbilisi modelled on the Saint-Petersburg Brodi-

achaia sobaka (Stray Dog), and a forerunner of the Miniaturis Teatri (Miniature
Theatre), founded by Sophia Melnikova in 1918. After her arrival in Tbilisi, Mel-
nikova united people with diverse interests in a group called Medny kotel (Copper
Pot),18 befriended Ilya Zdanevich and became a great inspiration to the group
18 Magarotto: “Literary and Cultural Life in Tiflis (1914–1921)”, pp. 83–84.

41°.19 Melnikova had been an actress at the Liteinyi Teatr (Foundry Theatre) in
Saint-Petersburg and possessed great talent for the recitation of Futurist poetry.
Her intimate gatherings during the first year of the Fantastic Tavern were reported
on by Kruchenykh.20 On 18 January 1918, at a soirée in the “Imedi” restaurant
in Tbilisi, after the lecture by Ilya Zdanevich, “On Zaum’ Poetry and Poetry in
General”, Melnikova recited zaum’ poetry by Zdanevich, Kruchenykh, Khleb-
nikov, Burliuk and others (see Fig. 1).
Nina Vasilieva (1889–1979) was one of the poetesses active during the Tbilisi
avant-garde years. Born in Georgia into the family of a Russian general and a
Georgian aristocratic mother, she was sent to Smol’nyi Charm School in Saint-Pe-
tersburg. Her sisters, Vera, a translator, and Sofia, an actress, helped her to
gain access to Russian artistic circles. A play by young Vasilieva was staged at
the Liteinyi Theatre in Saint-Petersburg.21 In 1909, she was briefly arrested for
keeping illegal political books, and in August 1917 she returned to Tbilisi, where
she became a member of the literary society, Alpha-Lira, founded by Vechorka in
December 1917, and of Tsekh poetov. Later, she acted as secretary of the Russian
Writers’ Union in Georgia. She married Dmitrii Gordeev, an archeologist and
art historian, who was also an active member in the Tbilisi avant-garde and the
author of academic papers on medieval Georgian architecture and manuscripts.
This might seem somewhat irrelevant within an avant-garde context, but may
serve to indicate the wide-ranging interests of that circle. Vasilieva wrote one
book of poetry, Zolotie resnitsi (Golden Eyelashes, 1919), but stopped publishing
after the Sovietization of Georgia.22
She contributed to the Sophia Melnikova miscellany, which opens with her
series Posviashcheniia (Dedications), containing four poems, one of which por-
trays Salome, a Biblical figure popular with the Symbolists and Modernists. The
poems focussed on female eroticism, on the desire of escaping from everyday
reality and noisy street life, to give birth to the melody and rhythm of the heart,
accompanied by the murmur of actresses.23 The poem Fantasticheskii Kabachеk
(Fantastic Tavern), written in October 1918, recreates the atmosphere and artistic
19 See: Nechaev: “Muza ‘41°’.”

20 Kruchenykh: “Fantasticheskii Kabachеk”, p. 19.
21 The title is not mentioned in her biography.
22 Biographic notes from Burenkova: “Nina Vasilieva”, pp. 322–323.
23 Vasil’eva: “Posviashcheniia”, pp. 13–16.
234 Bela Tsipuria
spirit of the nightclub and contains valuable information about the members of
the gatherings, their habits and predilections.24
Anna Antonovskaya (1885–1967) was born Anna Venzher in Tbilisi. She studied
applied arts and followed her father’s steps to become a craftswoman. In 1918,
she started her poetic activities and financed the Modernist journal ARS (1918–
19). Antonovskaya organized gatherings of Russian poets in Tbilisi and carried
on with this rôle in Moscow, where she moved in 1922 and where she chaired the
Moscow branch of Tsekh poetov, of which Tatiana Vechorka was also a member.
Unlike other Modernists and avantgardists, Antonovskaya decided to support the
Soviet régime and was rewarded for this by winning the Stalin Prize for her novel
Velikii Mouravi (The Great Mouravi, 1939), the first woman to be granted such a
prize.25
Tatiana Vechorka as a Futurist poetess in Tbilisi
When Tatiana Vechorka returned to Tbilisi in 1917, she brought with her the expe-
riences she had made in the cultural life of Saint-Petersburg. She quickly adapted
to the intense artistic scene of Tbilisi, but as far as her poetic production was
concerned, it took a while before she adopted some of the newest Futurist exper-
iments. Her first poetry collection, Magnolias (1918), was published in Tbilisi by
the Kolchuga group,26 of which she was a member,27 and in the same year a lith-
ographed edition of a manuscript called Bespomoshchnaia nezhnost’ (Helpless
Tenderness, 1918). She regularly wrote reports on the cultural life of Tbilisi, deliv-
ered lectures in literary cafés and was actively involved in various artistic gath-
24 Vasil’eva: “Fantasticheskii Kabachеk”, pp. 310–316. One stanza is dedicated to Vechorka.

25 The six-volume novel is depicting the life and actions of Giorgi Saakadze (1570–1629), a con-
troversial Georgian military and political figure. Stalin saw in Saakadze a progressive historic fig-
ure and drew a parallel between Saakadze and himself. He personally approved of Antonovskaya
as script writer for the film Giorgi Saakadze, produced in 1943 by the film studio Kartuli Filmi
(Georgian Film) in a manner that was obviously most flattering to him.
26 Most of the poems from this book were also included in her unpublished poetry book, Mednie
pavlini (Copper Peacocks, 1920).
27 Kolchuga was a breakaway group from the Tbilisi branch of Tsekh poetov, run by the Akmeist
Sergey Gorodetsky. It was founded by Yuri Degen and included Tatiana Vechorka, Georgii Evan-
gulov, Boris Korneev, Alexander Poroshin, Alexander Chachikov and others.
erings. She was one of founders and leaders of the Tbilisi branch of Alfa-Lira,28
which in summer of 1918 merged with Tsekh poetov and Kolchuga, and in Novem-
ber 1918 founded the Studiia Khudozhestvennoi Prozy (Studio of Artistic Prose).
At their weekly gatherings, the group presented and discussed poems by various
authors, offered lectures on Georgian history and culture, and so on.
Kuranty (Chimes), a monthly journal of arts and literature edited by Boris
Korneev (1896–1958), published in the first issue of December 1918 two of Vechor-
ka’s poems and a short story, Kira, both written in Saint-Petersburg in 1914.
Neither of the three pieces show any signs of a Futurist aesthetics; their style and
thematics were still steeped in Russian Symbolism, which in the 1910s was still
a dominant trend in Russia, although the younger generation was increasingly
following the newest avant-garde tendencies.29
From a Futurist point of view, Vechorka’s texts would seem traditional and
sentimental; Kira is a short story using an interesting but still rather conventional
approach to story-telling. The two poems are metric and focus on the themes of
love and passion, youth, feminine and masculine feelings, fidelity and betrayal.
Similarly, the book Magnolias, mainly written in Saint-Petersburg, can hardly
be identified as Futurist or avantgardist. It largely follows the nineteenth-cen-
tury Russian poetic tradition and seems typical for the girl in her early twenties,
dreaming about becoming a poetess, studying the authors of the Silver Age and
admiring poets like Alexander Blok (1880–1921).30
In a review published in December 1918 in Kuranty, the poet and critic Yuri
Degen (1896–1923)31 discussed several poetry books published in Tbilisi by
Russian avantgardists. Alongside works by Sergey Gorodetsky and Boris Korneev,
28 See Nikol’skaia: “Zhizneni put”, p. 93. On Alfa-Lira and Vechorka’s rôle in it see also
Nikol’skaia: Fantasticheskii gorod, pp. 154–161.
29 Velimir Khlebnikov (1885–1922) also began his poetic career under the influence of the Sym-
bolists, especially Konstantin Bal’mont, Viacheslav Ivanov, Sergei Gorodetskii and Aleksei Rem-
izov. See Barooshian: “Khlebnikov and Russian Futurism”, p. 157.
30 In 1921, Vechorka recalled the poet’s death in the essay, “Ob Aleksandre Bloke” (About Alex-
ander Blok). See Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, pp. 215–219.
31 Yuri Degen (1896–1923) was born in Warsaw and moved with his family to Tbilisi in 1906.
After graduating from a local high school there, he moved to Russia and entered Saint-Petersburg
University in 1916 to study law. The same year, he made his literary debut and became the second
member of Tsekh poetov. After founding some other literary groupings, the Russian Revolution
forced him to return, at the end of 1917, to Georgia, where he became an energetic member of the
Tbilisi avant-garde. He acted as editor of the literary journals Kuranty and Feniks and is men-
tioned as one of the initiators of the Fantastic Tavern (see Feniks 1 [1919], p. 14). In 1920, he moved
to Baku, worked at the Baku University Press and continued his artistic work. In 1923, at the age
of 26, the Soviets accused him of anti-revolutionary activities and executed him.
236 Bela Tsipuria
Vechorka’s Magnolias is analysed and described as “the undoubtedly most inter-

esting among numerous poetry books published in Tbilisi in 1918”.32 Nonethe-
less, Degen was quite critical of a certain “tastelessness” and “tactlessness” in
her work, quoting Vechorka’s view that, unfortunately, in the present age, beauty
and intellect are regarded as incompatible with each other, while in ancient times
Aspasia could be at the same time a beautiful courtesan and a female philoso-
pher.33 On a technical level, Degen praised the poetess’s highly developed vir-
tuosity, but also criticized that some of her experiments had gone awry. He com-
mended that Vechorka was usually loyal to the potential of sound; unlikely other
women, she had a poetic style reminiscent of drawings rather than paintings,
with which she could reach impressive effects.34
Degen’s observations are notable for several reasons: he underlines the
importance of Vechorka’s artistic development and the progress made in her
technical accomplishment; he stresses the fact that she offers a feminine voice
in poetry within the environment of Russian as well as Georgian Modernism. He
thus outlines a path that would eventually bring Vechorka’s artistic development
close to Futurist aesthetics.
Besides publishing poems, Tatiana Vechorka reported on Tbilisi cultural
life in newspapers and magazines and featured among the staff of the journals
Kuranty and Feniks. In many cases, these reports are the only reliable sources
today for reconstructing the history of the Tbilisi avant-garde. In the section
“Artistic Chronicles”, Kuranty of December 1918 printed Tatiana Vechorka’s note
on Yuri Degen’s poetry book, Etikh glaz (Those Eyes, 1919), as well as a report on
an artistic soirée given by the Poets’ Guild in the concert hall of the Tbilisi Con-
servatory on 23 October 1918, in which she herself shared the platform with Boris
Korneev, Alexander Poroshin, Grigorii Shaikevich, Ilya Zdanevich, Igor Terentev
and Aleksei Kruchenykh:
32 Degen: “O novikh stikhakh”, p. 8.

33 Ibid., p. 8.
34 Ibid., pp. 8–9.
1918 god 1918

Zal konservatorii Conservatory Hall
------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------
Vecher poezii i muzyki Poetry and Music Soirée
Sreda, 23 Oktiabria Wednesday, 23 October
PROGRAMMA PROGRAMME
OTDELENIE I. PART I.
I. Torzhestvennoe zasedanie Tsekha poetov I. Solemn Meeting of Tsekh poetov
Vstupitelnoe slovo skazhet Iurii Degen. Introductory speech byYuri Degen.
a) Georgii Evangulov: “Intimnoe”, “Rozovy a) Georgy Evangulov: “Intimate”, “Red
dom”. House”.
b) Iuri Dolgushin: “V Nomere”, “Metekhsky b) Yuri Dolgushin: “In the Hotel Room”,
zamok”. “Metekhy Castle”.
c) M. Moshchinskaia: “Monastir’”, “Po c) M. Moshchinskaya: “Monastery’”,
doline moei zhizni”. “Along the Valley of my Life”.
d) Vasilii Katanian: “Afrikanskaia d) Vasily Katanian: “African Woman”, “Near
zhenshchina”, “U tramvaia”. the Tram”.
e) Nina Vasil’eva: “Tsveti tomilis’”, e) Nina Vasil’eva: “Languishing Flowers “,
“Petrograd”. “Petrograd”.
f) Aleksandr Chachikov: “Priblizhenie k f) Aleksandr Chachikov: “Approaching the
vilayetu”, “I zakusila gubki”. Vilayet”, “And She Bit Her Lips”.
g) L. Golubev’-Bagrianorodnyi: “Bez liubvi”, g) L. Golubev’-Bagrianorodny: “Unloved”,
“Zatselovannaia”. “Kissed”.
h) Nikolai Semeiko: “V zakoldovannoi h) Nikolai Semeiko: “In the Enchanted
izbe”, “Grigoriu Robakidze”. Cottage “, “To Grigol Robakidze”.
2. Kontsertnoe Otdelenie 2. Concert Part

a) Romansy: Isponit I.O. Navratil’. a) Romances. Performed by I. O. Navratil’.
b) Veniavskii: “Souvenir de Moscou”. b) Veniavsky: “Souvenir de Moscou”.
Isp. O. Kats (skripka), g. Vigodsky (roial’). Performed by O. Kats (violin), Mr.
c) Napravnik: Romans Mashi is Vigodsky (piano).
op. “Dubrovsky”. Kolybel’niaia is c) Napravnik. Masha’s Romance from the
op. “Garol’d” Isp. D. G. Ribo (lir. opera “Dubrovsky”. Lullaby from the
soprano), G. Vigodskii (roial’). opera “Harold” Performed by D. G. Ribo
(Lyrical soprano), G. Vigodsky (piano).
3. Pleiada gruzinskikh poetov “Golubyie 3. Pleiad of Georgian poets The Blue

Rogi”. Horns.
a) Grigorii Robakidze. a) Grigol Robakidze.
b) Leli Dzhaparidze. b) Leli Japaridze.
c) Titsian Tabidze. c) Titsian Tabidze.
d) Paolo Iashvili. d) Paolo Iashvili.
e) Valerian Gaprindashvili. e) Valerian Gaprindashvili.
238 Bela Tsipuria
OTDELENIE II. PART II.

TORZHESTVENNOE ZASEDANIETSEKHA SOLEMN MEETING OF TSEKH POETOV
POETOV (PRODOLZHENIE). (CONTINUED).
a) Boris Korneev: Iz tsikla “Golubookaia a) Boris Korneev: From the series “Blue-
Ekaterina”. eyed Ekaterina”.
b) Aleksand Poroshin: “Dushnoi noch’iu”, b) Aleksand Poroshin: “Sultry Night”, “To
“Korabliam ukhodiashchim”. Vanishing Boats”.
c) Grigorii Shaikevich: “P’ero”, c) Grigory Shaikevich: “Pierrot”,
“Kolibel’niaia”. “Lullaby”.
d) Tat’iana Vechorka: “Opiat’ v otravlennikh d) Tat’iana Vechorka: “Poisoned Pleasure,
usladakh”, “Nu chto-zhe”. Again”, “So, Well”.
e) Iurii Degen: “Tak sini lenti”, “Serdtse bez e) Yuri Degen: “Such Blue Ribbons”, “Heart
nichego”. without Anything”.
f) Ilia Zdanevich: Zaumnie stikhi. f) Ilia Zdanevich: Zaum’ Poems
g) Igor’ Terent’ev: “Moi pokhorony”. g) Igor’ Terent’ev: “My Funeral”.
h) Aleksei Kruchenykh: Novye stikhi. h) Aleksei Kruchenykh: New Poems.
2. Kontsertnoe otdelenie 2. Concert Part

1. Cherepnin: “Posledniaia liubov’” slova 1. Cherepnin “Last Love”, lyrics by Fet.
Feta. “Den’i Noch’” slova Polonskogo. U “Day and Night’”, lyrics by Polonsky.
roialia avtor. Composer at the piano.
2. Deklamatsii: Isp. S. G.Melnikova. 2. Declamations by S. G. Melnikova.
3. Grig: Sonata A-moll. I chast. L. S. 3. Grieg. Sonata A-moll. Part I. L. S.
Benditskii (violonchel), Naum Benditskii Benditsky (violoncello), Naum Benditsky
(roial) (piano)
Rosporiadit: B. I. Korneev, A. Ia. Poroshin. Masters of ceremonies: B. I. Korneev, A. Ia.

Akkompanir. G.-N. Vigodskii. Poroshin. Accompaniment G.-N. Vigodsky.
Nachalo v 7 ½ chas. vechera Starts at 7.30 in the evening.
------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------
Litografia Gruzinskikh zheleznikh dorog. Lithography by Georgian Railways
Poster of the artistic soirée given by the group Tsekh poetov (Poets’ Guild) in the concert hall of
the Tbilisi Conservatory on 23 October 1918
35
35 A badly damaged copy of the poster has been preserved in the Ioseb Grishashvili library-mu-
seum in Tbilisi, but has currently gone missing. A digital copy has been published on the website
http://modernism.ge/?action=posters&lang=eng&p=21&limit=21. A better preserved copy from
Vechorka’s personal archive, now preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art
(RGALI), Moscow, was published in Portrety bez retushi.
For a while, Vechorka became a ubiquitous figure on the Tbilisi literary scene:
almost every issue of the Russian literary journals published in the city contained
at least one of her poems, or a review, or a translation of works by fellow poets.
Her poems written in Georgia contain images that show her responses to the local
landscape. For example, “Iz za gori lesnie lani” (Fallow Deers from the Forest
Mountain), dedicated to “Vladimir Gudiev” (i.e. Lado Gudiashvili, 1896–1980, a
Georgian avant-garde painter cooperating with the Russian Futurists in Tbilisi36)
was published in the first issue of Feniks (1918). The poem depicts ladies in
brocade dresses picking grapes, glowworms in a mountains monastery, a young
rider rushing over a frozen lake, etc.37 What is not clear is whether these images
are derived from real landscapes, or from paintings by Gudiashvili, or possibly
both.
The second issue of Kuranty (1919) opens with Vechorka’s poem “Vesnoiu
serdtsem ne bolei” (Don’t Let Your Heart Feel Pain in Spring). The poem has a
delicate emotional tone, conveys romantic feelings, admires the blossoming of
almond and cherry trees. The gender category of the Russian verb makes it clear
that the narrator of the poem is male; he wanders to a small chapel in the Geor-
gian mountains, has a vision of angels praying on their knees at an altar and thus
unveils his religious feelings. Vechorka’s attempt to create a male lyric hero is
quite unique at that time and suggests that her move to Georgia led her to develop
a new poetic imagery.
However, in these texts from early 1919 there is still no sign that she had
adopted the aesthetics of literary Futurism. Her association with the Russian and
Georgian avant-garde becomes apparent only in her next publications. The poem
“Molniia v tumane” (Lightning in the Mist, 1919), published in Kuranty, has two
stanzas that operate with ambiguous metaphors and a complicated syntax. The
Futurist spirit emerges in the way it depicts a cityscape with an old church: a
“muslin of a cruel night” is covering the scene, which is suddenly woken up by
the sound of a train rattling on its rails. Like a rocket, “a transparent angel” is
falling from the sky, with a long halo of light slowly vanishing into the mist.38
36 On Lado Gudiashvili’s avant-garde period see Bowlt: “Lado Gudiashvili”, pp. 7–15.
37 Vechorka: “Iz za gori lesnie lani”, p. 11. A different version of the poem appeared in Tret’
dushi (1927).
38 Vechorka: “Molniia v tumane”, p. 3. The poem was not, apparently, reprinted in any of
Vechorka’s later books.
240 Bela Tsipuria
Татьяна Вечорка: Молния в тумане Tatiana Vechorka: Lightning in the mist
Борису Корнееву To Boris Korneev
На церкви города, на гладь ланшафтов The muslin of a cruel night floated

сельских, Over the town church, over the smooth
Жестокой ночи стлалась кисея, surface of rural landscapes;
Ее прорезала звенящая струя The ringing jet of a steel train
Стального поезда, дрожащего на рельсах. Cut through it, trembling on the rails.
Закаменев над крышей золотой, Over the golden roof, a transparent angel,
Царапиной спадающей ракеты, petrified,
Прозрачный ангел, в длинном нимбе Like the scratch of a falling rocket,
света Descended in a long halo of light
Летел в тумане, гниющий слепотой. Into the mist, decaying with blindness.
Vechorka’s conversion to a Futurist aesthetics is most tangible in a series of

poems called “Soblazn afish” (Temptation of Theatre Posters, 1919), which was
published in the Sofii Giorgievne Mel’nikovoi anthology.39 The fact that Vechorka’s
series was included in the 189-page miscellany demonstrates her prominent posi-
tion within the Tbilisi avant-garde community. Although the collection is gener-
ally classified as belonging to Russian book art, it was actually an international
project that brought together some twenty poets and artists of four nationali-
ties: Aleksander Bazhbeuk-Melikov, Sigizmund Valishevsky, Tatiana Vechorka,
Nina Vasilieva, Natalia Goncharova, Dimitrii Gordeev, Lado Gudiashvili, Ilya
Zdanevich, Kirill Zdanevich, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Kara-Darvish, Vasili Katanian,
Aleksei Kruchenykh, Grigol Robakidze, Titsian Tabidze, Igor Terentiev, Alexan-
der Chachikov, Nikolai Cherniavsky, Grigorii Shaikevich, Paolo Iashvili, and an
anonymous author.
The collection showed indeed a very strong community spirit and demon-
strates a close artistic cooperation between the contributors, all of whom pub-
lished their poetry in their original language: Russian, Georgian and Armenian.
The artistic and conceptual design of the collection was mainly undertaken by
the Futurist Ilya Zdanevich, who was the initiator, sponsor and editor of the
project.40 The graphic works clearly belonged to the artistic domain of Futur-
ism, while the poems varied in style from Symbolism and Impressionism to
Futurism.
39 In 1920, Vechorka republished the series in book form, supplemented by some lyric poems
and an epic poem.
40 See Nikol’skaia: Fantasticheskii gorod, p. 75.
Vechorka’s series of six poems occupied a special place in this aesthetical

dialogue. They were not as radical as Kruchenykh’s or Zdanevich’s zaum’ works,
and, unlike them, did not show any traces of Dada influences; however, they
clearly reveal that Vechorka had shifted from from her earlier, sentimental texts
written in a Symbolist vein to a Futurist radicalism, alogicality and detachment
from reality. For example, the poem “Barabanshchik perebiraet lapkami laiki”
(Drumming with Husky Paws)41 has a phonetic quality and uses imagery that
evokes the tactile feelings of the drummer; they evoke the asthmatic sounds of
a flute; the visual composition is drawn from Futurist graphic art and depicts a
velvet curtain being drawn, the heat of green candles drying a spice cake and a
moon shining in the corner of a lilac cube.
In “V parchovom obruche” (In a Brocade Hoop) she relinquished the canon-
ical vers forms that used to be characteristic for her poems and adopted Russian
Free Verse. The surreal images evoke a theatrical setting and are dedicated to the
actress Melnikova. In an environment that could be the vaulted Fantastic Tavern,
a long-nosed, smart rat walks around in short brocade dresses; frock coats are
made from cast-iron; the smoke of perfumed cigarettes rises to the ceiling like a
lilac fountain; a lipstick-covered mouth is compared to a cave echoing the brain’s
thoughts. 42
Татьяна Вечорка: В парчовом обруче Tatiana Vechorka: In a Brocade Hoop
В парчовом обруче Wearing the brocade hoop

Краткого платья of a short dress,
Пройдет умная A clever long-nosed rat
Длинноносая крыса. is passing by.
Смотрите! Look!
Дымя лиловым фонтаном Rings of scented cigarettes
Надушенных папирос, rise like a purple fountain
Бегут за уважаемым хвостом and follow the respectful tail.
Чугунные фраки Cast-iron frock coats
Зализавшие лаком проборы. Shiny parted hair
Тяжелеют мешки под глазами Heavy bags under the eyes
От голода: From hunger:
Урвать из помадного рта To snatch from the lipstick mouth
(Пещеры, где звучит эхо мозга) – (a cave echoing the brain) –
Жало поцелуйки. the sting of a kiss.
41 Vechorka: “Barabanshchik”, p. 24.

42 Vechorka: “V parchovom obruche”, p. 25.
242 Bela Tsipuria
Six poems published in the Sophia Melnikova miscellany belong to the

anthology, Soblazn afish (Temptation of Theatre Posters), which served as a
calling card for Vechorka as a Russian Futurist poetess,43 as it can be considered
the most Futurist of her books. A few more poems had been added to the series,
first published in 1919 (see above), and the concluding images are very impres-
sive: in the morning, in the exhausted capital city covered with painted newspa-
pers, a horde of hushed poets is seen leaving the theatre after a night out; and
shop-windows reflect the temptation of theatre posters.43
It was not only Vechorka’s poems, but also her reviews and essays published
in the Tbilisi press in 1919 that make it clear that her artistic choices were rapidly
and categorically becoming related to Futurism. Typical of this new departure
is her essay on Kruchenykh’s “Sliuni chernogo geniia” (Droolings of a Black
Genius), which not only explores and scrutinizes Kruchenykh’s artistic practice,
but also shares the poetic principles analysed. The essay was first delivered as
a lecture in Tbilisi and then published in the journal Orion.44 Kruchenykh liked
the treatise so much that he included it in two collections dedicated to him, Buka
russkoi literatury (Bogeyman of Russian Literature, 1923) and Zhiv Kruchenykh
(Kruchenykh Is Still Alive, 1925). Apparently, Vechorka had continued working
on the essay, as the publication in 1923 dates it “1920–1922”.
The treatise shows how deeply Vechorka had come to understand the concepts
of Futurism and how much she shared Kruchenykh’s approach to poetry. She made
a clear distinction between the categories “language for everybody” and “language
for oneself”, suggesting that the first “roots speech within the framework of gram-
matical appropriateness”, while in the latter “all sounds, in any order, act as artistic
material. This is a freedom that terrifies those who only feel comfortable within the
narrow framework of poetic convention.”45 At the same time, Vechorka developed
some new images to express her thoughts on Kruchenykh and his zaum’ poetry:
“This [poetry] is a black diamond drilling and spinning into infinity. In Kruche-
nykh’s poems there is a coexistence of nonsense and chemical formulas, personal
and public thoughts, transrationality and logos, cacophony and melody. There is
no exact formula for a synthesis of science and art – it is still zaum’, but verging
on the side of Logos.”46
43 Vechorka: Portrety bez retushi, p. 95.

44 Nikol’skaia indicates that the speech was held at the Fantastic Tavern, and the essay pub-
lished in the journal Orion 1 (1919), pp. 59–69. See Nikol’skaia: Fantasticheskii gorod, p. 62.
45 Tolstaia-Vechorka: “Sliuni chernogo geniia”, pp. 19–20.
46 Tolstaia-Vechorka: “Sliuni chernogo geniia”, p. 37.
The process of Vechorka’s transformation into a Futurist poetess began with

her artistic cooperation with the zaum’ poets in Tbilisi and continued after she
moved to her native city Baku in 1919.
Vechorka, Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh in Baku
At the end of the nineteenth century, Azerbaijan was one of the first countries
with an oil industry that rang in a rapid process of modernization. After the col-
lapse of the Russian Empire, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was founded
by the Azerbaijani National Council in Tbilisi on 28 May 1918. Moscow sought
to regain control of the region as it was dependent on its resources, especially
oil. In April 1920, the independence of Azerbaijan was suspended by the Red
Army and the country came under the sway of Bolshevik Russia. Still, for a
while, cultural activities of a Modernist and avant-garde nature continued to
be carried out by Russian émigrés. Vladimir Markov described Baku in 1920:
“There was still enough literary atmosphere during this short period: Gorodet-
sky moved to Baku from Tiflis; Vyacheslav Ivanov was teaching at the local
university; and Khlebnikov too was there. But it was nothing like the heroic
time of 41° in Tiflis”.47
Following her move to Baku in 1919, Vechorka’s personal life took a new
direction. Having become engaged in Tbilisi in 1919, she married the Russian aris-
tocrat Boris Tolstoy on 5 April 1920, and a year later her only child, the daughter
Lydia, was born there. For a while, Aleksei Kruchenykh and Tatiana Vechorka
continued their cooperation and were joined in Baku by Velimir Khlebnikov,
who arrived from Rostov-on-Don. All three worked there in the Soviet telegraph
agency Kavrost, designing propaganda posters,48 but they also created a joint
poetry collection Mir i ostal’noe (The World and the Rest, 1920), which contained
24 poems by Kruchenykh, 6 poems by Khlebnikov and 15 by Vechorka. Although
the collection can be considered Futurist, Vechorka’s poems, all united within
the series Zautrenya na rassvete (Matins in the Sunrise), were actually quite con-
ventional. Dedicated to her husband Boris Tolstoy, they reveal her most romantic
47 Markov: Russian Futurism, p. 365.

48 See Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, p. 19; Libedinskaia: Zelenaia lampa: Vospomi-
naniia, p. 9.
244 Bela Tsipuria
feelings and a sense of security she had found in marriage49 and in her friendship
with fellow poets.
Back in Tbilisi, the journal Kuranty kept an eye on the latest developments
in the Azerbaijani cultural scene and published a chronicle by Nikolai Sudeikin
on the Baku branch of Tsekh poetov. The report emphasized the importance of
poetic activities in the commercial city and expressed an optimistic view about
its future, because the “real poetess T. Vechorka, with a serious poetic experience
behind her”, had joined the Poet’s Guild.50 However, Futurism was not widely
accepted in the social and cultural life of Baku, and no lively artistic gatherings as
had been common in Tbilisi took place there. Nonetheless, Vechorka maintained
her interest in Futurism, as can be seen in her unpublished poems, Khlebnikov
(1920–24) and Nechaianno: Zhizn’ A. Kruchenykh (Accidentally: Life of A. Kruche-
nykh, 1919).51 This can also be said of her essay, Zaumnyi iazyk i dra dinamitnogo
dendi (Transrational Language and the Dra of a Dynamite Dandy, 1920). It pro-
vides a lucid explanation of the development of zaum’ and placed it in a historical
perspective, starting with Symbolist poetic research and, of course, Alexander
Blok. In her view, feelings cannot be expressed with ordinary words. Zaum’ lan-
guage, she claims, is the result of a poetic vision that creates multiple new worlds
through sounds and newly coined words. Based on Ilya Zdanevich’s drama, Ianko
krul’ albanskai (Yanko, the Albanese King, 1918), Vechorka gives a very detailed
explanation of zaum’ poetics and phonetic experiments and suggests how they
can be interpreted.52
Khlebnikov became a frequent guest in Vechorka’s home, and his unconven-
tional appearance and behaviour shocked her parents-in-law. Khlebnikov’s Baku
period was recalled in Vechorka’s essay, Vospominaniia o Khlebnikove (Memoirs
on Khlebnikov), published after Khlebnikov’s death and edited by Kruchenykh.53
During her Baku years, Tatiana Vechorka also developed a friendship with the
Russian Symbolist, Viacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), who at the time taught at
Baku State University. Vechorka attended his seminars while studying at the uni-
versity, and he became a godfather of her daughter Lydia, to whom he actually
49 See Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, pp. 107–122. The couple separated in 1935 and
divorced. Boris Tolstoy was arrested due to his aristocrat roots and died in prison in 1942.
50 Sudeikin: “Bakinskii tsekh poetov”, p. 27.
51 Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, pp. 158 and 162.
52 Ibid., pp. 181–196. The essay may have been started in Tbilisi and was completed in Baku.
53 Vechorka: “Vospominaniia o Khlebnikove”. See also Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez re-
tushi, pp. 233–251.
gave her name.54 Viacheslav Ivanov provided her with a letter of recommendation
for the Valery Bryusov Literary-Artistic Academy in Moscow, when she was plan-
ning to move back to Russia.
Return to Moscow
In 1924, Vechorka moved with her family back to Moscow, which was now the
capital of the Bolshevik-governed USSR. Following Lenin’s death in 1924 and a
brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power, suppressed all political oppo-
sition and introduced a cultural policy that was strictly tied to the State ideology
of Marxism-Leninism. Initially, his control of cultural matters was not as total as
it became after 1928, but writers and artists had to show their loyalty to the Bol-
shevik government.
Vechorka’s publications after her return to Moscow dwindled in number and
show touches of the changes that were taking place in the political and cultural
life of the young Soviet State. She became a member of the Moscow branch of
Tsekh poetov, which between 1924–1925 used to gather in the apartment of Anna
Antonovskaya. Vechorka was not particularly active in the Guild, but contrib-
uted to its group project, Styk (Junction, 1925), a collection that gathered together
poetry by workshop members as well as non-members. The title of the book
conveys the clear message that the Russian Modernists and avantgardists had
reached a new junction and were ready to come to terms with the political reali-
ties of the Soviet Union. The thematic spectrum of most texts reflects the changes
that had taken place in the world view of the guild members and show their adap-
tation to the dictates of the Bolshevik State.
The book opens with a foreword by Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875–1933), “O
vashei poezii” (On Your Poetry). The Commissar of Enlightenment in the first
Soviet government was critical of contemporary poetry and deemed its orienta-
tion towards virtuosity to be “completely useless for us”. He set up three revolu-
tionary poems written by himself as models for the new type of poetry required
by the New Age. Vechorka’s contribution consisted of the poem Navodnenie (The
Deluge), printed alongside texts by most notable figures of Russian Modernism:
Valery Bryusov (1873–1924), Andrei Bely (1880–1934), Boris Pasternak (1890–
1969) and Sergey Gorodetsky (1884–1967).
54 She married a Russian writer Yuri Libedinsky (1898–1959) and became a Russian writer under
the name of Lydia Libedinskaya (1921–2006).
246 Bela Tsipuria
In Moscow, Vechorka was also inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930),

remembered him in her memoirs and diary notes,55 thanks to which her name is
often mentioned in Vladimir Mayakovsky studies.56 Kruchenykh used to come to
her home in Moscow, sometimes daily, and was always a respected and welcomed
guest.57 When the Georgian poets Titsian Tabidze and Paolo Iashvili were visiting
Moscow, they were always celebrating their reunion with Vechorka. 58
Tatiana Vechorka’s next poetry book was Tret’ dushi (One-Third of a Soul,
1927), which included some Futurist poems from her Baku period. For example,
Rodi (Childbirth, 1922) offers an interesting combination of Futurist poetics and
the feelings experienced by women during labour, described as a dark-haired and
smooth-skinned baby, slimy like a frog in egg yolk, jolting out of the womb like
a bomb.59
Other texts in Tret’ dushi signalled the poetess’s return to a Realist aesthetic.
Nikolskaya suggests: “After the short-term ardour for Futurism, she returned to
‘beautiful lucidity’. Under the influence of 41°, T. Vechorka developed her own
style through combining elements taken from both traditional and avant-garde
poetics.”60 Vladimir Markov also highlighted her volte-face in Tret’ dushi: “Despite
some avant-garde rhyme, two or three images (like ‘the moon is like an enormous
cutoff fingernail’) and such modern subjects as a flight in an aeroplane, a news-
paper office, and childbirth, [the collection] marked Vechorka’s turn from futur-
ism to more conventional poetry”.61
Evidently, this metamorphosis was not due to an artistic maturation process,
but was the outcome of an increasing ideological pressure that forced former
Modernists and avantgardists to reject their personal aesthetic preferences and
disown their artistic biography. To show their conformity with the new régime,
the writers adapted texts from their past production and transformed them into
more acceptable works. This can also be seen in some of Vechorka’s poems.
Nikolskaya observes how one of her poems from 1918 changed in her 1927 book,
Tret’ dushi: “She removed the dedication to the Georgian avant-garde artist Lado
Gudiashvili from the poem ‘Iz za gori lesnie lani’, and retitled the poem ‘Iveria’.
55 See Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, pp. 265–281.

56 Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, p. 252. The book collects her poetry, essays, mem-
oirs, diary notes, and is now the most complete edition of Vechorka’s writings. It was edited and
provided with a commentary by Alexander Parnis.
57 Libedinskaia: Zelenaia lampa: Vospominaniia, pp. 24–31.
58 Ibid, p. 26.
59 Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, p.137.
60 Nikol’skaia: “Tvorcheskii put’ Tat’iany Vechorki”, p. 89.
Thus, the motives taken from Gudiashvili’s paintings were turned into an image
of ancient Georgia”.62
Another example of adaptation to the principles of Socialist Realism can be
seen in the poem “Baku”.63 Whereas the first lines depict urban Baku within the
tradition of the Symbolist city, as developed by Baudelaire or Verhaeren, onto
which the Futuristic vision of the industrial oil fields is grafted – the Caspian
Sea is compared to a flat and extended cement veranda, the atmosphere in the
city is conjured up by mixture of smells coming from oil, fruits, tobacco and
sweat – the next lines incorporated some Soviet messages, for example, “the
day today is more serene than it was yesterday”. What at first glance may look
quite innocuous, is in fact a standard topic in Soviet aesthetics that contrasts
the oppressive past with the bright present and was meant as a compliment
to the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The message becomes even more
obvious in a passage that deals with the death of the 26 Baku Commissars. In
1918, the short-lived Baku Commune was overthrown by counter-revolutionary
nationalists and its leaders executed. This, subsequently, became a well-known
component of Soviet hero worship and formed an integral element of Bolshe-
vik political mythology. Therefore, when writing about Baku, mentioning the
heroism of the 26 martyrs was an absolute necessity,64 just like the final line of
the poem praising the freedom and independence of the Soviet republics within
the ‘brotherly family’ of the USSR.65
Vechorka’s legacy
With the book Tret’ dushi, Tatiana Vechorka’s poetic activities came to an end.
This may have been a moral choice and can be interpreted as a way of avoid-
ing otherwise inevitable compromises with the totalitarian régime. Instead,
Vechorka chose to earn a living from writing for various magazines and news-
62 Nikol’skaia: “Tvorcheskii put’ Tat’iany Vechorki”, p. 96. Georgia was known to the Greeks as
‘Iveria’.
63 Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, p. 139.
64 The version accepted by historians today is that the 26 commissars were executed by Russian
Bolsheviks; the official Soviet version was that they had been betrayed by British agents and
were killed by anti-Bolshevik traitors.
65 In December 1922, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, as part of the newly established Soviet
Union, formed the Transcaucasian SFSR, which in 1936 split up into the Georgian, Armenian and
Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republics.
248 Bela Tsipuria
papers and working in the relatively neutral genre of biography.66 She published
historical novels on the Russian Decembrist67 Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (published in
1932), and on the childhood of Russian Romantic poet Mikhail Lermontov (pub-
lished in 1959).68 She also completed a novel on another Russian Decembrist,
Kondraty Ryleyev.69 These novels, commissioned by State-controlled publishing
houses, offered Vechorka an opportunity to stay thematically on neutral ground.
Within the framework of Soviet culture, certain topics were officially supported,
including, of course, events and personages related to the Bolshevik Revolution,
the struggle against Tsarism, the workers’ battle against the capitalist system, or
the peasant revolts against the aristocrats. Vechorka’s historical novels fitted into
this thematic requirement; they avoided any expression of intimate feelings and
thoughts, as such ‘individualist’ poetry would have been censored by the Soviet
régime.70 Furthermore, it allowed her to keep a distance from contentious con-
temporary issues and thus circumvented the danger of having to make political
choices.
Consequently, the Futurist poetess Tatiana Vechorka sank into oblivion
already during her lifetime and, instead, the name of the less-popular Realist
novelist Tatiana Tolstaya entered the chronicles of Russian literature. This trend
is now being overturned, due to the rising interests in the Russian Silver Age and
the historical avant-garde.
66 In her autobiography, Vechorka describes herself as a ‘literary worker’ for the magazines
Ogonek, Zhenskii zhurnal, Vecherniaia Moskva, and the newspapers Novaia vecherniaia gazeta
and Leningradskaia pravda (Moscow branch). See Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, p. 19.
67 The Decembrist uprising on 26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1825 was a revolt of Russian
army officers against Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne, after his elder brother Constantine
had renounced the crown and caused a lengthy interregnum.
68 Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev (3 November [O.S. 23 October] 1797 – 19 June [O.S. 7
June] 1837) was a Romantic poet, a novelist and a member of the Decembrist revolt. He wrote
under the pseudonym Alexander Marlinsky. Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov (15 October [O.S. 3 Oc-
tober] 1814 – 27 July [O.S. 15 July] 1841) was a Romantic writer and painter and is considered one
of the greatest figure in Russian literature, alongside Pushkin.
69 The novel was commissioned by the publishing house Molodaia gvardiia in 1946. See her
autobiography in Vechorka (Tolstaia): Portrety bez retushi, p. 21.
70 This message was most demonstratively given to former Modernists and avantgardists at the
First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in August–September 1934.
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Jordan Tobin
Alexandra Exter 1908–1914:
Futurist Influences from Russia and the West
Abstract: Within the early Russian avant-garde, Alexandra Exter was unique in
her capacity as a true bridge between artistic tendencies and developments in
Russia and in the West. This essay explores Exter’s rôle as artistic ambassador in
the pre-war years, based on her promulgation of Russian art and ideas in the West
and her task of carrying with her descriptions and representations of the most
recent Western artistic trends when she returned to Russia. This study analyses
Exter’s position as a Russian “émissaire officiel du cubisme parisien”,1 as well as
a representative of Russian Futurism in Paris. This paper focusses on Exter’s com-
plicated relationship with Futurisms in both the Eastern and Western spheres,
assesses her visual output from the period and interprets her work both as a part
of a Russian tradition and a reflection of a multi-national environment. In many
ways, Exter seemed to remain somewhere above Futurism, transcending the Ital-
ians’ incessant repetition of visual and ideological definitions as well as the Rus-
sians’ tendencies to ground their work in the ancient history of their own culture.
Keywords: Cubo-Futurism, Futurism in the East and West, Russian avant-garde in

Paris, Ardengo Soffici
“[Alexandra] Exter was neither Cubist, nor Futurist, nor Constructivist,

nor Suprematist nor even Purist, and therein lies her deep originality:
she used these methods to further her research and overcame them all.”2
Introduction: Budetlianstvo, Futurizm and Futurism
In his autobiography, Benedikt Lifshits evokes how, on a cold afternoon in

December of 1911, the two brothers David and Vladimir Burliuk huddled together
over a smudged, thumb-printed photograph, eager to drink in every angle and
curve of the image it represented. Their humble compartment in a train hurtling
towards their country home in rural Russia was soon pulsing with ideas – inspira-
tion for what would become a flurry of artistic production and promotion. These
1 Chauvelin and Filatoff: Alexandra Exter: Monographie, p. 411

2 Nakov: Alexandra Exter, p. 10.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0013
Alexandra Exter 1908–1914: Futurist Influences from Russia and the West 253
two men were protagonists of a Russian group that would eventually come to call
themselves Futurists. The photograph represented one of Picasso’s most recent
paintings, a female figure, “the first experiment in disintegrating the body into
planes.”3 Once at home, the Burliuks would immediately apply their own inter-
pretations of this approach, producing canvas after canvas of their own Cubist
works. This photograph, handed them by their new acquaintance and compan-
ion on their homeward journey, Benedikt Livshits, had recently been brought
back from Paris by Alexandra Exter. This well-travelled, well-educated painter
was at the very heart of the Russian avant-garde, and this example of her having
a hand in inspiring great waves of production and creativity among her Russian
peers is far from singular; it is typical.
Exter was never a Futurist artist, although she is often included in the canon
of Russian Futurists. She enjoyed a Cubo-Futurist phase, but she was never fully
committed to Futurism in either the Russian or the Italian sense of the word.
Andrei Nakov interestingly and eloquently sums up her career progression thus:
The true sources of Exter’s artistic evolution lie in her commitment to Russian Futurism
and her wide-ranging personal erudition. Her frequent trips abroad, the maturity of her
judgement, tied to a deeply refined erudition and to a generous character, have ensured for
Alexandra Exter a unique place in the history of Russian Cubo-Futurism.4
Any such discussion of Futurism in both the Eastern and Western spheres requires
a clear notion of the implications of this deceptively straightforward term in each
distinct place; the reader must therefore forgive a short explanatory introduction
in this case. Italian Futurism was a distinct movement launched in early 1909. On
20 February of that year, F.T. Marinetti imposed a new sense of idealism on the
creatives of his generation by publishing a passionate manifesto on the front page
of the Parisian journal Le Figaro. In this proclamation, he called for the artisti-
cally-minded to shed the shackles of the past in favour of embracing the modern
world which surrounded them. His strong rhetoric demanded that museums
be burned and machines celebrated, academies shunned and forward motion
extolled. This compelling mandate for artists of the time to create without bounds
applauded the so-called Futurists for their activities. In short order, Marinetti
3 Livshits: The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, p. 44.

4 “Les vraies sources de l’évolution artistique d’Exter restent dans son attachement au futurisme
russe et dans une culture personnelle de grande diversité. Les fréquents voyages a l’étranger, la
maturité de son jugement, liée a une culture littéraire de grand raffinement et a un caractere
généreux, réserveront a Alexandra Exter une place toute spéciale dans l’histoire du cubo-futur-
isme russe.” Nakov: Alexandra Exter, p. 12.
254 Jordan Tobin
placed himself at the centre of a newly-formed group of like-minded poets and

intellectuals, all of whom were eager to sign on as Futurists and apply this new
idealism to their own artistic production. For the first year of its existence, Futur-
ism was solely a literary movement, but by the following March, several visual
artists approached Marinetti with a desire to join forces and bring Futurism into
the visual realm. Western Futurism flourished for the coming years and proved
to be an extensive cultural phenomenon whose message quickly found its way to
the Russian sphere – but it is at this border that our topic requires clarification.
While Futurism in the West was a distinct and clearly defined movement with
which a group of artists and writers chose to associate themselves, in Russia it was
another matter altogether. By the time of Marinetti’s initial manifesto, Russian
intellectuals had just begun to establish an equally forward-looking avant-garde
of their own. Marinetti’s message found its way to their ears almost immediately,
but very little of his 1909 manifesto was translated in the Russian press, and for
the most part, the efforts of these new so-called ‘Futurists’ were of little interest to
artists in the East. Yet, over the course of time, historians have come to define the
activities in Russia during this period as Futurist. In his volume, Russian Futur-
ism: A History, Vladimir Markov points out that ‘Futurism’ was a word mistakenly
applied to Russian phenomena by contemporaries in the West. Although it has
become canonized over time, it must be considered a misnomer in the Russian
context prior to 1913.5 The term many of the Russian artists used themselves
was ‘budetliane’, the meaning of which is closer to ‘people of the future’ than
‘Futurists’. For the most part, the Russians denied any connection to the activi-
ties of their Italian contemporaries and never consolidated as a formal group. By
1913, the words ‘futurizm’, ‘futuristov’ and ‘futuristi’ began to be used by certain
Russian artists and writers to describe their own efforts, but they still considered
these terms to be entirely separate from any group in the Western milieu. Ben-
edikt Livshits put it most aptly in his memoir:
Budetlianstvo was not a finite world-view like Marinettism. We considered the traditional
opposition of creativity to destruction an anti-dynamic prejudice, but we had no wish to
consolidate the tendencies of this opposition and we refused to turn them into crystallised
formulae, into absolute postulates. We were afraid of making budetlianstvo into a canon, a
doctrine, or a dogma.6
5 My analysis here consciously leaves out the fleeting but significant Russian poetic movement
of Ego-Futurism, a detailed account of which is provided in Markov’s Russian Futurism. This is in
an effort to focus more on the pictorial realm and Exter’s life and œuvre.
6 Livshits: The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, p. 187.
Cubo-Futurism is a different beast altogether, but is probably the best term to

describe the majority of Russian production from late 1913 until the East’s first
ventures into non-objective art. Markov has noted the difficulty in determining
precisely when the prefix ‘cubo’ was added into the equation, and points out
two schools of thought: one scholarly set believes that it was applied by Russian
artists themselves, while the other maintains that the press was responsible for
the term in their attempt to underscore Moscow artists’ fervent interest in Cubism
from 1913 onwards.7 This new Cubist focus sent many artists into a love affair with
the exploration of shapes and space as practiced in the Parisian art scene, but
the resulting works were nearly always immediately identifiable as Russian due
to the presence of strange symbols and bits of words, letters and numbers strewn
across the canvases. These often cryptic codes pointed to the uniquely Russian
phenomenon of the confluence of linguistic and pictorial exploration in one fluid
stream, for Cubo-Futurism was just as much a poetic movement as it was visual.
Around 1913, several poets, including Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov,
Alexei Kruchenykh and Benedikt Livshits, began to apply the visual principles of
breaking down forms in space to their own poetry. This meant re-assessing the
value of the components of language, weighing vowels and consonants against
each other, and exploring sound and rhythm in new ways. Eventually, such
explorations began to be known as zaum’, often translated as ‘transrational’ or
‘beyonsense’.
These attempts at freeing language from any formal bonds in turn informed
the visual arts, and this confluence of the visual and the poetic engendered a pro-
liferation of works that featured under the catchphrase ‘Futurist’. Many artists
of diverse persuasion occasionally and variously chose to take shelter under
this umbrella term for different amounts of time and with varying degrees of
passion. It was a phenomenon entirely separate from Futurism in Italy and its
aesthetic doctrines, clearly defined by a set of manifestos. It is, therefore, with
great caution that this essay treads upon such a slippery subject as Alexandra
Exter’s relationship to Futurism. Rather than define her place in the canon as a
participant in Russian Futurist efforts, I shall consider her as an artist between
Futurisms; indeed, between any number of -isms. The following presentation of
my research will concentrate on the period of her artistic activity between 1908
and 1914, during which time Exter moved constantly and fluidly between East
and West.
7 Markov: Russian Futurism: A History, p. 118.

256 Jordan Tobin
Exter between East and West
Alexandra Exter (Alexandra Alexandrovna Ekster, 1882–1949), born into a well-

off family in 1882, was raised and educated in Kiev, where she studied studio
painting. She married a wealthy cousin and had linguistic, financial and social
means that allowed her to entertain a personal relationship with the West that
many of her Eastern colleagues could not enjoy. With homes in Paris, Kiev and
Moscow, Exter spent much of her time on the move, typically living abroad for
months at a time, and she very keenly felt her rôle as artistic liaison between
the two worlds. Unlike most artists operating in the Russian avant-garde, Exter
learned about Cubism and other Western efforts not by studying these notions
through books and essays, but by meeting their creators first-hand and learning
of their intentions from the artists themselves. This put her in a unique position to
bring the West to Russia and Ukraine directly, without academic or social filters.
Exter’s early production shows an advanced mastery of composition, palette
and the handling of paint, as exemplified by some of her first still lifes in 1908
and 1909. These fit quite comfortably into an appealing and widely accepted
visual style, oscillating somewhere between Realism and Impressionism. But by
the early 1910s, a strong avant-garde tendency had begun to leave a mark on her,
and on Russian art and literature in general. Many felt that the time had come
for a break with the past and the establishment of new social and artistic ideals.
Such strong sentiments led to the creation of a few relatively small groups of like-
minded creatives. Two groups with a progressive outlook eventually established
themselves: the Soiuz Molodezhi (Union of Youth) in Saint-Petersburg and the
Bubnovyi Valet (Jack of Diamonds) in Moscow. Both associations shared a desire
to promote and inspire new art in a firmly Russian context, but each went about
achieving this goal in quite different ways. The Union of Youth took a great deal
of inspiration from the West, particularly from Germany, and produced an epony-
mous journal which frequently published translations of articles, essays and
manifestos on European art. The Jack of Diamonds, on the other hand, was a
more inward-looking gathering of minds, drawing on Russia’s visual traditions
and folklore.
Exter, blessed with an extraordinary ability to shift between theories and
schools of thought, was involved with both of these groups on an almost equal
level without causing any rancour whatsoever. She was a signed member of the
Union of Youth until 1912, at which time she took up more closely with the Jack
of Diamonds, but she continued to show with the Union thereafter. She was not
alone in straddling the frequently divergent collectives; other artists managed
to do so to varying degrees of success for varying amounts of time, but at some
point each of them reached an impasse and broke away either from a specific
person or from an association. Exter, however, never had such a break with either
group. She was welcomed in both circles as a well-respected, well-travelled gath-
erer of ideas and philosophies. Indeed, she was heavily relied upon as a source of
information on the latest discoveries and experiments in the West, particularly in
Paris. She frequently brought to Russia photographs and catalogues from recent
Parisian exhibitions, giving her compatriots invaluable, otherwise unattainable
access to West-European art.
Exter also made herself useful to the Russian avant-garde through her efforts
and talents as an organizer and advocate. As early as 1908, she showed a pre-
cocious ability to organize exhibitions through her involvement in Kol’tso (The
Ring), an exhibition held in 1914 at the Kalfa Department Store in Kiev, one of the
first shows of avant-garde art in the East. She was also instrumental in setting up
the first travelling exhibition of Western art in the East, presented at the Izdebski
Salon of 1909 and 1910.8 She was a constant supporter and advocate of Russian
artists and writers while she was abroad, and was particularly supportive of the
works of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ivan Puni and Alexander Archipenko. She main-
tained a very vocal lifelong conviction that Archipenko, also from Kiev, was and
would remain one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. She
introduced Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov to Guillaume Apollinaire in
Paris in 1913. In Russia, she was very much considered to be the official cultural
emissary of Parisian Cubism, but she was equally relied upon and trusted to rep-
resent Russia and its burgeoning avant-garde to the West.
Yakov Tugendhold’s 1922 book on Exter sheds a clear light on the artist’s rep-
utation abroad, if only from the perspective of a fellow Russian living in the West.
Madame Exter’s creations [...] are ennobled by West European culture. The artist has seen
much, knows much, has transformed much in herself. She has a Russian soul, and an emi-
grant’s psychology is foreign to her, but her internal eyes are ever turned towards the West
[...]. Exter has never shared the Futurist mentality, never has she sympathized with the
revolts of Futurism against museums, with its anarchistic denial of discipline and apology
of individualism. On the contrary, in her development and her aspirations she is most
logical. She does not rush about but quietly moves on from one experiment to another.9
Although the date of the source makes it appealing as a primary document, its
contents are most significantly biased to cast Exter as the ideal artist, steeped in
Eastern tradition, but practiced in the artistic approaches of the West. In Tugend-
8 The sculptor Vladimir Izdebsky organized several Salons comprising about eight hundred
works of art, the first being held in Odessa (1909) and in Kiev (1910).
9 Tugendkhol’d: Alexandra Exter, pp. 7–8.
258 Jordan Tobin
hold’s mind, his good friend Exter had stepped beyond the strictures of Parisian
experiments to fuse Russia and the West in an art that was more complex and
sensual than the analytical approach taken by the Cubists. In his assessment
of Exter’s work, she is something akin to an artistic deity, methodical and yet
sensitive in her production. While we can overlook Tugendhold’s hyperbole, it
is significant that he took note of Exter’s unique, amalgamative approach to the
canvas. As a rule during the period in question for this essay, Exter was extremely
analytical of form and space, working in a Cubist manner, which she studied
extensively throughout her time in Paris.
Fig. 1. Alexandra Exter: Le Pont de Sèvres et les hauteurs de Meudon (The Bridge at Sèvres and
the Heights of Meudon, 1911).
Typical of her analytical style is a series of studies of bridges which she produced
between 1911 and 1912. Notably, she was often chided in her studio classes for
failing to adhere to the limited colour range of the Cubist tradition. In the example
of her painting, Le Pont de Sèvres et les hauteurs de Meudon (The Bridge at Sèvres
and the Heights of Meudon, 1911; see Fig 1), her tendency towards a broader
palette is evidenced subtly but clearly in her addition of a few shades of blue,
which makes the work stand out from typical Cubist paintings of the time. For the
most part in her bridge series, Exter maintained an analytical approach similar
to that of the Cubists, but her colour schemes remained unique. This similarity of
analysis but difference in palette is evident in many examples, but a comparison
between her Le Pont de Sèvres et le Village de Sèvres (The Bridge at Sèvres and the
Village of Sèvres, 1911) and Picasso’s El embalse (Horta de Ebro) (The Reservoir:
Horta de Ebro, 1909) is particularly pertinent. Picasso’s piece flattens and com-
pounds space, form and distance, while both paintings capture buildings from
multiple angles at once in an effort to better portray the fullest possible experi-
ence of a vista. Exter was careful to separate space from form, and the broad, far
brighter palette in her painting is typical of her general style and her tendency
to go beyond formal analysis in her expression of a given visual experience. For
Exter, in this period and throughout her career, expression through colour always
seemed to be the goal of her painterly production. Where the Cubists were purely
analytical, Exter focussed on sensation beyond analysis.
As we shall shortly see, it was around this time that Exter’s colour range
expanded into an ever-deepening range of the brightest of hues. While the Paris-
ian artists focussed on Cubist analysis and Futurist dynamism, artists working in
the Eastern sphere began to connect more and more with the new colour theories
of Wassily Kandinsky, whose treatise, Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning
the Spiritual in Art, 1912), was translated from the German and read, at least in
part, for the first time in Russia in 1911. This essay concentrated on an aspect of
art that was singularly embraced by Russians: a call to look “within, rather than
above, for clues to reality”.10 Intuition and pure creative forms were of the utmost
importance to these artists, and were most frequently explored through new uses
of colour, often stemming from Kandinsky’s initial appeal. In this sense, Exter
was firmly rooted in the East despite her deep respect for Western approaches.
In Paris, just as in Russia, Exter proved able to move freely between diver-
gent groups. She participated in the controversial 1912 Section d’Or exhibition
at the Galerie La Boëtie (10–30 October 1912), which had been organized as a
Cubist reaction to the first exhibition of Italian Futurist painting at the Galerie
10 Douglas: Swans of Other Worlds, p. 36.

260 Jordan Tobin
Bernheim-Jeune (5–24 February 1912). Exter showed a few paintings, including

several of her Bridges series. Following on from the show, most of the partici-
pants soon found themselves on two sides of an ideological divide, at which point
Picasso and Braque chose to dissociate themselves from Gleizes and Metzinger’s
approach. Their reasoning was that Gleizes’ faction was too methodical and ana-
lytical in its approach to form and did not appreciate any of the expressive efforts
undertaken by the Italian Futurists. Apollinaire, a great friend of Exter’s, sided
with Gleizes in this debate, while Exter’s work from this point on tended to reflect
Picasso’s opinions with pronounced and exuberant colours, exemplified in a
new range of paintings of cities upon which she embarked in late 1912. She sided
neither with the Cubists that held to tradition, nor with the Cubists who leaned
towards the future; instead, she managed to maintain friendships and artistic
relationships with everyone involved.
Exter’s ability to straddle artistic and ideological divides is belaboured here
because it is crucial to an understanding of her place in the art world of the 1910s.
By avoiding taking a firm stance on either side of any divergence in ideals or
approaches, Exter was able to continuously learn and take influence from diverse
groups. For her, the aim was never to establish any great truth in art; she wanted
to be true to her own art and to explore its possibilities in every conceivable direc-
tion. She possessed the remarkable gift of moving through movements and styles,
learning a great deal from each of them, and taking new notions and ideas with
her to develop her own, unique voice.
Exter and Italian Futurism
Exter’s understanding of Italian Futurism centred on her relationship with

Ardengo Soffici, whom she met in April of 1912 while he was still co-editor of
La voce (1908–1916). The relationship the two shared over the next years, while
Soffici published the influential Futurist magazine Lacerba (1 January 1913 – 22
May 1915), greatly influenced Exter’s experience of Italian Futurism. Soffici first
heard of Exter in a letter from a mutual Parisian friend, who envisioned a poten-
tial romance between the two rather than anticipating the intellectual and artistic
interchange which their relationship would eventually engender. Soffici saw great
beauty in Exter and affectionately called her ‘Aissa’ in his memoirs. Their artistic
relationship soon blossomed into a love affair, the lasting significance of which
is relatively difficult to determine as our main source is Soffici’s own memoirs
(he mentions her with much fondness but not great frequency). While in Paris,
the two shared a studio space in Rue Boissonade, and they took trips together
on more than one occasion. In 1914, Soffici brought her to Florence (where she
painted her 1914 city-portrait, Firenze) and his hometown, Poggio a Caiano. Here,
they were surprised by her understandably perturbed husband, who insisted on
her immediate departure. This personal touch is notable, not least because, aside
from this episode, Exter’s husband is virtually absent in the records of her artistic
life. As we lack Exter’s own recollection of events, it is difficult to draw any con-
clusions about the relationship between husband and wife. What is clear, at any
rate, is that Nikolai Exter dreaded the social consequences of his wife visiting the
childhood home of another man in Tuscany. It was not, however, this affair that
ended the relationship between Exter and Soffici; instead, it was the outbreak of
war that separated the two. In the summer of 1914, Soffici accompanied Exter to
her train and noted in his memoir that his world had ended.
Leaving aside their romantic interactions, the overlap in career and ideolog-
ical development between these two artists merits a deeper investigation. While
Soffici acted as art editor of La voce, Russian artists and writers began to emerge
in his articles around the time that he encountered Exter. Soffici occasionally
wrote about female artists; in these articles he tended to diminish their work to
mere adventures in colour theory, but somehow he consistently managed to also
show respect of their work. Exemplary of his style is an article he wrote on the
female Russian artist Anna Zherebtsova (1885–?), three pages of which he ded-
icated to an exploration of literature, poetry and painting produced by women,
and how splendid such work was thanks primarily to the feminine charms of the
artists themselves.11 He seems to have felt the same about Exter’s work; he tended
to laud her extraordinary talent with colour and form, but always weighed her
achievements against her femininity, quite misguidedly portraying himself in his
memoirs as her mentor.
While Exter and Soffici entertained their relationship, the latter experienced
his Futurist heyday. Following on from an initial conflict with Marinetti,12 by early
1913 Soffici became one of the most important allies of the Milanese Futurists. Not
at any point, however, was Soffici an orthodox Futurist; his name does not appear
on any Futurist manifestos, and he never considered himself to be a true part of
11 For an analysis of this La voce article, see Meazzi: “Soffici, Férat, Roch Grey e gli altri…”.
Meazzi gives key insights into Soffici’s positive opinion of female creatives as influenced by his
relationship with Hélène d’Œttingen in Paris.
12 Following Soffici’s denigrating review of the exhibition, Arte libera e libera pittura futurista,
in La voce on 22 June 1911, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Carlo Carrà, Umberto Boccioni and Luigi
Russolo descended on Florence in a ‘punitive expedition’. It ended on 30 June 1911 in a famous
brawl at the Giubbe Rosse café, during which Boccioni slapped Soffici in the face, and both
artists ended up at the police station. For a detailed discussion of the Lacerba group and their
conflicts with Marinetti see Del Puppo: Lacerba 1913–1915.
262 Jordan Tobin
Marinetti’s entourage. His association with Futurism stemmed from a personal

desire to inject Italian culture with new vitality and creativity, a desire which
was a constant throughout his career. Nonetheless, during his time as editor of
Lacerba, Soffici promoted Futurist ideals and was perfectly well-informed of
their activities and progress. It was in 1913 and 1914 that Soffici and Exter were
closest, and the two carried out prolonged discussions on the movement when
their Parisian sojourns overlapped, as well as in their shared studio. Thus Exter
was arguably the Russian with the closest ties to the Italian movement, and cer-
tainly with the best understanding of its efforts at the time. Indeed, she was one
of only four Russians who would participate in the Esposizione libera futurista
internazionale (Free Exhibition of International Futurists, 13 April–25 May 1914)
at the Galleria Sprovieri in Rome.
This exhibition was organized by Marinetti himself following on from his
visit to Russia in January and February of 1914. This trip, organized by Genrikh
Tasteven, a Paris-based Russian expatriate and one-time editor of the journal
Mir iskusstva (World of Art), represented for Marinetti an opportunity to take
the so-called Futurists in Russia under his wing and prove to his colleagues in
the West the superiority of Futurism within the Modernist movement. Over the
course of his three weeks spent in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, Marinetti gave
a total of six lectures on the Italian movement, and participated in many other
informal discussions with Russian artists and intellectuals, who were variably
in agreement with his efforts to propagate an international Futurism stemming
from Italy.13 As a result of one of these discussions, Marinetti resolved to organize
an international exhibition of Futurist art in Rome. His plan came to fruition in
April of 1914; non-Italian participants were few, but Marinetti managed to involve
artists from Russia, England, Belgium and North America, and thus achieved his
sought-after internationalism. At this exhibition, Exter (catalogued in the exhibi-
tion as Russian) showed works alongside Nikolai Kulbin,14 Alexander Archipenko
and Olga Rozanova. Kazimir Malevich was also invited to participate, but was
unable to afford the expense of sending his works to Rome.
Notably, Soffici was not included among the participants in this international
show. Despite his connections with the Futurist group, Soffici was never truly
a Futurist, just as Exter was never truly a Cubist. He was active in the Futurist
13 For a discussion of Marinetti’s visit to Russia, see Egidio: “The Collision of Italian and Rus-
sian Futurism: Marinetti’s Visit to Russia.”
14 Kulbin was one of Marinetti’s stoutest supporters in Russia, and was greatly instrumental
in organizing the Russian contributions to this exhibition. See Muzzioli: “La cena da Kul’bin:
Confronti e discussioni tra futuristi italiani e russi.”
movement from 1913 to 1915, but then dissociated himself as he was concerned
that Lacerba was becoming too political. Like Exter, his paintings from this time
tended to reflect Parisian influence, centring on still lifes, city scenes and the
analysis of planes rather than the bustling expressions of movement that so pre-
occupied his compatriots. Both Exter and Soffici were markedly reticent to sign
on with any group unless they were truly supporting the circle’s principles and
message. Exter, in particular, consistently held her own.
To explore Exter’s unique style, a few visual comparisons may serve to gain a
deeper understanding of her œuvre. Unlike some of her colleagues, Exter’s con-
stant travel and busy social life kept her from being as prolific as she otherwise
might have been. However, over the course of the years pertinent to this discus-
sion she produced a wide range of works, honing and defining her own distinc-
tive style. During the time when Exter and Soffici shared a studio, their paintings
show remarkable (although of course not surprising) similarities in content, style
and form. For example, Soffici’s Natura morta con uovo rosso (Still Life with Red
Egg, 1914) could easily be presumed to be by the same hand as the creator of
Exter’s Nature morte (Still Life, 1913–14), depicting a caraffe, cup and saucer and
newspaper clippings. But these still lifes incorporating collage elements repre-
sent but a fleeting moment in Exter’s career, and lines of similarity are much more
difficult to determine than with the works of other artists. It is interesting to note
that Soffici’s still lifes were strongly rooted in Parisian Cubist trends of the time,
despite the fact that at this point he was most closely involved with the Italian
Futurists. Boccioni’s Forme plastiche di un cavallo (Plastic Forms of a Horse, 1913–
14) best represents the efforts of the Italians at this point in time, utilizing the
strongest possible colours to explore the shape and space occupied by a horse in
motion. In Boccioni’s painting, colour fields explode on the canvas and give great
vitality to the Futurist efforts to celebrate the unfolding of the modern world.
This exploration of motion is rarely to be found in Exter’s œuvre; for the most
part, her paintings act as calm vignettes, whether representing a bridge, a city or
a table setting. A nod in the direction of Futurist dynamism does, however, exist
in her Boulevard des Italiens of 1914.15 This painting depicts the hustle and bustle
of a busy Parisian street and the city’s vitality through a range of vibrant colour
studies of moving car tyres and street lights. Goncharova’s Velosipedist (The
Cyclist, 1913) provides a straightforward comparison here: both artists explore
the theme of motion in the city, but Exter’s vibrant colour palette is particularly
obvious against Goncharova’s subdued hues. It is tempting to find Italian influ-
15 This painting is variously referenced as Boulevard parisien, le soir, Boulevard des Italiens, and
even simply Composition, and is occasionally dated to 1913.
264 Jordan Tobin
ence in her heavy reliance on the boldest of colours, and this reading may well
be accurate; one recalls her early refusal to adhere to the subdued colours typical
of Cubist painting, and the strident use of colour which came to typify her work
was certainly most strongly developed at the time of her relationship with Soffici
(and, by extension, Italian Futurism). However, her attempt to depict the vibrant
heart and soul of a city street itself is something inherently and entirely indicative
of an Eastern approach. It reflects the Russian process of breaking down forms,
sounds and colours in order to find new paths to a creativity that had brought
about Cubo-Futurism and would soon engender complete non-objectivity in art.
Conclusion
At the end of this essay, it seems appropriate to return to Tugendhold’s eloquent,

if at times exaggerated description of Exter’s career (see above, p. 257). The notion
of moving “from one experiment to another” is particularly pertinent to Exter’s
career. During her early studies in Paris, she greatly appreciated Cubism and its
formal analysis; she explored its possibilities to their fullest extent until they no
longer corresponded with her needs. Between 1912 and 1914, she investigated new
approaches to colour and dynamism and moved away from Cubism. She did not,
however, embrace Italian Futurism, but favoured something more akin to Russian
Cubo-Futurism. At the time, Eastern artists were just as analytical in their formal
experiments as their Western counterparts, but their efforts were imbued with an
exploration of consciousness and its effects on human perception. Expressions
of intuition through colour, form and visual experiences were seen as paramount
in Russia, while motion and dynamism reigned in the West. Having begun her
relationship with the avant-garde in the West, by 1914 Exter had returned to the
East, where the milieu was more open to continuously breaking boundaries to
discover something new. This return to Russia was not only ideological but also
physical; the outbreak of the Great War sent Exter home in 1914, and she would
remain there until her emigration to Paris in 1924.
Rather than ever being entirely convinced of the ideals of one given group,
Exter absorbed and learned as much as she could from all directions she
respected, while ensuring that her art remained unique. She supported fellow
progressives in the East by advocating their ideas in Europe; at the same time, she
helped expand their ideological and aesthetic portfolios by provided them with
written and visual records that documented the latest trends in Western art. In
many ways, Exter remain somewhere above Futurism, transcending the Italians’
incessant repetition of visual and ideological definitions as well as the Russians’
tendency to focus inward, at least ostensibly, rather than gleaning much-needed
inspiration from the West. Extree was never truly Cubist, never truly Futurist; she
was always an artist in her own right.
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Marcadé, Jean-Claude: L’Avant-garde russe. Paris: Flammarion, 1995.
Marcadé, Valentine: Le Renouveau de l’art pictural russe, 1863–1914. Lausanne: L’Âge
d’Homme, 1971.
Markov, Vladimir: Russian Futurism: A History. London: MacGibbon, 1969.
Meazzi, Barbara: “Soffici, Férat, Roch Grey e gli altri....” Bart Van den Bosche, Giuseppe
Manica, and Carmen Van den Bergh, eds.: Azione/Reazione: Il futurismo in Belgio e in
Europa. Firenze: Cesati, 2012. 67–78.
Muzzioli, Francesco: “La cena da Kul’bin: Confronti e discussioni tra futuristi italiani e russi.”
Bart Van den Bosche, Giuseppe Manica, and Carmen Van den Bergh, eds.: Azione/
Reazione: Il futurismo in Belgio e in Europa. Firenze: Cesati, 2012. 101–117.
Nakov, Andréi, ed.: Alexandra Exter. Exhibition catalogue Paris: Galerie Jean Chauvelin, mai –
juin 1972.
Soffici, Ardengo: Autoritratto d’artista italiano nel quadro del suo tempo. Vol. 1–4. Firenze:
Vallecchi, 1951.
—: Ricordi di vita artistica e letteraria. Seconda edizione accresciuta. Firenze: Vallecchi, 1942.
Tugendkhol’d, Iakov: Alexandra Exter kak zhivopisets i khudozhnik stseny. Berlin: Zaria, 1922.
German edn Alexandra Exter. Aus dem Russischen übersetzt von von Maria Einstein.
Berlin: Sarja russische Buchhandels- und Verlags-Gesellschaft m. b. H, 1922. English edn
Alexandra Exter. Translated by Count Petrovo Solovovo Petrovsky. Berlin: Sarja, 1922.
Isabel Wünsche
Elena Guro: On the Crossroads between
Symbolism, Organicism and Cubo-Futurism
Abstract: Elena Guro (1877–1913), a Saint-Petersburg poet, playwright, painter and
graphic artist, was an artist of independent and original vision whose works – var-
iously characterized as Impressionist, Symbolist or Cubo-Futurist – link the artis-
tic and literary heritage of Symbolism with the new trends in the emerging avant-
garde. She was well educated and familiar with a broad range of European art,
literature and culture; her development as an artist was shaped by French Sym-
bolism, German Romanticist thought and German-Austrian Modernism as well as
Scandinavian culture and folklore. In 1909–10, she participated in Nikolai Kulbin’s
Impressionist exhibitions. Together with Mikhail Matyushin, she co-founded the
artists’ group Souiz molodezhi (Union of Youth) in 1909 and was also a member of
its literary section, Hylæa. She contributed works to Cubo-Futurist miscellanies
such as Sadok sudei I (1910), Sadok sudei II (1913), Troe (1913) and Rykaiushchii
parnas (1914). Yet, she did not really fit well into any of the Futurist groups in
Russia and always remained independent. She was fascinated by the rhythm of
modern life, but as she also recognized its downside, she was among the first to
turn away from urbanism, even as it was reaching its peak of popularity with the
Cubo-Futurists, a fact that has complicated and delayed the appreciation of her
artistic œuvre. Guro’s poetry and prose, like her visual art, were cohesively inte-
grated with one another, and sought to reflect the harmony with the elemental
forces and vital processes of living Nature as well as the laws of the universe. Thus,
she became a forerunner of the Organic school in the Russian avant-garde.
Keywords: Saint-Petersburg avant-garde, Neo-Primitivism, anti-urbanism, organic

culture, synthesis of the arts
Introduction
Elena Guro (pseudonym of Elena Genrikhovna von Notenberg, 1877–1913) came

from a noble Saint-Petersburg family; her father, of French origin, served as an
officer in the Russian infantry; her mother was the daughter of the pedagogue,
editor and writer Mikhail Chistiakov.1 Guro grew up in Saint-Petersburg, but
1 On Guro’s life and work see Guro: Sochineniia [Collected Works]; Guro: Iz zapisnykh knizhek
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0014
Elena Guro: Symbolism, Organicism and Cubo-Futurism 267
during her childhood spent the better part of each year at the family estate, Pochi-
nok, near the village of Novosele in the Pskov region. She was well educated;
provided with a lifetime pension, she was able to pursue and finance her artistic
interests as well as some ventures of the Cubo-Futurists.2
Guro received her artistic education under the guidance of Jan Ciągliński at
the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and at Ciągliński’s
studio on Liteinyi Prospekt, where she met the musician and painter Mikhail
Matyushin, her future husband. Together they transferred in 1906 to the private
art school of Elizaveta Zvantseva, where they studied under Léon Bakst and
Mstislav Dobushinsky. Zvantseva’s art school was also where they joined the
Symbolists for their weekly gatherings in Viacheslav Ivanov’s legendary ‘tower’.3
In this setting and under the influence of Symbolist thought and culture, Guro
and Matyushin made the acquaintance of poets such as Alexander Blok, Andrei
Bely, Alexei Remisov and Fiodor Sologub, as well as religious thinkers such as
Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky.4
Guro made her artistic début in 1904 with her illustrations for the Russian
edition of George Sand’s Contes d’une grand’ mère (Grandmother’s Tales,
1872–1875)5 and her literary début in 1905 with the short story “Raniaia vesna”
(Early Spring), published in Sbornik molodykh pisatelei (An Anthology of Young
Writers).6 Her first book, Sharmanka (The Hurdy-Gurdy), consisting of short prose,
poetry and two plays, accompanied by her own illustrations, was published in
19097 and followed in 1912 by her second book, Osennii son (An Autumnal Dream),
which comprises a play of the same title as well as some prose and poetry along
(1908–1913) [From the Notebooks, 1908–1913]; Povelikhina: Elena Guro: Poet i khudozhnik,
1877–1913 [Elena Guro: Poet and Artist, 1877–1913]; Hausbacher: “... denn die Geschöpfe lieben
Aufmerksame”: Weiblichkeit in der Schrift Elena Guros (1877–1913) [“The creatures cherish the
attentive ones”: Femininity in the Writings of Elena Guro, 1877–1913]; Jensen: Russian Futurism,
Urbanism, and Elena Guro; Ljunggren and Gourianova: Elena Guro: Selected Writings from the
Archives; Ljunggren and Nilsson: Elena Guro: Selected Prose and Poetry.
2 On Guro’s relationship with the Russian Cubo-Futurists see Markov: Russian Futurism, pp. 14–
22, and Gourianova: “Elena Guro i russkii avangard” [Elena Guro and the Russian Avant-garde],
pp. 87–99.
3 Ebert: “Vjačeslav Ivanovs ‘Turm’: Experiment einer neuen Kultur- und Theaterauffassung.”
[Viacheslav Ivanov’s Tower: Experiment of a New Approach to Culture and Theatre], pp. 160–168.
4 Kovtun: “Elena Guro: Poet i khudozhnik” [Elena Guro: Poet and Artist], p. 317.
5 Sand: Babushkiny skazki [Grandmother’s Tales]. Kharkov: Tsederbaum, 1905.
6 Guro: “Raniaia vesna” [Early Spring], pp. 119–125. Reprinted in Elena Guro: Selected Prose and
Poetry, pp. 75–80.
7 Guro: Sharmanka [The Hurdy-Gurdy]. Sankt-Peterburg: Zhuravl, 1909. The book was reprinted
in 1914.
268 Isabel Wünsche
with her illustrations.8 Her book Nebesnye verbliuzhata (The Baby Camels of the
Sky) was published posthumously in 1914.9 The manuscript Bednyi rytsar (The
Poor Knight) remained unfinished and was only published in the 1980s.10
Saint-Petersburg and the Union of Youth
Although Symbolism was a significant force in Russia well into the 1910s, it soon
faced competition from other, more radical avant-garde groupings. One of them
was Nikolai Kulbin’s circle of Impressionists. Stimulated by recent discoveries in
the natural sciences and developments in psychology, the physician and artist
Kulbin proposed that in the search for a new aesthetic, all rules and conventions
had to be first discarded.11 Between 1908 and 1910, Kulbin organized three major
art exhibitions, delivered many lectures, and published several articles on his
psychological approach to art.12 He and the members of his group combined
Impressionist and Symbolist modes of painting and emphasized metaphysical
inquiry, mythological motifs and fantasy.
Another influential artists’ group was Soiuz molodezhi (Union of Youth),
founded in 1909 by several former members of Kulbin’s circle. A heterogeneous
group of about a dozen young artists, it focussed on “familiarizing its members
with modern trends in art” and “developing […] aesthetic tastes by means of
8 Guro: Osennii son [Autumnal Dream]. Sankt-Peterburg: Zhuravl, 1912.

9 Guro: Nebesnye verbliuzhata [The Baby Camels of the Sky]. Sankt-Peterburg: Zhuravl, 1914.
Later Russian editions appeared in Guro: Nebesnye verbliuzhata. Bednyi rytsar’. Stikhi i proza
[The Baby Camels of the Sky – Poor Knight – Verses and Prose], pp. 49–135 and Guro: Nebesnye
verbliuzhata: Izbrannoe [The Baby Camels of the Sky: Selection]. English translation Guro: The
Little Camels of the Sky.
10 Guro: Bednyi rytsar [The Poor Knight], 1912–13; manuscript at the public library Saltykov-
Shchedrin in Saint-Petersburg [RO GPB], f. 1116, ed. khr. 3, l. 48. Published in Elena Guro: Selected
Prose and Poetry, pp. 131–214 and in Guro: Nebesnye verbliuzhata. Bednyi rytsar’. Stikhi i proza,
pp. 145–214. Another version was compiled by Evgeny Binevich and published in Guro: Zhil na
svete pytsar bednyi [Once Upon a Time There Lived a Poor Knight], pp. 13–102.
11 Kul’bin: “Garmoniia, dissonans i tesn’ie sochetaniia v iskusstve i zhizni” [Harmony, Disso-
nance and the Close Combination of Art and Life], p. 39.
12 The exhibitions he organized were: Sovremennykh techeniia v iskusstve [Contemporary
Trends in Art], in Saint-Peterburg, 26 April – May 1908; Impressionisty [The Impressionists] in
Saint- Petersburg, 9 March – 12 April 1909 and Vilna, Lithuania, 26 December 1909 – 20 January
1910; Treugo’nik [Triangle] in Saint Petersburg, 19 March – 14 April 1910. For his publications, see
the bibliography at the end of this essay.
drawing and painting workshops, as well as discussions on questions of art.”13

The group set up a studio; organized exhibitions, discussions and theatrical pro-
ductions; and founded a small library.14
Not unlike Kulbin, the Union of Youth stressed artistic individuality, and
expressive freedom served as a platform for the renewal of the arts by promot-
ing a wide variety of artistic approaches and stylistic expressions. Less radical
in their artistic experiments than some avant-garde colleagues in Moscow, the
members of the Union were generally post-Symbolist in their orientation; they
acknowledged their debt to their Symbolist forebears, but chose to develop new
directions, promoting the study of the formal aspects of art and the processes
of artistic creation while also emphasizing metaphysical content. The Union of
Youth artists were also well attuned to developments in Western Europe, espe-
cially the art scenes in Munich and Scandinavia.15 Rather than following the
prevailing interest in icon painting and Russian folk art that characterized many
representatives of the Moscow avant-garde, the Saint-Petersburg artists were
more concerned with non-Western artistic expressions, including archaic sculp-
ture, Chinese calligraphy and poetry, Persian and Indian miniature painting.16
13 Ustav obshchestva khudozhnikov “Soiuz Molodezhi.” [The Statute of the Artists’ Society “Un-
ion of Youth”], February 2, 1910, in Central State Archive of Literature and Art [TsGALI], f. 336,
op. 5, ed. khr. 4, l. 4. English in Howard: The Union of Youth, p. 46.
14 Between March 1910 and January 1914, the Union of Youth held seven exhibitions, organized
several debates on modern art, and published three edited volumes with essays by its members
and contributions by Hylaea poets. For a full account on the activities of the organization see
Howard: Union of Youth, and Liuboslavskaia: “Khronika obedineniia ‘Soiuz molodezhi’.”
15 Nikolai Kulbin and Wassily Kandinsky were in close contact and, in December 1911, Kulbin
read the Russian version of Kandinsky’s treatise On the Spiritual in Art at the All-Russian Con-
gress of Artists in Saint-Petersburg. See Bowlt and Washton Long: The Life of Vasili Kandinsky in
Russian Art. Voldemar Matvejs and Eduard Spandikov were both fluent in German and in touch
with the Blue Rider group in Munich. They planned to publish a translation of Wilhelm Wor-
ringer’s 1907 dissertation Abstraktion und Einfühlung [Abstraction and Empathy] in the Union’s
almanac, but the publication did not materialize. See Howard: Union of Youth, pp. 120–121. In
1910, Pavel Filonov, Josif Shkolnik, Savelii Shleifer and Eduard Spandikov went to Finland and
Sweden to meet with Scandinavian artists and to invite them to their 1911 exhibition; in 1913 the
Union again pursued “a broader union with Finnish and Swedish artists” in order to include the
newest trends in Northern art in their upcoming exhibition and also planned to have it travel to
Helsingfors. See Howard: Union of Youth, pp. 57, 86, 156.
16 Voldemar Matvejs (1877–1914) was a Latvian-born artist, better known under his nom-de-
plume Vladimir Markov. He was a key figure in the Union of Youth and tried to develop a uni-
versal theory of new art, based on the arts of all epochs, countries and peoples. He became a
leading theoretician of Primitivism in Iskusstvo ostrova paskhi [The Art of the Easter Islands].
Sankt-Peterburg: Soiuz Molodezhi, 1914, Svirel’ kitaia [The Chinese Flute]. Sankt-Peterburg: Soi-
270 Isabel Wünsche
In its final season, 1913–14, the Union presented Neo-primitivist, Cubist and
Futurist techniques in painting, along with works reflecting spiritual themes
and metaphysical concerns. The group also collaborated with the Hylaea poets
David Burliuk, Elena Guro, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Benedikt
Livshits and Vladimir Mayakovsky. On alternate nights on 2–5 December 1913
they staged at the Luna Park Theatre, Saint-Petersburg, Vladimir Maiakovskii:
Tragediia (Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy) and Kruchenykh and Matyushin’s
“opera” Pobeda nad soltsem (Victory over the Sun), in stage and costume designs
by Kazimir Malevich.
Guro’s collaborations with the Cubo-Futurists and the Union

of Youth
As a member of Nikolai Kulbin’s circle, Guro participated in his 1909 Impression-

ists exhibition, where she showed 5 risunki dlia knigi “Sharmanka” (5 illustrations
for the book The Hurdy-Gurdy); and his 1910 Triangle show, where she exhibited
the composition Rozovoe nebo (Pink Sky) and three studies.17 Through Kulbin,
she met Vasily Kamensky and also made the acquaintance of the Burliuk siblings,
Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Benedikt Livshits and Vladimir May-
akovsky. Although Guro rejected the provocative and aggressive attitude of the
Cubo-Futurists and rarely participated in their public events, she contributed to a
number of their publications. Her literary works were included in Sadok sudei I (A
Trap for Judges I, 1910), Sadok sudei II (A Trap for Judges II, 1913), Troe (The Three,
1913), and Rykaiushchii parnas (Roaring Parnassus, 1914). Together with Mikhail
Matyushin, she founded the Zhuravl (Crane) publishing house in 1909 and the
Union of Youth in December of 1909. Their apartment in Litseiskaia ulitsa and
later their apartment in the traditional wooden blockhouse on Pesochnaia ulitsa
became central meeting places of the Saint-Petersburg avant-garde.18 Like many
of the Saint-Petersburg intelligentsia, Guro and Matyushin also had a dacha on
uz Molodezhi, 1914 and Iskusstvo negrov [Negro Art]. Peterburg: Otdel izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv
Narodnogo Komissariata po Prosvesheniiu, 1919. The first and second volume of the Union of
Youth almanac of 1912 included Chinese poetry, an article on Persian art by Varvara Bubnova,
and illustrations of Chinese art as well as Persian and Indian miniatures.
17 See the Exhibition catalogues, Impressionisty [The Impressionists] and Treugo’nik [Triangle],
and Gordon: Modern Art Exhibitions, 1900–1916. Vol. 2, p. 321.
18 Povelikhina: “S.P.B. Pesochnaia, 10”, pp. 117‑121. See also Basner: House on Pesochnaya.
the Karelian Isthmus.19 The location served not only as an escape from the city
but also as a gathering place of the Saint-Petersburg avant-garde between 1910
and 1913, and it was there that Guro died, of leukemia, in May 1913.
Guro was a transitional figure in the Russian avant-garde; her body of work
– characterized at one time or another as Impressionist, Symbolist or Cubo-Futur-
ist – links the artistic and literary heritage of Symbolism with the new trends in
the emerging avant-garde. Her diaries and notebooks suggest that she was more
indebted to the Russian Symbolists Blok, Bely and Bryusov than the Cubo-Futurists
Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh and Mayakovsky, but she shared in varying proportions
the beliefs and interests held within both groups.20 The Symbolists invited her to
participate in their meetings and publications;21 the Cubo-Futurists involved her
in a discussion on new literature organized by the Union of Youth in March 1913.22
But she did not really fit well into either group and remained independent, a fact
that has complicated and delayed the appreciation of her artistic œuvre.
Among the Russian Cubo-Futurists, Guro was an exception: she came from
a noble family and had grown up in Saint-Petersburg. She was well educated
and familiar with a broad range of European art, literature and culture; she
also admired the works of Charles Baudelaire, Francis Vielé-Griffin and Émile
Verhaeren23 and had a particular affinity for the German Romanticists and Ger-
man-Austrian Modernists24 as well as a keen interest in Scandinavian culture and
19 Hämäläinen: “Die russische Sommerhaussiedlung auf der Karelischen Landenge am Ende

des 19. und zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts.” [The Russian Dacha Settlement on the Karelian
Isthm at the End of the Nineteenth and the Beginning of the Twentieth Centuries], pp. 518–538.
20 Guro: Iz zapisnykh knizhek (1908–1913) [From the Notebooks, 1908–1913] and Elena Guro:
Selected Prose and Poetry, pp. 19–67.
21 Blok and Ivanov appreciated her literary works; on Guro’s and Blok’s personal acquaintance
and artistic relationship see Banjanin: “Of Harlequins, Dreamers, and Poets: A Study of an Image
in the Works of Elena Guro”, p. 226, and Jensen: Russian Futurism, Urbanism, and Elena Guro,
pp. 41–42.
22 On Guro’s relationship with the Russian Cubo-Futurists see Markov: Russian Futurism,
pp. 14–22; Gur’ianova: “Elena Guro i russkii avangard.” [Elena Guro and the Russian Avant-Gar-
de]. On her joint performance with Mayakovsky at the discussion evening of the Union of Youth
on 24 March 1913, see Khardzhiev and Grits: “Kratkaia Letopis’”, p. 40.
23 Banjanin: “The Prose and Poetry of Elena Guro”, p. 303 and “Nature and the City in the Works
of Elena Guro”, p. 236.
24 Through Ivanov and other Symbolists, Guro was familiar with the works of the German Ro-
mantics Novalis, Schelling and Schlegel. On the nature philosophical influences in her work see
Bobrinskaia: “Naturfilosofskie motivy v tvorchestve Eleny Guro” [Nature Philosophical Motivs in
the Work of Elena Guro]. On Guro’s free translation of Peter Altenberg see Nilsson: “Elena Guro
and Peter Altenberg”, pp. 26–28. On a possible influence of Rainer Maria Rilke upon Guro see
Markov: Russian Futurism, p. 20.
272 Isabel Wünsche
folklore.25 Her position at the crossroads of Symbolism and Cubo-Futurism thus

seems to explain her success in bringing together various cultural strands and
artistic influences within her own work.
From early childhood on, Guro spent the summer months at the family estate
in the countryside, and by the age of eight she was sketching, drawing and paint-
ing the animals, plants and trees she saw, as well as taking notes of her impres-
sions, feelings and thoughts about Nature and life. Her first published poem,
“Early Spring”, was a celebration of these childhood memories; it described the
springtime departure from the city and the arrival at the country house, seen
from a child’s point of view and establishes her artistic credo: a love of all Nature
and compassion toward all living creatures.26 From her works and diaries it is
evident that her encounters with the natural world, particularly the landscape
in the Pskov region and the northern countryside of the Karelian Isthmus, were
a primary source of inspiration and also a driving force in her urge to develop a
personal artistic language.27
Anti-Urbanism in Russian Modernism
Intrinsically linked with the rise of modernity was the development of the modern
city and the emergence of a new urban lifestyle. Increasingly, modern artists and
writers began to focus on the differences between life in densely populated cities
and rural life. Symbolists and Cubo-Futurists alike were fascinated by the rhythm
of modern life, but they also recognized its downside – poverty and impoverish-
ment, dirt and noise, questionable pleasures and decay. The artist, they thought,
would be able to grasp the complex realities of modern life and address the living
conditions of the Big-City dweller, the individual’s fear of the anonymous crowd,
the loss of personal identity and the premonitions of catastrophe.28
The contrasts between life in the city and the countryside were often reflected
in Russian literature as a clash between Western civilization and Eastern culture.
Peter the Great’s will to modernize Russia greatly impressed the Russian Sym-
bolists, who made Saint-Petersburg, the newly established capital, the object of
25 Nilsson: “Russia and the Myth of the North: The Modernist Response”, pp. 132–140; Elena
Guro: Selected Prose and Poetry, 8–13; Hausbacher: “… denn die Geschöpfe lieben Aufmerksame”,
pp. 189–191.
26 Jensen: Russian Futurism, Urbanism, and Elena Guro, pp. 35–36, and Kalina-Levine: “Through
the Eyes of the Child: The Artistic Vision of Elena Guro”, pp. 32–34.
27 Banjanin: “Nature and the City in the Works of Elena Guro”, pp. 231–235.
28 See Wirth: “Urbanism as a Way of Life”, pp. 190–191.
their explorations of modern city life and urban themes. Andrei Bely’s Peterburg
(Petersburg, 1913), was among the first to draw on the city to illustrate the funda-
mental conflict in Russian intellectual life since the time of Peter the Great – the
historical and cultural contradictions resulting from the confrontation between
rural peasant life and the modernity of Western culture. However, Russian Mod-
ernists were less influenced in their literary discussions by actual city life than
by the works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Émile Verhaeren; their
urbanism was not writing about the city, but “in the language of the city”.29 The
“new meters, new rhythms, changes in syntax and vocabulary”30 emphasized the
human subjective experience in the urban environment.
Urbanism came to be closely associated with the literature of the Russian
Cubo-Futurists. The best known representative of this trend, Vladimir Mayak-
ovsky, characterized it as “the poetry of the city, the modern city […] telephones,
aeroplanes, express trains, elevators, rotating machines, sidewalks, factory pipes,
the stone grammar of houses […] these are the elements of beauty in the new
urban nature.”31 The harsh realities of modern life fascinated the Futurists, yet
at the same time they perceived them as being cruel, evil and ugly. In his poetry,
Mayakovsky demonstrated the extent to which he was under the sway of modern
city life. It was for him both a force of inspiration and of oppression. Other avant-
garde artists, such as Vasily Kamensky, Velimir Khlebnikov and Elena Guro, were
likewise inspired and acknowledged the physically and spiritually corruptive
influence of the modern city on humanity.
The architectural development of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century inspired many young poets and painters, and its
triumphs were celebrated by the avant-garde in poetry readings, exhibitions, dis-
cussion events and theatre performances held in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Kiev
and Tbilisi. However, many of the avant-garde ideas and manifestos behind these
works were formulated not in the artists’ metropolitan apartments, but in the
dachas outside of these urban centres. Nikolai Kulbin regularly congregated with
friends and artists at his summer house in the Finnish artists’ colony of Kuokkala;
David Burliuk gathered Velimir Khlebnikov, Mikhail Larionov, Benedikt Livshits
and Vladimir Mayakovsky at the estate of Count Mordvinov in Chernianka near
Kherson on the Black Sea (it was here that they founded the poets’ group Hylaea
on New Year’s Eve, 1911); and the First All-Russian Congress of the Cubo-Futur-
ists, at which Kruchenykh, Malevich and Matyushin devised their opera Pobeda
29 Shershenevich: Zelenaia ulica [Green Street], p. 45.

30 Ibid.
31 Katan’ian: Mayakovsky: Literaturnaia khronika [Mayakovsky: Literary Chronicle], p. 56.
274 Isabel Wünsche
nad soltsem (Victory over the Sun) and planned the publication of a number of
Cubo-Futurist books, took place at the dacha of Guro and Matyushin near the
Finnish village Uusikirkko on the Karelian Isthmus in July 1913.
In 1910, Kamensky published the novel Zemlianka (The Mud Hut), in which
he propagated a Rousseauian “return to Nature”.32 The protagonist is on the brink
of suicide and leaves the city, a place dominated by tragedy and chaos, for the
countryside and lives in an abandoned shelter on the bank of a river, where he
finds happiness in the arms of a peasant girl. Kamensky lived the busy, urban
lifestyle of a Cubo-Futurist poet, working as editor of the Moscow journal Vesna
(Spring), producing his acclaimed zhelesobetonnye poemy (ferroconcrete poems),
contributing to numerous avant-garde publications and performances, and trav-
elling together with David Burliuk and Vladimir Mayakovsky throughout Russia
in order to promote Cubo-Futurism. But he also performed with Vladimir Golts
shmidt, a self-proclaimed “futurist of life” and anti-urbanist, who promoted with
hedonistic fervour “the sunny joys of the body.”33 After a remarkable career as
a Cubo-Futurist poet and as one of the first aeroplane pilots in Russia,34 in 1932
Kamensky returned to the Perm region, where he lived out the remainder of his
life in the village of Troitsa.
Anti-urbanism was nothing new in Russian art and culture and can be traced
back to the views of the Slavophiles, who influenced conservative as well as
progressive positions within the Russian intelligentsia. In the late nineteenth
century, liberal, socialist and populist intellectuals, among them followers of Lev
Tolstoy, were united in their fundamental critique of the cities as “bastions of
decadence, prostitution, faceless anomie and raging vice.”35 The experiences in
the modern city fed into discourses on ‘decadence’, which shaped intellectual
discussions in Russia after the 1905 Revolution. The period between 1914 and 1921
saw new levels of anti-urbanism with peasant revolts and an exodus from the
urban conglomerations.36
The literary and artistic avant-garde in Russia was admittedly an essentially
urban movement; however, one should not overlook the dominant rôle played
by rural life in the childhood and domestic habits of most members of the avant-
garde. David Burliuk was born in the village of Semirotovshchina near Kharkov,
and his family lived on the estate of Count Mordvinov, near Kherson, until 1914;
32 Kamensky: Zemlianka [The Mud Hut]. See also Markov: Russian Futurism, pp. 29–32.
34 See Bubrin: Mud Huts and Airplanes: The Futurism of Vasily Kamensky.
35 Stites: Revolutionary Dreams, p. 192.
36 Ibid.
Vasily Kamensky spent his childhood on the Kama river near Perm, where he later
had his own farm; Alexei Kruchenykh came from a peasant family near Kherson;
Velimir Khlebnikov, son of an ornithologist, was born in a village near Astrakhan;
Elena Guro spent most of her childhood and youth on the family estate Pochinok,
near Novosele in the Pskov region; Mikhail Matyushin was born into a serf family
in Nizhni Novgorod; and although Kazimir Malevich was born in Kiev, he spent
an unsettled childhood in the Ukrainian provinces, where he attended the agri-
cultural college of Parkhomovka.
The growing disenchantment with the realities of city life in the early twen-
tieth century correlated with a renewed appreciation of life in Nature. A number
of avant-garde poets and painters contrasted their reflections on modern city
life with their memories of a childhood in the countryside and a life in harmony
with Nature, among them Vasily Kamensky, whose literary works were closely
related to his memories of a blissful youth in the Perm region.37 The œuvre of
the Cubo-Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov was also shaped by a latent anti-ur-
banism. Khlebnikov, who had studied mathematics and natural sciences at the
University of Kazan before settling in Saint-Petersburg in 1908, was a visionary
who imagined a future world in which art, science and life were organically and
harmoniously interwoven.38
The modern city in Guro’s œuvre
For a brief period, between 1905 and 1910, Guro also focussed on the subjective
experience of the modern city, particularly the social and philosophical conse-
quences of urban life, which simultaneously attracted and horrified her.39 She
depicted the contemporary urban environment in a stream of highly personal
impressions that were presented almost like cinematic flashes – visual and acous-
tic impressions that convey the city’s rhythms, colours, sounds and atmosphere.40
The urban theme dominated the collection of short stories, The Hurdy-
Gurdy.41 Here, she combined the manifold impressions and everyday experiences
of people in the city with reflections on their inner feelings. “Pered vesny” (Before
37 See Markov: Russian Futurism, p. 327.

38 Stobbe: “Velimir Chlebnikov’s ‘My i doma’”, p. 375.
39 Bowlt and Konecny: A Legacy Regained, p. 236.
40 Ibid.
41 Guro: “Pered vesny” [Before Spring]; “Pesni goroda” [Songs of the City]; “Tak zhizn idet”
[That’s Life], in Guro: Sharmanka [The Hurdy-Gurdy]. Sankt-Peterburg: Zhuravl, 1909.
276 Isabel Wünsche
Spring) captures the thoughts of a woman who becomes increasingly wearied by

the sights and impressions during her walks through the city.42 In “Pesni goroda”
(Songs of the City), Guro depicts urban life by day and night through a series of
impressions recorded from the viewpoint of various figures. During the day, the
city appears as a confined space, hostile to life and artistic creativity; by night
it regains its capacity for mystery and fantasy as a basis of life and a source of
artistic inspiration.43 In “Tak zhizn idet” (That’s Life), she thematized the psy-
chology of human relations in the city and the oppressive nature of city life; she
describes the tragic life of a woman in the urban environment, a place dominated
by men and fashioned according to the structures of male rationality.44 With these
‘impressionistic sketches’, Guro conveyed the nervous mood of the contemporary
city and its intensity, but also its cruelty.45
Guro’s fascination with the urban environment began with the city’s archi-
tecture: the stonemasonry and ornate windows, the winding streets, lanterns,
signpoles and waterpipes form a place of mystery and secrets. But looking more
closely at the harshness of the modern, urban existence, she increasingly began
to view the city as a place of alienation, male dominance, humiliation, spiritual
suffering and animosity toward Nature, and this transition is reflected in her
writing. Beginning with “Before Spring,” her image of the city became increas-
ingly darker, and in her last urbanist work, the 1910 poem “Gorod” (The City), the
city is mercilessly dominated by technology and violence, and has forfeited its
potential for love, dreams and beauty.46
After her abandonment of urban themes, Guro turned towards the natural
world. She found in the vital, organic life of the meadows, forests and sea an
alternative to the lifeless and inhuman stone architecture of the city. Guro was
among the first to turn away from urbanism, even as it was reaching the peak of
its popularity in Cubo-Futurist poetry and Cubist painting. While her early urban-
ist poetry was exercising as an influence upon the poetry of the young Maya
42 Banjaninin: “The Prose and Poetry of Elena Guro”, pp. 307–308, and Jensen: Russian Futur-
ism, Urbanism, and Elena Guro, pp. 81–88.
43 Jensen: Russian Futurism, Urbanism, and Elena Guro, pp. 88–105.
44 Banjanin: “The Prose and Poetry of Elena Guro”, pp. 309–310; Banjanin: “Nature and the City
in the Work of Elena Guro”, pp. 239–241; Jensen: Russian Futurism, Urbanism, and Elena Guro,
pp. 105–114.
45 Khardzhiev/Grits: “Kratkaia letopis’”, pp. 41. See also Banjanin: “The Prose and Poetry of
Elena Guro”, p. 305.
46 This poem was published in the 1914 anthology Rykaiushchii parnas [Roaring Parnassus] and
again in 1916 in Ocharovannyi strannik: Almanakh vesennii [The Enchanted Wanderer: Spring
Almanac]. See also Jensen: Russian Futurism, Urbanism, and Elena Guro, p. 118.
Fig. 1. Elena Guro, c. 1912. Photograph by Mikhail Matyushin
kovsky, her new anti-urbanist stance was inspiring Kamensky’s first novel, The
Mud Hut.47
In her approach to Nature, Guro insisted on pure sensory perception, unspoiled
by rational thought or systematic analysis. The impressions captured by the artist
or poet represented a spiritual experience, an effort to reveal the mysteries and
secrets of Nature, to capture its rhythms and breath, and to reflect upon the univer-
sal interrelations between visible apparitions of the material world and their inner,
spiritual being. Matyushin, recalling his walks with her (see Fig. 1), wrote:
Usually she was holding a pencil and a notebook in her hand; while walking, she was
watching, drawing, and taking notes. When she was looking at something or listening, she
was all attention, her mind was all drawn to the things, as though she was in a special
47 On Guro’s influence upon Mayakovsky, see Khardziev and Trenin: Poeticheskaia kul’tura
Maiakovskogo [Mayakovsky’s Poetic Culture], pp. 193–195; Jensen: Russian Futurism, Urbanism,
and Elena Guro, pp. 170–187. On Guro’s influence upon Vasily Kamensky see Khardzhiev and
Grits: “Kratkaia Letopis’”, pp. 41; Markov: Russian Futurism, pp. 29–32; Jensen: Russian Futurism,
Urbanism, and Elena Guro, pp. 131–133.
278 Isabel Wünsche
contact with the objects, knowing their ‘secrets’, and she was able to transfer her feelings
into words and images. She loved Nature so much that when she was living and studying in
Saint-Petersburg she used every free day to leave the city for the country. In the early spring
days, she would depart to the country and only in late fall would she return to her ‘pocket of
stones’, as she called the city, bringing along a large collection of drawings, watercolours,
paintings as well as prose and poetry.48
Guro’s pantheism
Guro’s interest in the natural world and her celebration of the infinite forms of cre-
ativity that could be found in Nature were shaped by a pantheist worldview. Like
Kulbin, she perceived all life forms, both organic and inorganic, as manifestations
of a universal soul – a worldly force or presence that endowed all organisms with
life and feeling.49 In contrast to Kulbin’s more rigorous scientific background, Guro’s
panpsychist view was strongly shaped by a deep religiosity, which married Chris-
tianity with Buddhism and Romanticist nature philosophy. She was influenced by
the mystic traditions of Francis of Assisi, Jacob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg,50
but also Tolstoy’s cult of the simple life in harmony with Nature and Alexander
Dobroliubov and the Russian god-seeker movement.51 She followed developments
in theosophy, spiritualism and occultism.52 Together with Matyushin, she had
studied the works of Henri Bergson, Gaston Bonnier, Camille Flammarion, Gustave
Le Bon, Otto Lehmann, Jacques Loeb, Friedrich Nietzsche and Petr Ouspensky.53
48 Matiushin: “Russkie kubo-futuristy”, p. 136. See also Guro: Iz zapisnykh knizhek, pp. 7–8.
49 Guro: “Bednyi rytsar”, in Elena Guro: Selected Prose and Poetry, pp. 143–144. English in Ban-
janin: “Nature and the City in the Work of Elena Guro”, p. 232.
50 Bobrinskaia: “Naturfilosofskie motivy v tvorchestve Eleny Guro”, p. 161.
51 Gur’ianova: “Tolstoi i Nitssche v ‘Tvorchestve Dukha’ Eleny Guro” [Tolstoy and Nietzsche in
the “Creative Spirit” of Elena Guro], pp. 63–76.
52 Berry: Spiritualism in Tsarist Society and Literature, pp. 157–160; Bobrinskaia: “Naturfilosof-
skie motivy v tvorchestve Eleny Guro”, pp. 162–166; Bowlt: “Esoteric Culture and Russian Soci-
ety”, pp. 165–183; Douglas: “Beyond Reason: Malevich, Matiushin, and Their Circles”, pp. 185–
199; Kasinec and Kerdium: “Occult Literature in Russia”, pp. 361–365; Kruglow: “Die Epoche des
großen Spiritismus: Symbolistische Tendenzen in der frühen russischen Avantgarde” [The Ep-
och of the Great Spiritual: Symbolist Tendecies in the Early Russian Avant-Garde], pp. 175–186;
Parton: “Avantgarde und mystische Tradition in Rußland 1900–1915” [The Avant-Garde and the
Mystic Tradition in Russia 1900–1915], pp. 193–215; Carlson: “Fashionable Occultism: Spiritual-
ism, Theosophy, Freemasonry, and Hermeticism in Fin-de-Siecle Russia”, pp. 135–152.
53 Among the works were Henri Bergson: Vremia i svoboda voli [Time and Free Will]. Moskva:
Russkaia Mysl’, 1911]; Idem: Tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia [Creative Evolution]. Moskva: Russkaia
Mysl’, 1914; Gaston Bonnier: Zven’ia zhivoi prirody [Links in Living Nature]. Sankt-Peterburg:
Guro’s impressionistic approach to art and life, her desire to capture momen-
tary impressions and to reveal the secrets of Nature, were influenced by Bergson’s
concept of creative intuition. Bergson’s durée, Guro believed, was to be found,
above all, in the internal life of the individual, the ‘stream of consciousness’ or
endless flow of intimate feelings and sensations.54 Guro supplemented Bergson’s
ideas with a spiritual dimension that were derived from Russian interpretations
of Bergson and the native intuitivism of Dmitri Boldyrev and Nikolai Lossky.55
The works of the French astronomer and spiritist Camille Flammarion,
whose scientific books were popular in Russia at the turn of the century, pro-
vided further intellectual and visual inspiration to Guro. She had first been
exposed to Flammarion through her grandfather’s copy of Bog v prirodge (Dieu
dans la nature, 1869) and mentioned the astronomer in her diaries.56 Flammarion
renounced scientific materialism and strove to unite the natural sciences with
the idea of a godly creator. Guro shared Flammarion’s belief in an “invisible and
universal power […] constantly at work in Nature”,57 but her celebration of the
creative forces of Nature was also based on the concept of zhiznetvorchestvo (life
creation), an idea that had arisen within Symbolism and was central to the new
Russian art.58 “Art is the creation of life”,59 and “life itself is creation”,60 Andrei
Bely had proclaimed, emphasizing not only the creation of life but also a syn-
Iakovenko, 1909; Camille Flammarion: Bog v prirodge [God in Nature]. Sankt-Peterburg: Izd.
Obshchestvennaia Pol’za, 1869; Gustave Le Bon: Evoliutsiia materii [The Evolution of Matter].
Sankt-Peterburg: Semenov, 1914; O. Leman [Otto Lehmann]: Zhidkie kristally i teorii zhizni
[Liquid Crystals and the Theory of Life]. Odessa: Mathesis, 1906; Jacques Loeb: Dinamika
zhivogo veshchestva [The Dynamics of Living Beings]. Odessa: Mathesis, 1910; Petr D. Uspenskii:
Chetvertoe izmerenie: Opyt izsledovaniia oblasti neizmerimago [The Fourth Dimension: An
Experience in Exploring the Immeasurable]. Sankt-Peterburg: Novyi Chelovek, 1909 and Tertium
Organum: Kliuch k zagadkam mira [Tertium Organum: A Key to the Enigmas of the World]. Sankt-
Peterburg: Trud, 1911. See Mikhail Matiushin: Tvorcheskii put’ [My Creative Path], copy at Institut
russkoi literatury i iskusstva, 130.
54 Usenko: “Nachalo impressionizma v Rossii i filosofiia intuitivizma.” [The Beginning of Im-
pressionism in Russia and the Philosophy of Intuitivism], pp. 278–284, and Usenko: “E. Guro. Ha
puti k ‘dushevnomu impressionizmu’” [On the Path to a “Spiritual Impressionism”].
55 Usenko: “Nachalo impressionizma v Rossii i filosofiia intuitivizma” pp. 278–284.
56 Bobrinskaia: “Naturfilosofskie motivy v tvorchestve Eleny Guro”, pp. 59–178.
57 Flammarion: Dieu dans la nature [God in Nature], p. 493.
58 Gourianova: “Introduction II: On Elena Guro’s Criticism”, pp. 76. Paperno: “Introduction”,
pp. 1–11.
59 Bely: “Pesn’ zhizni.” [Song of Life], in Arabeski [Arabesques], p. 43. English in Paperno: “In-
troduction”, p. 8.
60 Andrei Bely: “Teatr i sovremennaia drama” [Theatre and Modern Drama], in Arabeski [Ara-
besques], p. 20. English in Paperno: “Introduction”, p. 8.
280 Isabel Wünsche
thesis of the two:61 Art eventually becomes life itself, and once art has fulfilled
its function as a life-giving force, it disappears as an independent ontological
category.62 Creative activity, according to the Symbolists, was “not contemplative,
but active […] Art is not the creation of images, but the creation of life.”63 Much
like Viacheslav Ivanov, Guro’s search for a formula for the fusion of art and life
was influenced by German Romanticism; a separation between the personal life
(zhizn) and creative activity (tvorchestvo) did not exist.
Guro’s artistic striving for a mystical communion between humanity and
Nature was also related to her interest in Scandinavian culture. She was familiar
with the literary works of Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg,64
the music of Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius, as well as the work of painters such
as Vilhelm Hammerskoi, Edvard Munch and Akseli Gallen-Kallela.65 The Scandi-
navian artists provided inspiration in terms of landscape and culture as well as
style, but above all, Guro shared with them a pantheist worldview and a folklor-
istic understanding of the secrets of Nature and human life.66 Her Neo-Romantic
turn toward Nature was closely related to the ‘Scandinavia boom’ in Russia in the
1890s and its influence on the Saint-Petersburg art scene.67 Guro saw in Scandina-
via a model of independence and boldness, of courage and joy of life – qualities
which she demanded of the new Russian art and poetry. Her deep rootedness
in the northern landscape and the inspiration she received from Scandinavian
culture found its expression in poems such as “Finskaia melodiia” (Finnish
Melody, 1910?) and “Finliandiia” (Finland, 1913), in paintings such as Skandina-
vskaia printsessa (Scandinavian Princess, 1910) and Utro velikanov (Morning of
the Giant, 1910), and in the landscape motifs of her drawings and watercolours.
61 Paperno: “Introduction”, pp. 2, 7.

62 Ibid., 8.
63 Ivanov: “Zavety simvolizma” [The Legacy of Symbolism], in Borozdy i mezhi [Furrows and
Lynchets], p. 139. English in Paperno: “Introduction”, p. 8.
64 Hausbacher: “… denn die Geschöpfe lieben Aufmerksame”, pp. 189–191.
65 She was familiar with Akseli Galen-Kallela’s illustrations of the Kalevala and Erik Weren-
skiold’s illustrations of Norwegian legends in the journal Mir iskusstva [World of Art]. See Ljun-
ggren: “Introduction I: Elena Guro’s Literary Prehistory”, p. 14, and Comini: “Nordic Luminism
and the Scandinavian Recasting of Impressionism”, pp. 274–313.
66 Nilsson: “Russia and the Myth of the North”, pp. 132–140; Elena Guro: Selected Prose and
Poetry, pp. 8–13.
67 Until World War I, the artistic exchange between Russia and Scandinavia was shaped by
the dream of a spiritually united North based on Russian and Scandinavian culture. See Stern-
in: Das Kunstleben Rußlands an der Wende vom neunzehnten zum zwanzigsten Jahrhundert,
pp. 134–140; Mukhina: Russko-skandinavskie khudozhestvennye sviazi kontsa 19 – nachala 20
veka [Russian-Scandinavian Artistic Relations at the End of the Nineteenth and the Beginning of
the Twentieth Centuries].
Organicism
Guro’s artistic work was closely intertwined with her understanding of the cre-
ative principles of Nature. The goal of her artistic, almost religious striving, she
explained, was to apprehend the World Soul in all its manifestations. To this
end, the artist must allow herself to become enveloped in the love that permeates
Nature, to become one with Nature, to create in the spirit of Nature, and to strive
toward a higher reality. The immediate and direct observation of Nature became
Guro’s pathway to a comprehension of the World Soul in its material manifes-
tations; her creative activity was shaped by an urge to express “the breathing
of earth and the filament of clouds”, to capture how “the pine trees make noise
in the distance […] the wind unfolds and agitates […] the universe breathes.”68
Guro’s poetic and artistic work was dominated by the organic forms drawn from
the elemental forces and vital processes of living Nature.
Guro’s striving to reveal the hidden movements and inner vitality of Nature
is most clearly visible in her painting, Rostiki: Kompozitsiia s tvetami i rasteni-
iami (Sprouts: Composition with Flowers and Plants), created between 1905 and
1907.69 In this almost monochromatic canvas she strove to capture the process of
plant growth. As Matyushin recalled, he and Guro discussed at the time “how to
show in a painting the hidden life, the inner forces that construct what is visible,
together with the movement that informs everything.”70 Guro’s focus on the
details of plant growth – the sprouting and unfurling of the leaves – reveals her
careful attention to organic life and the vital processes in the natural world.
Guro’s careful study of organic life forms and her empathy for all living crea-
tures can also be found in the depiction of trees, a frequent motive in her numer-
ous drawings and book illustrations. To her, they represented a link between
heaven and earth, symbolizing cosmic unity by allowing the earth to breathe
“through the trees into the nearby quiet skies.”71 Guro’s strong interest in Nature
extended beyond her worship of organic life forms; she also endowed the inor-
ganic with life and soul. A frequent motif in her paintings were the large boul-
68 Guro: Bednyi rytsar, in Kovtun: “Elena Guro. Poet i Khudozhnik”, p. 321. English in Banjanin:
“Nature and the City in the Works of Elena Guro”, p. 233.
69 Guro: Rostiki: Kompozitsiia s tvetami i rasteniiami [Sprouts: Composition with Flowers and
Plants], 1905–07, oil on canvas, 71.5 x 142.0 cm, State Museum of the History of Saint-Petersburg.
See Klotz: Matjuschin und die Leningrader Avantgarde, p. 172, cat. No. 41.
70 Matiushin: Tvotcheskii put’, p. 52. English in Experiment/ Eksperiment: A Journal of Russian
Culture, vol. 1 (1995), p. 213.
71 Guro: Zapisnaia knizhka, 1910–13, Institut russkoi literatury i iskusstva, F 631, 1.39. English in
Banjanin: “Nature and the City in the Work of Elena Guro”, p. 234.
282 Isabel Wünsche
ders of the northern countryside upon which she sat to rest and draw, as can be
seen in her painting, Kamen na beregu finskogo zaliva (Stone at the Finnish Gulf
Coast, 1910).72 By means of colour and form, Guro endowed an otherwise largely
unspectacular object with a sense of life and soul, thus making it an integral part
of its natural, organic environment. Her attention to such inanimate matter cor-
responded to her belief in an emotional resonance of all aspects of Nature. In a
letter to Nadezhda Fedotova, she explained: “It is not at all by chance that I return
constantly to inanimate objects […] Each object has its own soul, either put into it
by its creator, the author, or received […] from surrounding life.”73
Guro believed that the artists had been sent into the world to reveal the
secrets of the earth, to protect Nature, and to create new life, as “the giver, not
the taker of life.”74 In this, she was again heavily influenced by both Romanticism
and Symbolism. The artist was simultaneously the chosen one and the outcast –
one of the few sensitive souls who could hear the voices of plants and animals,
could recognize the soul of the world in all creatures, was able to create works
of art in harmony with the secrets and rhythms of Nature as well as the laws of
the universe, but also someone who was destined to suffer in a hostile, mate-
rial world. The artist’s true friends and allies were the creatures of Mother Earth
because “the creatures cherish the attentive ones”, and only to them do they
reveal their secrets and share their love.75 Guro cultivated a maternal devotion
toward the small, insignificant things of this world,76 the weak and helpless,77
the wise fools, the idealistic dreamers and good-hearted souls, whose heightened
aesthetic sense, although masked by an intentional passivity, attracted Guro.
72 Guro: Kamen na beregu finskogo zaliva [Stone at the Finnish Gulf Coast], 1910, gouache, gold
and silver bronze on paper, 11.6 x 14.9 cm, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. See Weiss: Von Malewitsch
bis Kabakov, p. 124, cat. 60; Stanisławski and Brockhaus: Europa, Europa: Das Jahrhundert der
Avantgarde in Mittel- und Osteuropa [Europe, Europe: The Century of the Avant-Garde in Central
and Eastern Europe], p. 186.
73 Guro: Letter to Nadezhda Fedotova, Tsentralnyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusst-
va, f. 134, op. 1, ed. khr. 23, l. 4. English in Banjanin: “Nature and the City in the Works of Elena
Guro”, p. 240.
74 Guro: Nebesnye verbliuzhata, p. 14. English in Guro: The Little Camels of the Sky, p. 19.
75 Guro: Bednyi rytsar, in Elena Guro: Selected Prose and Poetry, pp. 152–160. For this notion of
the poet see also Guro: The Little Camels of the Sky, pp. 19, 44.
76 See Jensen: Russian Futurism, Urbanism, and Elena Guro, pp. 56–57.
77 Guro: Sharmanka, p. 69. English in Banjanin: “Nature and the City in the Works of Elena
Guro”, p. 235.
Synthetism
Guro’s striving for purity and immediacy found expression in her synthesis of
art and literature. Most of her works were characterized by direct interrelations
between word, image and sound. Matyushin referred to Guro’s artistic efforts to
achieve a harmonious balance between colour and form through musical-con-
structive means as “syntheticism”. He recalled: “I have never encountered poetry
and drawing that were so closely interwoven. When she was working on the
wording, she was at the same time drawing. When she was painting, she wrote
poetry in the margins. She began this in her childhood […] It was something like a
‘sunny mixture’ of seeing and hearing.”78 Guro created pictures with her prose and
poetry and told stories in her drawings and paintings; her poetry consists of inter-
woven images and sounds; her paintings combine impressionist sketches with
primitivist simplifications of form and synthetic-musical colour compositions.
This close relationship between her literary work and visual art and the way
in which these complement one another becomes particularly evident in her
book illustrations. Around 1906 she turned to pen and ink, which brought about a
fundamental change in her graphic style and led to an increasingly more abstract
formal language. Using brush and ink, Guro developed a fluid style with soft,
flowing lines and solid forms of great inner coherence and clarity. Illustrations
such as Zimnii peizazh (Winter Landscape, 1910; see Fig. 2), with its sparse and
clear linearity, call to mind Chinese ink drawings.
In her paintings, which drew on an impressionistic approach and included
stylized representations of Nature, Guro strove for a synthesis of painterly and
musical means. She used natural colours, organic forms and plastic simplicity
as a means to express life in Nature in its most quintessential way. In her use
of subtle colour nuances and shadows, she sought to endow matter with life, to
capture the fabric and liveliness of Nature, and to make substance and structure
weightless – the result gently sparkling, delicately coloured treasures intended to
capture the breath of the pines, the earth, and the clouds and to achieve a new
harmony between humanity and Nature: “I am building a palace out of the rays of
heavenly light. Those who reach it will be blessed with a pale green, soft pink or
liquid blue heavenly crystal. And the vestments are of a delicate silver fleece.”79
78 Matiushin: Tvorcheskii put’, p. 62, as cited by Evgenii Binevich in Guro: Iz zapisnykh knizhek,
p. 3.
79 Elena Guro: Diary entry of June 5, 1911, RO GPB, f. 1116, ed. khr. 3, in Elena Guro: Selected
Prose and Poetry, p. 63. See also Kovtun: “Elena Guro: Poet i khudozhnik”, p. 323.
284 Isabel Wünsche
Fig. 2. Elena Guro: Zimnii peizazh (Winter Landscape, 1910).
Guro: The Spiritual Mother of the Organic School
Guro never invented a particular style or school; nor did she set forth a new concept
of art. Her religious devotion to Nature and her motherly affection for all of crea-
tion, as well as her empathy for the helpless and weak made her a unique person
in the eyes of her contemporaries – admired and misunderstood at the same time:
“In possession of the key to the enigmas of the world, she gazed meekly down on
the vain wisdom of life from the heights of secrets that were hers alone.”80 A gentle
80 Livshits: Polutoraglazyi strelets, pp. 405–407. English in Livshits: The One and A-Half-Eyed
Archer, p.124.
and introverted person, she lived according to her own standards, beliefs and
convictions and planted the seeds of her ideas about Nature, art and life in the
hearts and minds of her friends and colleagues, thus having a lasting effect on the
artistic developments of Kamensky, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Malevich, Maya
kovsky and Matyushin.
Guro’s premature death in 1913 was a great loss to the Saint-Petersburg
avant-garde. Jeremy Howard attributes the dissolution of the Union of Youth to
it.81 She was commemorated by the artists’ group in its 1913 productions. The
anthology Troe (The Three, 1913) with texts by Guro, Khlebnikov and Kruche-
nykh, an introduction by Matyushin and illustrations by Malevich was pub-
lished in September 1913 and dedicated to her memory. The seventh and final
exhibition of the Union of Youth, held on Nevskii Prospekt in Saint-Petersburg
from 10 November 1913 to 14 January 1914, included a posthumous exhibition
of her work.82
In her poem “Obeshchaite!” (Promise!), published posthumously in The
Three, Guro reminded her colleagues once more of the artist’s mission: respon-
sibility to Nature and humanity, and moral obligation to all of God’s creation:
Swear, you distant and near, who write on paper with your ink […] on clouds with your gaze
[…] on canvas with your paint – swear, never to betray, never once to slander the beautiful,
newly formed face of your dream. Be it friendship, be it faith in people or in your songs.
A dream! You gave it life – and the dream lives – that which we’ve created no longer belongs
to us, as we no longer belong to ourselves!83
After Guru’s death, the spiritual unity between art and Nature that she celebrated
in her works was revived in the worship of her person and œuvre by young artists,
who gathered at her grave near the village of Uusikirkko, and by Matyushin, who
placed a bench there with a built-in shrine for her works.84 To commemorate the
anniversary of Guro’s death, a small exhibition of her works was held at the Dom
Literatorov in Leningrad in 1919.85 In the 1920s, Matyushin and his students per-
formed her plays Nishchii Arlekin (Poor Harlekin, 1909), V zakrytoi chashe (In A
Closed Bowl, 1910), Don Kikhot (Don Quixote, 1911), Osennii son (An Autumnal
81 Howard: The Union of Youth, 179.

82 See Soiuz Molodezhi: Katalog vystavki kartin [Union of Youth. Exhibition catalogue]. Sankt-Pe-
terburg 1913–14.
83 Guro: “Obeshchaite!” [Promise!], in Troe, p. 96. English in Guro: The Little Camels of the Sky,
p. 102.
85 Spandikov: “Vystavka E. Guro”, p. 3; and “E. Guro”, p. 2.
286 Isabel Wünsche
Dream, 1912) and Nebesnye verbliuzhata (The Baby Camels of the Sky, 1912–13) as
experimental Gesamtkunstwerke.86
Guro was the spiritual mother of the Organic School; her worldview and her
art were rooted in a subjective-emotional experience of Nature, her spirituality
and a holistic understanding of the world, her philosophy of Nature and her
musical approach to colour were the starting point for Matyushin and the emer-
gence of his concept of Organic Culture.
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Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj
Nina Henke-Meller and Ukrainian Futurism
Abstract: This essay recounts the life of Nina Henke-Meller, her career in art and
her brief relationship with the Ukrainian Futurist Movement. She was closely con-
nected with several major avant-garde figures such as Oleksandra Ekster and the
cottage crafts industry in the Ukrainian countryside, helping to fuse modernist
trends and tradition in the field of decorative arts. She was also closely involved
in the theatre (stage and costume designs) and the graphic arts. Suprematism
was an early influence in her work, but her work for the Futurists moved in the
direction of Constructivism.
Keywords: Graphic design, Suprematism, avant-garde theatre
Women artists and painters played a prominent rôle in the Ukrainian avant-garde
just before and after the Russian Revolution. Consider, for example, individuals
such as Oleksandra Ekster (Alexandra Exter), Bronislava Nijinska, Ievheniia Pry-
byl’s’ka, Natalia Davydova, Maria Syniakova, to name just a few. Suprematism,
Cubo-Futurism, Art Nouveau and (Neo)-Primitivism were among some of the
first manifestations of the new art. Ekster, Prybyl’s’ka, and Davydova were also
known for blending Ukrainian folk design with the latest contemporary artistic
trends.1 The name of Nina Henke-Meller belongs among the latter.
The Ukrainian Futurist movement (1914–1930), led by Mykhail’ Semenko, was
chiefly an enterprise of male poets and prose writers; it never had any prominent
women adherents.2 Nina Henke-Meller was the exception, but even her relation-
ship to Panfuturism (as the Ukrainian movement was called) was relatively brief
and mostly marginal. Nevertheless, she did leave one prominent mark on the
movement – a cover designed for a Futurist literary anthology, Zhovtnevyi zbirnyk
panfuturystiv (Panfuturists’ October Collection, 1923). The cover (see Fig. 1) testi-
fied not only to her own artistic breadth and evolution but also to the obsessive
care with which Futurists pursued the graphic design of their publications.
Henke-Meller was born in Moscow in 1893 during the waning years of the
Russian Empire and died in Kyiv in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in
1 Mel’nyk: Ukrainian Modernism, 1910–1930, pp. 115–118; Makaryk and Tkacz: Modernism in

Kyiv, pp. 170–176; 298–301; 311–319.
2 See Ilnytzkyj: Ukrainian Futurism.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0015
1954. According to details provided by Sergei P. Papeta,3 she completed her early
schooling in a private gymnasium in 1912, after which she became a teacher of
Russian and History. A year later, she was employed as an instructor of history,
geography and draftsmanship in a women’s school in the village of Skoptsi,
which was known later (from 1946) as Veselynivka, now located in the Kyiv dis-
trict. It was in Skoptsi that she received her actual art training from Ievheniia
Prybyl’s’ka. Henke-Meller and Prybyl’s’ka are described as playing “key rôles
in connecting local artisans with figures from the art world, and in organizing
exhibitions that stimulated societal interest in decorative art”.4 She also studied
with Ekster in her famous Kyiv studio, becoming Ekster’s assistant in fulfilling
orders from a Moscow textile factory. She quickly graduated to designing fabrics,
costumes and stage panels for Moscow’s Chamber (Kamernyi) Theatre, which
was directed by the Ukrainian-born Alexander Tairov. In particular, she assisted
Exter in her Cubist designs for Tairov’s staging of Innokentii Anennskii’s Famira
Kifared (Thamira Khytharedes) at the Kamernyi Theatre (1916).
From 1915, she was also the director and head artist of an artisanal centre
in the village of Verbivka (then part of the Poltava region), founded by Natalia
Davydova, which became a magnet for the Suprematists, a group with whom
Henke-Meller entertained close connections. Davydova, Exter and Henke-Meller
organized an “Exhibition of Contemporary Decorative Arts of the South of Russia”
in Moscow’s Le Mercier (Lemerse) Gallery, which featured the work of Ukrainian
peasant women from Skoptsi and Verbivka based on designs created by leading
avant-garde artists. A second exhibition of this nature, organized by Davydova
and Henke-Meller, took place at Moscow’s Mikhailova Art Salon in 1917.5
After the Bolshevik Revolution, Henke-Meller was immersed in the avant-
garde artistic life of Kyiv. She married Vadym Meller in 1919, a man who would
shortly be recognized as one of Ukraine’s major painters, stage and costume
designers. He took part in Paris exhibitions in the years 1912–19146 and in 1919–21
he created costume sketches for Bronislava Nijinska’s ballets, for example, Mar-
riage of Figaro and Metr Patlen (1919).7 Among his more famous costumes designs
3 Papeta: “Nina Henke: Vid narodnoho suprematyzmu do avanhardyzmu vydovyshch” and

“Nina Henke-Meller: Vid narodnoho suprematyzmu do radyans’koho ahitpropu.”
4 Shkandrij: “The Genius of Vadym Meller”, p. 81.
5 Papeta: “Nina Henke-Meller: Vid narodnoho suprematyzmu do radyans’koho ahitpropu”,
p. 125.
6 See Krasyl’nikova: “Oleksandra Ekster i Vadym Meller”, p.106.
7 See Shkandrij: “The Genius of Vadym Meller”, p. 79, 83, 84. See also Ratanova: “Bronislava
Nijinska and Her École de Mouvement”, p. 314.
294 Oleh S. Ilnytzkyi
were the “Assyrian Dancer” and “A Dancer in Blue.”8 Apparently, Vadym and
Nina met in Ekster’s studio.9 Henke-Meller herself continued to be professionally
active on many levels, especially in the decorative arts and the graphic design of
print materials and posters. It is the latter activity that brought her in contact with
the Ukrainian Futurists. She became the head artist for the short-lived Panfuturist
publishing house Hol’fshtrom (Gulfstream). In 1926, she and her husband moved
to Kharkiv, where Les’ Kurbas, Ukraine’s preeminent avant-garde theatre director,
was making a major impact with his Berezil’ troupe. Both Mellers contributed to
the designs of Kurbas’s theatrical productions.
Oddly, there seem to be only two colour reproductions extant of Hen-
ke-Meller’s Suprematist works, both dating from 1916. Dmytro Horbachov first
published them in Ukrains’kyi avanhard 1910–1930 rokiv; they appeared again (in
a better resolution) in Ukrainian Modernism, 1910–1930. These works reveal an
aesthetic almost identical to Malevich’s, featuring suspended rectilinear geomet-
ric forms in shades of red, gold and off-white; one of the compositions also sports
two partial ovals. Unlike Malevich’s generally white or flat backgrounds, Hen-
ke-Meller’s shapes float against a textured, linen-like backdrop. Under closer
examination, these two works show that they are not in fact paintings but col-
lages of sorts, consisting of pieces of silk-embroidered fabrics, materials that link
them to the handicrafts of the Ukrainian countryside.10
Henke-Meller’s other extant work is a radical departure from this early Supre-
matism. It is a cover for Zhovtnevyi zbirnyk panfuturystiv (Panfuturists’ October
Collection. Kyiv: Hol’fshtrom, 1923), a paean, written by eight male poets, cele-
brating not only the October Revolution but also, as one visual poem put it, the
“sixth anniversary of the liberation of nations”.11 This was an official publication
of the Association of Panfuturists or Aspanfut. Ostensibly, the content consisted
of ‘poetry’, but many texts were actually slogans, designated as plakaty (posters),
in a publication that set out to highlight the graphic aspects of the ‘word’. All
the works were overtly political and characterized by an inventive layout and
typography. On the inside of the publication, the arrangement of the texts, called
‘montage’, was attributed to two Futurists: Nik (Mykola) Bazhan, a very talented
young man who went on to become one of Soviet Ukraine’s great poets after
8 See reproductions in Mel’nyk: Ukrainian Modernism, 1910–1930, pp. 214–221.

9 Papeta: “Nina Henke-Meller: Vid narodnoho suprematyzmu do radyans’koho ahitpropu”,
p. 126.
10 Mel’nyk: Ukrainian Modernism, 1910–1930, plates 17 and 18.
11 A good colour reproduction of the cover appears in Rowell and Wye The Russian Avant-Garde
Book, p. 207.
undergoing a radical change of heart due to political pressure; and Geo Shku-
rupii, Semenko’s right-hand man in all things Futurist. Henke-Meller was credited
for the cover. By undertaking this work for the Futurists she was in a way paving
the way for her husband, Vadym Meller, to become the designer of the first issues
of the Ukrainian Futurists journal Nova generatsiia (New generation, 1927–1930).
Fig. 1. Front and back Cover of Zhovtnevyi zbirnyk panfuturystiv (1923).
Henke-Meller’s cover was clearly based on a Constructivist and/or Bauhaus style,

prefiguring some of the book design work of Ukrainian artist Vasyl’ Ermilov. It
also reflected the changing orientation of Ukrainian Futurists, who throughout
the 1920s were increasingly drawn to the Dada and Expressionist art of Weimar
Germany. Henke-Meller’s cover uses only one colour – vivid red. Some letters
are thick and heavy; others are hollowed out, empty, appearing in outline form.
Both Cyrillic and Latin script is used, another testament to Ukrainian Futurism,
which a year earlier had agitated for the abandonment of Cyrillic as being too old
fashioned and proposed writing Ukrainian in Latin transliteration. Some Cyrillic
letters were highly stylized (the ‘Z’ and ‘K’, for example, in the word ‘Zbirnyk’
[Collection]), are almost unrecognizable. The foregrounded words ‘October Col-
lection’ create a large and dynamic ‘X’. ‘Pan-Futurists’ (hyphenated and in the
genitive plural), along with the year ‘1923’, occupy the background. ‘Kyiv’, the
place of publication and ‘Golfstrom’, the publisher, are rendered in smaller letters
that stand discretely on the right side.
296 Oleh S. Ilnytzkyi
There was also a back cover to this collection, which echoed the political
content inside. It was dominated by a bold, red word ‘Rur’ (i.e., the German Ruhr
region), then a hot topic in the Soviet Union because it had been occupied by
France and Belgium in 1923. The two large Cyrillic ‘R’s serve as brackets, shel-
tering two smaller words (vsi na) that complete the slogan: “Everyone [go] to the
Ruhr.”
Bibliography
Horbachov, Dmytro, ed.: Ukrains’kyi avanhard 1910–1930 rokiv: Al’bom. Kyiv: Mystetstvo, 1996.
Ilnytzkyj, Oleh Stepan: Ukrainian Futurism, 1914–1930: History, Theory, and Practice.
Cambridge/MA: Harvard University, 1997.
Krasyl’nikova, Ol’ha Vasyl’evna: “Oleksandra Ekster i Vadym Meller.” Platon O. Bilets’kyi, et.
al., eds.: Ukrains’ke mystetstvo ta arkhitektura kintsia XIX – pochatku XX st. Kyiv: Naukva
dumka, 2000. 106–118.
Makaryk, Irena Rima, and Virlana Tkacz, eds.: Modernism in Kyiv: Kyiv/Kyïv/Kiev/Kijów/Ḳieṿ:
Jubilant Experimentation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
Mel’nyk, Anatolii, ed.: Ukrains’kyi modernism, 1910–1930 = Ukrainian Modernism, 1910–1930.
Exhibition catalogue. Chicago: Chicago Cultural Center, 22 July – 15 October 2006; New
York: The Ukrainian Museum, 4 November 2006 – 11 March 2007. Kyiv: Halereia, 2006.
Papeta, Sergei: “Nina Henke: Vid narodnoho suprematyzmu do avanhardyzmu vydovyshch.”
Pryhody avanhardu: Vadym Meller, Nina Henke-Meller, Nina Vyetrova-Robinson. Kiev:
Natsional’nyi khudozhnyi muzei Ukrainy, 2004. 48–66.
Papeta, Sergei: “Nina Henke-Meller: Vid narodnoho suprematyzmu do radyans’koho ahitpropu.”
Visnyk Kharkivs’koi derzhavnoi akademii dyzainu i mystetstv 2 (2006): 221–227.
Ratanova, Maria: “Bronislava Nijinska and Her École de Mouvement.” Irena R. Makaryk, and
Virlana Tkacz, eds.: Modernism in Kyiv: Kiev/Kyïv/Kiev/Kijów/Ḳieṿ. Jubilant Experi-
mentation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 311–320.
Rowell, Margit, and Deborah Wye, eds.: The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910–1934. New York:
Museum of Modern Art, 2002.
Shkandrij, Myroslav: “The Genius of Vadym Meller: Dance and Decorative Arts in the Ukrainian
Avant-Garde.” Nelli Korniienko, et. al., eds.: Materialy naukovoi konferentsii v ramkakh
mizhnarodnoho mul’tymediinoho proektu “Les’ Kurbas i svitovyi teatral’nyi kontekst”,
prysvyachenoi 125-richchyu vid dnia narodzhennia Lesia Kurbasa. Kyiv: Ministerstvo
kul’tury Ukrainy; DP “Ukrains’kyi informatsiino-servisnyi tsentr kul’tury i turyzmu”;
Natsional’nyi tsentr teatral’noho mystetstva im. Lesia Kurbasa, 2012. 79–85.
Donatella Di Leo
Eva Amendola Kühn (Magamal): A Futurist
of Lithuanian Extraction
Abstract: This essay assembles biographical information on the Futurist activ-
ist Eva Kühn and investigates her contribution to F.T. Marinetti’s movement.
After leaving her native Lithuania in the last years of the nineteenth century and
studying in Germany and Switzerland, Eva Kühn settled in Italy, where she met
and then married the socialist journalist Giovanni Amendola. She worked as a
language teacher and highly respected translator, but suffered from mental dis-
orders that did not find any adequate treatment in the psychiatric institutions
of Italy. In Florence, Rome and Milan she became familiar with Futurist circles.
She greatly admired Marinetti and chose the name of a character from his novel
Mafarka as her literary pseudonym: Magamal. She contributed essays and poems
to Futurist periodicals, wrote an autobiographical novel, Eva the Futurist, and
sketched out her notions of a Futurist woman in the drama, The Woman of Every-
one and Nobody. However, like her film scenario, Colourful Symphony, these
works remained unpublished. After the First World War, she was active in the
Futurist Political Party and campaigned for the Futurist-Fascist alliance in the
1919 General Election. Due to her contacts in Anarchist and anti-Fascist circles
she took an increasingly distanced view of Mussolini and supported her hus-
band’s oppositional course, which in 1926 cost him his life.
Keywords: Futurism and politics, Roman circle of Futurists, Florence circle of

Futurists, L’Italia futurista, Theosophy, Giovanni Amendola, Arthur Schopen-
hauer, Annie Besant
Eva Kühn in Lithuania (1880–97)
The subject of this essay was born on 21 January 1880 as Eva Oskarovna Kiun, the
daughter of Oskar Kiun1 and Emmy Wittman. At that time, Lithuania belonged to
the Russian Empire and was officially called Western Russia (Zapadnaia Rossiia).
1 Оскар Кюн is an approximate transcription of Oskar Kühn. Although the Kühn family had
been Protestant since the nineteenth century, they appear to have had a Jewish origin, as Emilio
Sereni (1907–1977), Jewish writer and communist politician, declared to Eva Kühn’s son, Giorgio
Amendola. When Giorgio visited Vilnius, in 1971, he discovered that there was no family with
that name living in the city any longer. Eva’s relatives and their offspring had all emigrated, to
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0016
298 Donatella Di Leo
Russification measures were imposed in 1795 under Catherine the Great; in 1840,
the Lithuanian Statute of 1588 was abolished and the Russian legal code was
introduced.2 The capital, Eva’s hometown Vilnius, was Russified and the Lithu-
anian language came to be used only by the lower strata of society.3 Therefore,
Eva Kühn not only possessed Russian nationality but also spoke Russian as a
native language; however, her mother tongue was German, soon to be comple-
mented by French, English and Italian.4 Her mother Emmy had been educated at
a college for girls in Moscow, whereas her father Oskar had studied in Estonia at
the University of Tartu (Kaiserliche Universität zu Dorpat) and worked as a teacher
in a Realschule (technical secondary school) in Vilnius. He compiled a manual
for the learning of the German language, had a knack for creative writing, loved
music and was a great admirer of the German Romantic poet, Heinrich Heine. He
appears to have had a great influence on her daughter, as in 1960 she confessed
that, as a teenager, she knew by heart “almost the whole Buch der Lieder”.5 Oskar
Kiun’s death in 1893 left a tragic impression on Eva. Around that time, she delved
into Schopenhauer’s Parerga and Paralipomena (Appendices and Omissions,
1851) and later considered the philosopher to having been the “very first master”
in her life.6
Russia, Canada and the rest of the world. See Amendola: Una scelta di vita, pp. 56–57. This book
is the main source for Eva Kühn’s biography outlined in this essay.
2 On the topic of Russification see Weeks: “Russification and the Lithuanians, 1863–1905”; Stal-
iūnas: Making Russians: Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and Belarus after
1863; Thaden: Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914.
3 During the First World War, Vilnius and the rest of Lithuania was occupied by the German
Army. After the withdrawal of German forces, the city was briefly controlled by Poland and then
by Soviet forces. During the Polish-Soviet War and the Lithuanian Wars of Independence, it
changed hands and was ceded to Lithuania in 1920. Following a mutiny by the Polish General
Lucjan Żeligowski and the parliamentary elections to the Diet of Wilno, the city was officially
annexed by the state of Poland in 1922 and belonged to Poland in the interwar period.
4 Eva used her polyglot background to translate works from Russian, German and Romanian.
With her friends, she often spoke in French, and her correspondence with Giovanni Amendola
was conducted entirely in French.
5 Kühn Amendola: Vita con Giovanni Amendola, p. 44.
6 Ibid., p. 44. She translated chapters 15–31 of the second volume, as well as a treatise of 1813,
Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (La quadruplice radice del princi-
pio di ragion sufficiente. Lanciano: Carabba, 1912).
Fig. 1. Map of Lithuania in 1919. The hatched area periodically belonged to Russia or Poland
As we can see, Eva came from an educated family well integrated into Russian
culture, but also cherished her German heritage and her parents’ Waldensian
beliefs.7 At the age of seventeen, she went to England to work as a governess
and taught private lessons of German and Russian. In the same year (1897),
she obtained a diploma for teaching English and moved to Saint-Petersburg,
where she taught English in a commercial school and German in a high school
for girls.
7 The Waldensians, named after Peter Waldo (c.1140 – c.1218), had been declared ‘heretical’ by
the Catholic Church and were widely persecuted in Europe. In the sixteenth century they joined
the Reformed Church and became a Protestant denomination.
Studies and settlement in Italy
In 1832, the University of Vilnius was closed by the Tsarist authorities as it had
become a centre of irredentist agitation during the November 1831 Uprising
against Russia. For that reason, as attested by Giorgio Amendola, Eva enrolled
first at the University of Leipzig, then in Dresden, London and Zurich, where she
registered to study medicine, but then decided to attend a liberal-arts college.8
During her stay in Zurich, thanks to an essay on Henry Thoreau, later pub-
lished in Italy,9 she won a prize of one-hundred francs, which allowed her to
move to Italy.10 She left Zurich in 1903 and moved to Rome in order to improve
her Italian and to earn a degree in Comparative Literature. She began to frequent
the Roman Theosophical Society, where she met the journalist, Giovanni Amen-
dola (1882–1926). In March 1904, at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society,
Eva gave a lecture on “Arthur Schopenhauer’s Transcendental Optimism”, which
seemed a contradiction in terms, given that the philosopher was considered a
champion of pessimism.11 However, in an autobiographical twist, Eva found
solace and comfort from the material and moral anxieties of her life by interpret-
ing Schopenhauer’s thought rising from an earthly pessimistic to a transcenden-
tal optimism.
Towards the end of 1904, Eva became highly critical of Theosophy, not least
because of a disagreement she had with Annie Besant:12
I was struck by [brain] fever13 the same evening when I got into a dispute with the famous
Annie Besant at the Theosophical Society. I had agued with her because she asserted that
it was futile to struggle against certain temptations, saying that it was necessary to free
oneself from evil by realizing it in practice. I stood up and courageous responded to the
majestic and scornful Besant that her theory was lethal. Besant was dressed all in white, she
had white hair and looked like the Pope: she gave me such a menacing look that I fainted,
thunderstruck.14
8 Amendola: Una scelta di vita, pp. 14–15. There is currently no information available concerning
the subjects of her studies in Leipzig and Dresden, nor about the exact dates.
9 Kühn: “Enrico D. Thoreau e la sua religione naturale.”
11 Eva had previously given the talk at the University of Zurich. It was published in Coenobium
6 (1907): 84–92.
12 Annie Besant (1847–1933) succeeded Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891) as the spiritual leader of
the Theosophical Society and became its secretary in 1907. She acted as a patron for Giovanni
Amendola.
13 The term “febbre cerebrale” (brain fever) was used in nineteenth-century psychological liter-
ature to describe an illness brought about by a severe emotional upset.
14 “La febbre mi scoppiò la sera stessa di una conferenza della celebre Annie Besant, presso la
Fig. 2. Eva Amendola Kühn
Recalling this incident when arranging her husband’s correspondence, Eva Kühn
declared: “But I didn’t feel at all attracted to Theosophy; indeed, I believed that
Theosophers were neither truly religious souls, nor philosophical minds.”15 This
conviction, referring to the years 1904–05, is confirmed by her review of the
società Teosofica. Avevo polemizzato con lei, che aveva sostenuto l’inutilità di combattere certe
tentazioni, asserendo che bisognava liberarsi dal male realizzandolo in pratica: io mi ero alzata e
avevo detto energicamente alla maestosa e sprezzante Besant che quella sua teoria era micidiale.
La Besant vestiva tutta di bianco, aveva i capelli bianchi, e somigliava al Pontefice: mi rivolse
uno sguardo minaccioso, che mi fece cadere in deliquio, come fulminata.” Kühn Amendola: Vita
con Giovanni Amendola, p. 48.
15 “Ma io non mi sentivo per nulla attratta dalla teosofia: ritenevo infatti che i teosofi non erano
né anime veramente religiose, né menti filosofiche.” Kühn Amendola: Vita con Giovanni Amen-
dola, p. 46.
Futurist novel, Sam Dunn è morto (Sam Dunn is Dead, 1915), by Bruno Corra.
Writing under the pseudonym ‘Magamal’, Eva Kühn considered Theosophy to be
old-fashioned, stating that
our Futurist conception has nothing in common either with magic or Theosophy or occult-
ism. I hate and despise all this stuff because it is antiquated to the highest degree and
reflects a world view in which everything is divided into Good and Evil, Spirit and Matter,
Christ and the Devil.16
Eva / Magamal disapproved of Theosophy and became receptive to new ideas

propagated by the Futurist movement. Similarly, her admirer Giovanni Amendola
changed from being a staunch supporter of Theosophy to an intellectual who
immersed himself in philosophical studies.17 In the same article, she vented her
grudge against Besant who, in her view, not only caused her departure from the
Roman Theosophical Society but also her mental illness and unjust internment
in psychiatric care facilities:
13 years ago, when locked up by mistake for one year in a mental asylum, I realized with
clarity and cogency events which I then kept hidden in the most remote corner of my con-
sciousness and which all of a sudden jumped out of your [Corra’s] book in a clear and
simple manner. [...] There is a gulf between the ideas raised by Corra in Sam Dunn is Dead
and the by now rancid and outdated Theosophy. I personally know the leaders of this reli-
gious-philosophical amalgamation, their Besant etc., and I don’t like to see them cited any
longer in L’Italia futurista. They are charlatans without any modern sensibility – they have
pilfered all their stuff from the books of Indians without ever admitting so. [...] Nowadays,
the sun of Futurism is shining and no longer that of ‘occult’ doctrines.18
In September 1905, Eva returned to Vilnius and travelled several weeks with her
brother Robert to Gomel in Belorussia. In November, she accepted a teacher’s
16 “[…] la nostra concezione futurista non ha nulla in comune né colla magia né colla teosofia,
né coll’occultismo – odio e disprezzo tutta questa roba – sono cose “passatiste” al massimo gra-
do, perché rispecchiano una concezione del mondo dove tutto è diviso in Male e Bene, in Spirito
e Materia, in Cristo e Diavolo.” Magamal: “Sam Dunn è morto”, p. 3.
18 “Un 13 anni fa, quando rinchiuso per sbaglio per un anno nel manicomio, intuii con chiarez-
za e con logicità eventi che poi ho tenuto nascosto nell’angolo il più remoto della mia coscienza
e che ad un tratto mi balzò fuori dal tuo [Corra] libro in un modo così limpido e semplice. […] Vi
è un abisso fra le idee agitate da Corra col Sam Dunn è morto e la ormai rancida e trapassata te-
osofia. Conosco personalmente i capi di questo miscuglio religioso-filosofico, i loro Besant ecc.,
e non vorrei che siano citati più sull’Italia futurista, sono ciarlatani, senza nessuna sensibilità
moderna – hanno rubato senza mai confessarlo tutta la loro roba dai libri degli indiani. […] arde
il sole rosso del futurismo e nulla più di “occulto”!”. Magamal: “Sam Dunn è morto”, p. 3.
appointment in the same Realschule where her father had worked.19 The following
summer she was joined by Giovanni Amendola, who had formed a strong friend-
ship with the Lithuanian poet Jurgis Baltrušaitis (1873–1944), who belonged to a
group of Russian Symbolists (Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Viacheslav
Ivanov20) and published in Vesy (The Balance, 1904–09) several articles by Gio-
vanni Amendola. Having spent time with Eva in Lithuania, Giovanni stayed as a
guest at Baltrušaitis’s dacha in Moscow, as is evidenced by a letter he sent to Eva
in August 1906.21
On 25 January 1907, Giovanni and Eva were married in the Waldensian
Church of Rome. The early years of their marriage were marked by economic
hardship. When Eva published the essay, “Il nuovo metodo intuitivo dell’inseg-
namento delle lingue moderne” (The New Intuitive Method of Modern Languages
Teaching), in the journal Italia moderna (1907) and won the patronage of Senator
Oreste Tommasini, she became a teacher of English in a female teachers’ training
college (the Scuola Normale Femminile “Margherita di Savoia”). The same year,
she accepted an employment as translator at the International Institute of Agri-
culture.22
In 1909, she visited Vilnius again, this time with her son Giorgio, who had
been born in 1907. In 1910, she gave birth to her second child, Ada, and in Decem-
ber of that year the Amendola family moved to Florence, where Giovanni had
been offered the post of librarian at the Philosophical Library in piazza Donatello,
founded by the American Theosophist Julia H. Scott in 1903. Under the direction
of Giovanni Amendola, the institution became a meeting place of bohemians
of the new generation, including Giovanni Papini, with whom Amendola pub-
lished in 1911 one of the most influential Italian journals of the epoch, L’anima.
Eva Amendola Kühn thus came into contact with the cultural circles of La voce

20 See Giovanni Amendola’s letter to Eva Kühn from Rome, dated 26 December 1905: “J’ai en-
suite beaucoup de connaissances littéraires; mais pour la plupart ce sont des connaissances et
pas des amitiés. Parmi les amitiés il y a celle avec Jurghis Baltrusciatis, un lithuanien qui passe
son hiver à Rome avec sa femme et son enfant, un ange d’enfant innocent, tout blond, qui a deux
ans et demi; et qui est venu tout de suite à ma rencontre la première fois qu’il m’a vu, avec pleine
confiance, en me donnant la main avec gravité. […] Il s’en suit que je suis devenu une institu-
tion omniprésente dans la maison Baltrusciatis […]. Baltrusciatis est écrivain, sa femme est de
Moscou, très naïve et très bonne”. Kühn Amendola: Vita con Giovanni Amendola, p. 76.
21 Kühn Amendola: Vita con Giovanni Amendola, pp. 105–107. Later, Eva translated verses by the
Lithuanian poet into Italian and published them in Giuseppe Vannicola’s Prose: Rivista d’arte e
d’idee. See also Jurgis Baltrušaitis: La scala terrestre: Versi. Transl. Eva Kühn-Amendola. Firenze:
Baldoni, 1912.
Fig. 3. Eva Amendola Kühn and the children Giorgio, Ada and Antonio
(The Voice, 1908–16) and the nascent Futurist scene around the brothers Arnaldo
and Bruno Ginanni, Ardengo Soffici, Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli etc. Giuseppe
Prezzolini offered to publish a volume with Eva’s translations of Dostoevskian
short stories,23 while Papini asked her to translate Schopenhauer’s Über die vier-
fache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (The Fourfold Root of the Prin-
ciple of Sufficient Reason, 1813).24
In these years, Amendola was friendly with the Russian revolutionary Dmitry
Kolpinsky (1884–1912) and the Signorelli family. Angelo Signorelli (1876–1952)
was a doctor and collector, and his Latvian wife, Olga Resnevich (1883–1973),
held an influential salon (frequented by Bragaglia, Casella, De Chirico, Govoni,
Marinetti, Pirandello and many others). Eva translated an essay by Kolpinsky on
Bryusov,25 wrote an essay on the American political economist, Henry George,26
and translated “The Boys” from Dostoevsky’s novel, Brat’ia Karamazovy (The
Brothers Karamazov, 1880).
In 1912, the Amendola family moved back to Rome and settled in Via Pai-
siello 15, close to where the Futurist painter Giacomo Balla and the Cappa family
23 See Dostoevskij: Crotcaia, ed altre novelle.

24 See Schopenhauer: La quadruplice radice del principio di ragion sufficiente.
25 Kolpinskii: “Lettere sulla letteratura russa.”
26 Kühn: “Henry George e il movimento dei riformatori fondiari.”
lived, which included the brothers Arturo (later a staunch supporter of Gramsci
and the Turin Communist-Futurists) and Alberto (later a founding member of the
Futurist Political Fascio in Rome and an editor of the periodical Roma futurista),
as well as Benedetta (Marinetti’s later wife). While Eva engaged in an extensive
production of translations, especially from Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, she entered
into contact with Futurism and became a convinced and passionate member of
the movement.
In 1909, Eva had established an intellectual and sentimental relationship
with the La voce collaborator Giovanni Boine (1887–1917), who fell madly in love
with her. In a letter he called her “my bride”27 and brought the Amendola spouses
to the verge of a divorce.28 In the autumn of 1914, the Boine affair pushed Eva into
a “condition of anxiety”, which made her health deteriote to such a degree that
she had to be admitted to a sanatorium.29 In 1915, when Italy entered the World
War, her husband served at the battle front and Eva dedicated herself to helping
blind and deaf-dumb war veterans in a building on via Nomentana.30
In 1916, Eva and Giovanni Amendola’s third son, Antonio, was born. In 1917,
from one day to the next, she decided to move her little family to Frascati, where
– she thought – the air would be better for the son Giorgio and especially for her
husband, who had contracted malaria at the front. In 1918, Eva was pregnant
again and before she gave birth to her fourth child, Pietro, the Amendolas spent
their summer holidays on Capri. The island was frequented at that time by many
Russian émigrés and Futurists,31 but, unfortunately, there is no evidence that Eva
entertained any personal contact with them there.
27 “Sposa mia, Ti spedisco con questa un telegramma un po’ ansioso. […] Ma non so che an-
goscia, non so che smarrimento quasi fisico come una nebbia nera che t’investa m’aveva preso:
non so che paura di guai, che tu non m’amassi più o tutto fosse finito prima di cominciare. […]
Se non te n’offendi ti dirò ch’io ti considero già come mia, come posseduta. Mi ti sei data. Lo dici
senza esitare. S’io fossi lì t’avrei posseduta già senza lottare. Dunque sei mia. […] Ma insomma,
combina per venire. Scappa. Pianta in asso tutto. Tanto bisognerà decidersi ad una rottura.”
Letter of Giovanni Boine to Eva Kühn, dated Porto Maurizio, 29 August 1914, in Boine: Carteggio.
Vol. 4, p. 373, 377.
28 “Ebbene, se tu, quando la signora lucidamente ti scriveva, avessi fatto un viaggio qui per
parlare ad Am.[endola], la cosa sarebbe stata meno odiosa, più umana, tanto poco egli voleva
rinchiudere in un manicomio la sua moglie, sentendo ch’ella si voleva separare da lui.” Letter of
Emilio Cecchi to Giovanni Boine, dated Rome, 13 September 1914. Boine: Carteggio. Vol. 2, p. 130.
29 Amendola: Una scelta di vita, p. 22.
30 Ibid., pp. 26–27.
31 See Vergine: Capri 1905/1940: Frammenti postumi; Caruso: “Breve storia del futurismo a Ca-
pri”; Bignardi: “Capri e Positano futuriste.”
1919 was a year of frenzied activities for the Futurists, who had returned
from the trenches and were now organized as a political Party.32 Eva became
actively involved in the Roman Fascio, as Marinetti registered in his notebooks
on 16 December 1918: “2nd meeting of the Roman branch of the Futurist Politi-
cal Party. Gathering of the home front. Fabbri, Ms. Amendola […] are talking”.33
In the summer of 1919, she came into contact with Gabriele D’Annunzio34 and
took part in the preparation of the Fiume exploit,35 thus strengthening the bond
between Futurism and D’Annunzio. During the election campaign of November
1919, Eva launched into a flurry of political propaganda in support of the ‘Block
of Iron Heads’, as the coalition of Futurists and Fascists liked to call itself.36 From
the memories of her son Giorgio we understand that Eva did everything she could
to be in touch with Marinetti and often went to the Casa rossa near San Babila to
spend “noisy and smoky evenings”37 with the Futurist activists gathered there.
On 16 November 1919, the day of the elections, Eva went to Greco, a ‘red’ town
on the outskirts of Milan, to distribute leaflets at a polling station. She did not
manage to hand out any of them, but entered into discussions with the Anarchists
and anti-Fascist workers. Her son Giorgio judged: “She arrived in Greco in the
morning as a Fascist, she departed in the evening as a semi-Anarchist”.38 On the
other hand, Ugo Fedeli, manager of the journal Nichilismo (Nihilism, 1920–21),
had the opportunity of reminding Giorgio Amendola that her mother, while she
was campaigning for Marinetti, Mussolini and Toscanini, attended meetings of
32 See Berghaus: “The Futurist Political Party.”

33 “16 Dicembre 1918: 2a riunione del Fascio politico futurista Romano. Salone Fronte Interno.
Parlano Fabbri, Sra Amendola.” Marinetti: Taccuini 1915/1921, p. 397.
34 Amendola: Una scelta di vita, pp. 39–40. In the General Archive of the Fondazione Il Vitto-
riale degli Italiani (Gardone Riviera), there is a folder of Eva Kühn Amendola, containing many
long letters written in Italian, sent in large part from Rome between 1919 and 1921, and express-
ing reverence for the hero and winner D’Annunzio. The same folder also contains an Appello al
popolo per il 1° maggio 1919 (Appeal to the People for 1 May 1919), dated Rome 4 May 1919 and
signed ‘Africa’; a paper entitled La nuova donna (The New Woman), dedicated “to poet hero Ga-
briele D’Annunzio with gratitude and faith”; the essay Il grido d’angoscia e di fede di una donna
italiana (Cry of Anguish and Faith of an Italian Woman), signed ‘Africa’ and published in L’epoca
of 29 March 1919.
35 See Floreani: “La città della vita: Marinetti e d’Annunzio. L’impresa di Fiume e la Carta del
Carnaro”; Salaris: “L’impresa di Fiume tra futurismo e dannunzianesimo”; Tonini: “Siamo nella
città inquieta e diversa...: Futurismo arte-vita a Fiume.”
36 See Berghaus: Futurism and Politics, pp. 146–150.
37 Amendola: Una scelta di vita, pp. 42–43.
38 “[…] arrivata la mattina a Greco fascista, ne ripartì la sera semi-anarchica.” Amendola: Una
scelta di vita, p. 43.
various Anarchist groups and witnessed the association between Anarchists and
Futurists of Milan in a group led by the painter Attilio Vella (1901–1979).39
The elections turned out to be a total disaster for the Futurist-Fascist ticket.
Two days after the elections, Marinetti and Mussolini were arrested and Eva went
to visit them in the San Vittore prison, bringing them books and chocolate.40 After
the electoral defeat, Eva devoted herself to her family, and her house in Porto
Ceresio seemed to have become an oasis of peace. After 1919, we have no other
news of Eva Kühn ever getting involved in politics again.
Instead, she embarked on her literary activities again. The prestigious pub-
lisher Rocco Carabba charged her with the direction of the collections “Classici
per il fanciullo” (Classics for Children) and “Libri per fanciulli” (Books for Chil-
dren), which she enriched with Russian, Tartar and Romanian fairy tales.41 That
same year, Giovanni Amendola became editor of the Corriere della sera, and the
family moved to Porto Ceresio, near Milan. They remained there for a whole year,
allowing Eva to be close to her Futurist friends. After the summer of 1920, they
returned to Rome, but in the winter of 1920–21 she suffered from headaches and
mental exhaustion which, in September 1921, turned into a nervous breakdown
caused by mental visions of Annie Besant and the Countess Luisa Casati,42 who
represented for Eva personifications of evil. In October 1921, she had to be admit-
ted to a clinic in Capodimonte (Naples) and then moved to a sanatorium about
one hundred kilometres outside Rome, in Viterbo, where she received psychiatric
treatment until 1934.
During her stay in Italy, Eva remained in touch with her family, who suffered
greatly during the First World War. For a while, the Kühns moved to Petrograd,
but following the October Revolution most of family returned to Vilnius. Eva’s
younger brother remained in the Soviet Union to perform military service, which
resulted in a generally agreed anti-Soviet attitude within the Amendola family. In
1922, Eva made a trip to Vilnius, where she was shocked by her relatives’ reports
about the ferocities carried out by the Red Army.43 Back in Rome, the family home
in Via Porta Pinciana was subject to attacks from Fascist squads. Giovanni Amen-
dola’s critical position towards right-wing extremism made him run for the post of
39 See Ciampi’s entries on “Anarchismo” and “Nichilismo” in Godoli: Dizionario del futurismo.
41 Paolino: “Eva Kühn Amendola: Ovvero dell’insostenibile tragicità del vivere”, p. 101.
42 Carrà had painted her portrait and Marinetti had dedicated to her La danza futurista (Manifes-
to of Dance, 1920). On the eccentric socialite see Cecchi: Coré: Vita e dannazione della Marchesa
Casati; Ryersson-Yaccarino: Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati; Vinci:
La Casati: La musa egoista.
Prime Minister at the head of a liberal coalition. Despite his defeat, he continued
to battle against Mussolini by implicating him directly in the murder of Giacomo
Matteotti and by rallying the anti-Fascist literary scene behind a Manifesto degli
intellettuali antifascisti (Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, 1 May 1925).
On 20 July 1925, he was half-beaten to death by a dozen gunmen. Eva saw him
for the last time on Christmas 1925,44 before he was moved to France for medical
treatment. Giovanni Amendola died on 7 April 1926, but the news was hidden
from Eva until 1934.
Eva suffered from frequent mental disorders and nervous breakdowns. She
was periodically locked up in mental asylums, sometimes for long periods. Her
whole life was marked by bipolar tendencies: periods of elation and hyperactivity
alternated with periods of depression, both physical and mental, a condition that
she claimed was hereditary, as if to play down her psychic ailments:
For a whole year I was in the hands of psychiatrists: I had inherited from my mother a
tendency towards severe headaches with brain congestion. Even later, at the age of forty,
I had again a serious brain disorder, caused by poor circulation; it forced me to stay for a
long time in a sanatorium, where I remained for several years, unaware of the tragic fate of
my husband.45
In several of her letters to Futurist friends, Eva expressed a fear that she would
be spoken about negatively. She suffered from a persecution complex that could
result in bouts of madness, often so violent that she had to be locked up in psy-
chiatric homes. As she was an extremely sensitive and sharp-witted woman,
the treatment she received in these asylums caused great anguish to her. She
addressed the issue in an essay, La pazzia e la riforma del manicomio (Madness
and the Reform of Mental Asylums, c.1913–16), conceived during her first hospi-
talization in 1905. Here, she addressed the inadequacy of psychiatric treatment at
that time and suggested that psychotic conditions, if addressed differently, would
reveal the patient’s genius rather than insanity. Eva distinguished between two
categories of inmates: morbid psychopaths, whose illness is caused by “mind
crystallization” (chronic melancholia, mania, hysteria, neurasthenia, etc.) and
hyper-spirituals, who have a mystical-erotic temperament and are devoured by
44 Cerchia: Giorgio Amendola, un comunista nazionale (1907–1945), p. 75.

45 “Per tutto un anno rimasi nelle mani degli psichiatri: avevo ereditato da mia madre la tenden-
za a fortissime emicranie con congestioni cerebrali. Anche in seguito, verso i quarantanni ebbi
di nuovo una grave malattia cerebrale, dovuta a cattiva circolazione; essa mi costrinse per lungo
tempo in una casa di salute, dove rimasi parecchi anni, ignara della tragica sorte di mio marito.”
Kühn Amendola: Vita con Giovanni Amendola, p. 75.
“the flame of a great love sui generis”. In the Middle Ages, they were venerated as
saints and prophets, but in our age they are ridiculed and locked away.46
With great foresight Eva offered suggestions of how the coercive and destruc-
tive methods of the time could be transformed into “psychotherapy”, a term not
widespread in those days,47 but employed by Eva in her essay.
With an intelligent systematic approach you can stop the development of the crystallization
of a centre by diverting the vital forces of the patient, his psychic energy toward that core
that has remained healthy because it has only been little or never exerted in life. [...] Indi-
viduals, whose will is sick, cannot cure themselves; it takes a long time, a lot of patience, a
lot of intuition on the part of the person who wants to help and save a human psyche. [...]
Science deceives itself when it thinks it can heal them with injections of bromide, by fixing
them to a bed, force-feeding them, removing from them every means of recreation, every
book, every friend. [...] Quite to the contrary, bromide, opium or morphine makes them
sleepy, kills their vegetative, underdeveloped life and leaves the patients in the grip of their
fantasies.48
The suffering endured, combined with her intellectual skills, allowed Eva Kühn
to see with great clarity what academic medicine did not even consider at the
time. She sought to give a person afflicted with mental suffering protection of his
or her dignity, to assure non-coercive therapy and to promote relationships and
specific aspects through compliance with the wishes and needs of the patient.
46 Salaris: “Profilo di Eva Kühn Amendola”, p. 60.

47 The term ‘psychotherapy’ was first used by two Dutch physicians, Frederik Willem van Eeden
(1860–1932) and Albert Willem van Renterghem (1845–1939). In 1887, Paul Dubois (1848–1918),
a professor of neuropathology in Berne, developed the concept further in his influential book,
Les Psychonévroses et leur traitement moral: Leçons faites à l’Université de Berne. Paris: Mas-
son, 1904 (English edn The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders. New York: Funk & Wagnalls,
1905). See Shamdasani: “‘Psychotherapy’: The Invention of a Word.” For the Italian system see
Mecacci: Psicologia e psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana del Novecento; Andolfi: I pionieri della
terapia familiare; Semerari: Storia, teorie e tecniche della psicoterapia cognitiva; Musatti: Trattato
di psicoanalisi.
48 “Con un metodo sistematico intelligente si può arrestare lo sviluppo della cristallizzazione
di un centro sviando le forze vitali del malato, la sua energia psichica verso quel centro che è
rimasto sano essendo stato mai o poco esercitato nella vita. [...] Individui, la cui volontà è mala-
ta, non possono da sè salvarsi, occorre molto tempo, molta pazienza, molta intuizione da parte di
colui che vuole assistere e salvare una psiche umana. [...] La scienza si illude di poter guarirli con
iniezioni di bromuro, con legarli al letto, con nutrirli con la sonda, con levare a loro ogni mezzo
di creazione, ogni libro, ogni amico. [...] Il bromuro, l’oppio, la morfina, per contro, li assopisce,
uccide la loro vita vegetativa, troppo poco sviluppata, e lascia il malato in preda alle sue fanta-
sie.” Salaris: “Profilo di Eva Kühn Amendola”, pp. 59–60.
In 1934, after having lived for eleven years isolated from her family, Eva
Kühn was released from hospital. She moved to Vilnius, which after 1922 had
become part of Poland, and obtained an appointment as Lecturer in Italian at
the Stefan Batory University. After the Second World War, she devoted herself
to the teaching of English and to translating Schopenhauer and various Russian
authors. The last years of her life were taken up with publishing her husband’s
correspondence and with piecing together the most important events of his life
in the volume, Vita con Giovanni Amendola. She died in Rome on 27 November
1961.
Eva Kühn’s contribution to Futurism
During the initial phase of the Futurist movement (1909–1910), Milan served as its
ideological and organizational centre, but in the years 1913–15 the focus shifted
to the Italian capital.49 When the painter Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) signed the
Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (Manifesto of Futurist Painters, 1910), his house in
Via Paisiello, close to where Eva Kühn lived, the Caffè Groppo in Via del Tritone
and the adjacent Sprovieri Gallery all became meeting places of Futurists and
their friends. Since 1912, Eva was fascinated by the works and artistic ideology of
F.T. Marinetti and adopted the name of the beautiful and unfortunate brother of
the protagonist in the novel, Mafarka il futurista (Mafarka, the Futurist, 1909/10),
as her pseudonym: Magamal.
Mafarka, the Futurist was an expression of Marinetti’s Futurist poetics and
became a source of inspiration for the bold Eva Kühn, who identified with the
young and handsome Magamal, an “adolescent warrior [with a] rubber body
at once impetuous in the flying flame of the rising dust”, who combines “fem-
inine graces with the twitches of a wild beast”.50 Despite the aversion to his
brother’s weaknesses, the terrifying Mafarka loves Magamal more than himself.
Eva’s desire to become a similar character differentiated her from other women
Futurists and offers an insight into how she saw her relationship with Marinetti:
they were united by a common love for the strong-willed man and a yearning for
renewing the world and giving it a Futurist direction.
On 18 April 1913, after a soirée at the Padiglione Colonna in Rome with poetry
recitations by Marinetti, Altomare, Cangiullo, D’Alba, Folgore and other Futur-
49 See Antonucci: Il futurismo e Roma, p. 48.

50 Marinetti: Mafarka, the Futurist, pp. 14–15.
ists,51 Giovanni and Eva Amendola invited Marinetti for dinner at their home. Like
many women, Eva was ‘bewitched’ by Marinetti and entered into a correspond-
ence with him.52 During the First World War, she asked her husband to send her
news of Marinetti’s activities at the front. Unfortunately, Eva’s letters to Giovanni
Amendola have not been discovered, but a response sent by Giovanni on 6 August
1917 enables us to understand how much interest Eva harboured about the fate
of her spiritual leader: “I have no news of Marinetti; he is not anywhere around
here. If he shows up, I’ll inform you. Soffici requested to be transferred to the
Casati Regiment and will depart today or tomorrow. It’s very honorable.”53
In the years 1914–18, Eva / Magamal defied the adverse conditions of her
family environment and devoted herself to creating Futurist works. In a letter to
Paolo Buzzi of 29 April 1915,54 she complained that she was unable to express
her creative urges because of her maternal and domestic obligations.55 Further-
more, her husband began to be perceived as an obstacle to her Futurist impulses.
51 See Marinetti’s letter in Amendola: Carteggio, 1913–1918, p. 44, and Salaris: Luciano Folgore
e le avanguardie, p. 95.
52 The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles preserves several letters Eva sent to Marinetti and
some manuscripts which she dedicated to him. Unfortunately, I can only mention the existence
of this material, as authorization to quote from or publish these manuscripts was denied by the
copyright holder. In particular, see Getty Research Institute, Papers of F.T. Marinetti and Benedet-
ta Cappa, Series III, Box 9, Folder 5 (Letters to Marinetti signed Magamal). This includes a letter
to F.T. Marinetti, dated 11 november 1918; N. 2 delle “Lettere futuriste” di Magamal a Mafarka,
dated 12 January 1919 (the title of this letter suggests that there was a previous letter Magamal a
Mafarka, not preserved at the Getty Research Institute); Magamal’s poems, Il guerriero che torna
[The Returning Warrior, 1917]; Il canto d’amore della Donna Cosmica [The Cosmic Woman’s Love
Song, 1918] (The same poem – with minor differences in the arrangement of the strophes – was
sent to Mino Somenzi and is stored at Archivio del Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di
Trento e Rovereto, Fondo Somenzi); Magamal’s essays, Manuale sintetico [A Short Handbook],
no date provided; La pazzia e la riforma del manicomio [Madness and the Reform of Mental Asy-
lums, 1913]; Certe carezze… [Certain Caresses, s.d.]; Il tradimento nell’amore sessuale [Betrayal in
Sexual Love, dated “Frascati 9/VIII/1917]. Among the Umberto Boccioni papers, 1899–1986, Getty
Research Institute, Series II-A, Box 3, Folder 16, there is a further essay: Trattato sintentico sulle
tre gradazioni dell’amore sessuale [A Short Treatise on the Three Gradations of Sexual Love, dated
5–6/XII/1913]; Letter to Umberto Boccioni, dated “Milan 4/X/17”.
53 “De Marinetti je n’ai aucune nouvelle: il ne doit pas se trouver de ce cȏté. S’il apparaîtra à
l’horizon, je te le signalerai. Soffici a demandé d’aller au régiment de Casati – et il va aujourd’hui
ou demain. C’est très honorable.” Letter of Giovanni Amendola to Eva Kühn, dated 6 August 1917,
in Kühn Amendola: Vita con Giovanni Amendola, p. 429.
54 Paolo Buzzi (1874–1956) was an important collaborator on the journal Poesia. For a look ‘be-
hind the scenes’ of this magazine, see Rampazzo: “Marinetti’s Periodical ‘Poesia’ (1905–09).”
55 “Non posso avere raffiche di creazione nella prigione dove mi trovo coi pensieri del ménage,
dei bimbi, del guadagno, della società” (I cannot have bursts of creativity in a prison, where my
During his absence in spring 1914, within 48 hours, she wrote Eva, la futurista
(Eva, the Futurist), a “condensed novel – Words–in-Freedom”, as she defines it, a
novel which she sent to Marinetti to be published in his magazine, Poesia:
I wrote up my life and my views with tragic vehemence; I wrote with extraordinary sin-
cerity, with a forceful style using Words-in-Freedom, I wrote with such tremendous con-
centration, experiencing again everything I wrote about, that there was nothing but the
dynamics of my psyche. I could not write more than 48 hours, otherwise I would have
been dead. That’s why it was necessary to give birth to a style that uses short statements,
caricature-like descriptions, hints and allusions. It was a gigantic work. During the 48
hours I grew up to a previously unreached height of a man. I gave it to Marinetti – He
returned it without saying a word, and I never knew whether he read it. I tore it to pieces
the same day I got it back – I was in rage, anger, pain. It seemed to tear my brain apart, to
destroy my life. It contained pages of grand cosmic visions (similar to his!!).56
This testimony is certainly unique and important, since it reveals Eva’s deep con-
viction of feeling herself to be a Futurist woman and discloses her specific goal
behind the creation of Futurist works. As we can deduce from the above note,
her novel was modelled on Marinetti’s Mafarka, il futurista, and was conceived
as an autobiography. Despite Marinetti’s refusal to publish the work, the corre-
spondence between Eva Kühn and the head of Futurism continued for several
years, albeit in a rather discontinuous way. Marinetti’s high esteem for Eva Kühn
is demonstrated by the fact that in chapter 20 of Democrazia futurista (Futurist
Democracy, 1919), he made use of her summary of Henry George’s land reform.57
In the letter to Buzzi quoted above, Eva announced the preparation of a volume
of selected works by Marinetti, an essay on the three gradations of Futurist love,58
thoughts are turning around household, children, earnings, society). Buzzi: L’ellisse e la spirale,
p. XXI.
56 “Scrissi con un impeto tragico la mia vita, le mie visioni – scrissi con sincerità meravigliosa,
con uno stile forte di parole in libertà, scrissi così in tensione tremenda di mio spirito – vivendo
di nuovo ciò che scrivevo – non vi era che la dinamica della mia psiche – non avrei potuto scrive-
re più di 48 ore – ne sarei morta – ed ecco perché per forza sorse lo stile abbreviato, la descrizione
a macchiette, ad accenni, e sfumature. Era un lavoro gigantesco. Crebbe attraverso le 48 ore
ad una altezza mai raggiunta di virilità. Lo diedi a Marinetti – Me lo restituì senza dire nulla,
e mai seppi, se l’ha letto. Lo distrussi lo stesso giorno che lo riebbi – a pezzettini – con rabbia,
con ira, con dolore – mi parve di strappare il mio cervello, di distruggere la vita mia. – Vi era-
no pagine grandiose di visioni cosmiche (che rassomigliavano alle sue!!).” Buzzi: L’elisse e la
spirale, p. XXI.
57 Kühn Amendola: “La riforma fondiaria di Henry George.” Roma futurista 2:32 (10 August
1919), p. 1.
58 Trattato sintetico sulle tre gradazioni dell’amore sessuale (1913) is dedicated to Umberto Boc-
cioni, and is now stored at the Getty Research Institute of Los Angeles. See footnote no. 52.
a drama entitled ‘Marinetti’, which was a continuration of Eva, the Futurist, a

short drama called ‘The Woman of Everyone and Nobody’, in which Eva sketched
“a kind of Futurist woman”.59 It appears that Eva Kühn also wrote a scenario
for a Futurist film, Sinfonia colorata (Colorful Symphony).60 She asked Buzzi to
mention these projects only to Marinetti, Carrà, Boccioni, Pratella and Russolo,
and to “nobody else – you must not let me down – if my husband finds out, he
will lock me up. I have a great fear of Sironi and Costantini – the latter always
spies on me and has been my downfall. [...] Never speak about me with a woman
– women hate me and always betray me.”61
Although some of Marinetti’s slogans give the impression that Futurism
showed contempt for women, Eva and a group of other Futurist women repre-
sented, at least until the feminist wave of the 1960s, the only literary and artistic
movement that encouraged a female presence in Italian arts. Within this context,
Eva / Magamal was important for having contributed to the innovation of expres-
sive codes. Her Words-in-Freedom, together with those of Emma Marpillero, Irma
Valeria and Enrica Piubellini, are important examples of visual poetry.62
In 1916, Magamal joined the group of L’Italia futurista, a periodical published
from 1916 to 1918 by Attilio Vallecchi in Florence. The front page contained arti-
cles about the war, but it was mainly an outlet for creative texts, manifestos, plays,
reviews etc.63 L’Italia futurista had Maria Ginanni on its editorial board, regularly
published contributions by Futurist women, and ran a column, Donna + Amore +
Bellezza (Woman + love + beauty), in which the woman question was controver-
sially debated. However, Magamal did not participate in this discussion, nor in
the periodical’s sequel, Roma futurista.
Like all Futurist women, Eva considered herself to be special, enterprising,
‘fast’, male, different from ordinary women:
We have a ring-a-ring-o’roses with spiral motions of cosmic forces increasingly more electri-
cal moving higher higher toward the sun which is perhaps nothing more than the projection
of psychic energies of a heart similar to the human heart, a heart of a Cosmic Titan, of whom
59 Eva Kühn: “Amendola’s letter to Paolo Buzzi (Rome, 29 April 1915).” Buzzi: L’elisse e la spirale,
p. XXI. The works mentioned here, unfortunately, could not be traced anywhere.
60 See Lista: “Cinema”, p. 273.
61 “[...] a nessun altro – non mi dovete tradire – se mio marito lo saprà, mi rinchiuderà. Temo
molto Sironi e Costantini – l’ultimo fa sempre la spia ed è stato la mia rovina. [...] Non parli mai
di me ad una donna – le donne mi odiano e mi tradiscono sempre.” Buzzi: L’elisse e la spirale,
p. XXI.
62 See the anthologies by Salaris: Le futuriste; Carpi: Futuriste; Bello Minciacchi: Spirale di dol-
cezza + serpe di fascino. See also Bentivoglio and Zoccoli: The Women Artists of Italian Futurism.
63 All issues were indexed by Luciano Caruso in his reprint of L’Italia futurista.
we Futurists are the younger brothers – perhaps a sperm of this Titan has contributed to our
conception in the uterus of our mother, in the same way as our sperms all over the world
have thrilled and perhaps fertilized beings of unknown and lower worlds.64
Rather than defend the cause of women, Eva / Magamal sided with the men, glo-
rified war, and turned to bold, manly qualities. She supported the Futurist policy
of fighting “the great tyranny of Sentimentalism”65 and retrograde women, guilty
of sapping their male’s energies with lascivious games. Nonetheless, she shared
the other Futurist women’s view that women should not be subjected to men,
should have freedom, economic independence, equal rights, participate in poli-
tics and play a useful rôle in civil society.
Within the Futurist circle, women developed new codes of expression and
composed works in Words-in-Freedom style. Eva Kühn offered one such contribu-
tion in L’Italia futurista. In the issue of 15 November 1916 she published Velocità
(Speed),66 a composition that broke down traditional syntax and used mathemat-
ical signs, in line with the precepts in Marinetti’s Technical Manifesto of Futurist
Literature (1912), but otherwise shunned typographical experiments:
Speed: Words-In-Freedom
To the ultra-fast Giacomo Balla
“External motion ...
Internal motion ... ”
(From Umberto Boccioni’s lecture)
1
High-speed bullet train. – Restaurant carriage …
Thrilled Nerves. Life X 100. Sense of the divine (Words by F. T. Marinetti )
Break away, break away – neither anguish, nor worries...
Electrified brain = Marconi telegraph: send, receive telegrams endlessly. Feverish activity.
Rising delight. Increasingly lascivious Marconi telegrams. Erotic desire.
Flames: Eruption of the volcano.
64 “[…] abbiamo un gira-gira-tondo con moti spiralici di forze cosmiche sempre più elettriche
più su più su verso il sole che forse è null’altro che la proiezione di energie psichiche di una cuore
analogo al cuore umano, di un cuore di un Titano Cosmico, di cui noi futuristi siamo i fratelli
minori – forse uno spermatozoide di questo Titano ha contribuito alla concezione della nostra
vita sull’utero di nostra madre, nello stesso modo come i nostri spermatozoidi sparsi nel mondo
hanno forse fecondato ed elettrizzato esseri di mondi sconosciuti ed inferiori.” Magamal: Sam
Dunn è morto, p. 3.
65 Marinetti: Critical Writings, p. 54
66 Magamal: “Velocità.” It is curious to note that in 1916 Marinetti wrote the screenplay for a
film that was to be called Speed, a kind of summary of the Futurist programme made of pieces of
narrative, heterogeneous sequences and speeded up images. The project, however, remained on
paper. See Lista: “Cinema”, p. 272.
2
Internal speed: Quickly overcome crisis after crisis with mathematical equilibrium. Transform-
ing hot lava into ice. Reach the summit and climb down again, rush into the abyss – voluntarily
and like a thunderbolt. Now fierce lightning, anger, ANGER – now icy composure. Renew in a
moment. Destroy. With the blink of an eye create a universe. Withdraw from the tumult of life
to an icy desert and then, in an instant, run into a loud square, dive into a whirlpool, enjoy.
ENJOY. At will quickly change the internal rhythm, now fierce torrent, now a wide river – calm
and majestic.
High-speed bullet train always ready to escape the lull, the moonlights!
Internal speed – you are MINE! anytime, anywhere.
I am God!
Magamal, Futurist
The poem is pervaded by a voluttà crescente (an increasing erotic thrill), a word
that was dear to Magamal. Her crowding and pressing together of nominal sen-
tences reflects the inner speed aroused by her Futurist joy while travelling on a
high-speed train. It seems that the poem describes the experience of an intense
but fleeting Futurist love, full of passion (hot lava) but controlled by cold reason
(ice). The images used here belong to a typically Futurist lexicon (speed, tele-
grams, desire, volcano, thunderbolt, lightning, whirlpool, rhythm) and refer to
the dynamism of the modern age.
The first issue of L’Italia futurista (1 June 1916) also printed Gino Cantarelli’s
Free-Word table Direttissimo (High-Speed Bullet Train) with a lexical repertoire
very similar to that employed by Magamal in Speed. Furthermore, it contained the
first instalment of Bruno Corra’s Futurist novel, Sam Dunn è morto (Sam Dunn is
Dead), reviewed by Magamal in L’Italia futurista of 9 September 1917. It celebrates
enthusiastically the new vision of life announced by Marinetti in his Mafarka,
il futurista (Mafarka, the Futurist, 1909/10), as well as by Paolo Buzzi in L’elisse
e la spirale (The Ellipse and the Spiral, 1915). Magamal calls Corra’s conception
“cosmic”, which for her is synonymous with “Futurist”. The review contains some
key characteristics of Magamal’s thought, developed more extensively in private
letters and unpublished writings. In particular, it features the idea of the cosmic
man who wins and dominates the world with a divine attitude:
To approach the ‘new horizon’ lying ahead, it needs a psyche that is no longer terrestrial
but cosmic (i.e. Futurist). The cosmic man (= Futurist man) already stands above the laws of
the land; he is no longer static. Dynamic and always electric, he exercises, like Sam Dunn, a
direct influence on the Cosmos, he shapes it, produces catastrophes – earthquakes, storms,
maybe? Who knows? Perhaps these cataclysms are nothing but a discharge of electricity
from a cosmic and overbearing psyche?! Of a psyche that instead of giving in to profane
impulses rises above human passions? The effect of such a victory on the universe can be
terrible in its consequences. And maybe if we had not had this war – this heroic unleash-
ing of terrible cosmic forces – who knows what and how many cataclysms would perhaps
have destroyed this terrestrial planet! The Futurist deifies Matter and in doing so destroys
evil, destroys hell with his cosmic joy, with his brilliant and clairvoyant, childlike serenity.
In every Futurist there is a Sam Dunn, who will be crucified, yes, but he will approach his
Golgotha with a ‘truly divine indifference’. 67
67 “[…] ci vuole una psiche, non più terrestre, ma cosmica (= futurista) per poter vivere col ‘nuo-
vo orizzonte’ dinanzi a sé. L’uomo cosmico (= l’uomo futurista) sta già al di sopra delle leggi
terrestri; egli non è più statico. Dinamico, sempre elettrico, egli acquista come Sam Dunn una
diretta influenza sul Cosmos, lo plasma, produce catastrofe – terremoti, tempeste? Chi sa? Forse
questi cataclismi non sono niente d’altro che la scarica di elettricità di una psiche cosmica e
prepotente?! Di una psiche che invece di cedere a impulsi terrestri si solleva al di sopra delle pas-
sioni umane? Il contraccolpo di una tale vittoria su tutto l’universo però essere terribile nelle sue
Several of Eva Kühn’s writings from her Futurist period remained unpublished,
sometimes in accordance with her own will. Notable among these writings
are two poems dedicated to Marinetti: Al guerriero che torna (To the Returning
Warrior, 1917), and Il canto della donna cosmica (Song of a Cosmic Woman, 1918),
also sent to Mino Somenzi (1899–1948) with slight changes in the arrangement of
verses and text.68
In February 1918, the L’Italia futurista group broke up and the femal Futur-
ists continued their activity in Roma futurista (1918–20),69 which was edited by
Mario Carli, Marinetti and Settimelli, and acted as the official organ of the Futur-
ist Political Party.70 Eva had participated in the formation of the Roma futurista
group, who, as Giorgio Amendola observed, “had a ‘revolutionary’ flag, red to
three fifths, white to one fifth and green to one fifth. [...] It pointed eloquently the
confusion of political addresses”71. Magamal appealed in this periodical, on 24
August 1919, to the Italians with a speech that cited in hyperbolic tone Mazzini’s
creed and that expressed her faith in the potential of the country, its citizens and
workers, while busily condemning those who live off others.
conseguenze. E forse se non avessimo avuto la guerra – questa scarica eroica di forze cosmiche
tremende – chi sa quali e quanti cataclismi avrebbero forse distrutto il globo terrestre! L’uomo fu-
turista divinizza la Materia e così facendo distrugge il male, distrugge l’inferno colla sua allegria
cosmica, colla sua serenità da bimbo geniale e chiaroveggente. In ogni futurista vi è Sam Dunn
colui che sarà crocifisso sì, ma andrà alla crocifissione con una ‘indifferenza veramente divina’.”
Magamal: “Sam Dunn è morto”, p. 3.
68 See footnote no. 52.
69 The subtitle was Giornale del Partito politico futurista (Journal of the Futurist Political Party).
All issues were indexed by Elisabetta Mondello in Roma futurista, pp. 158–194.
70 See Berghaus: “The Futurist Political Party.”
71 “[Il movimento di Roma futurista] aveva una bandiera ‘rivoluzionaria’, per tre quinti rossa,
un quinto bianca e un quinto verde. […] Indicava eloquentemente la confusione degli indirizzi
politici.” Amendola: Una scelta di vita, p. 39.
Appello al popolo italiano Appeal to the Italian people
Lavoratori e guerrieri della Patria – unitevi! Workers and soldiers of the Fatherland – unite!
Parassiti d’Italia – vergognatevi! Scroungers of Italy – shame on you!
Non è l’ora questa per l’ozio, per gli sfarzi, This is not the time for idleness, for
per i lussi sfrenati. ostentation, for unbridled luxuries.
Arditi dello spirito, che arda calma e forte la Assault troops of the spirit, how calm and
Fiamma vostra. strong burns your Flame.
Militanti spirituali – all’opera. Spiritual militants – to work!
L’unico distintivo nostro: lo sguardo sereno, il Our unique characteristic: serene gaze, smile
sorriso sulle labbra e la mano tesa coll’amore and hand outstretched with love to those who
a colui che arde e lavora. toil arduously.
L’unica arma nostra: la fiamma d’amore per Our unique weapon: the flame of love for our
il nostro popolo vittorioso ed il nostro verbo victorious people and our polished language:
lucido: la nostra Religione dell’Eroismo our Religion of daily Heroism and eternal joy.
quotidiano e della gioia eterna.
L’unica divisa nostra: ardere! lavorare! Our unique uniform: burn! work! surpass!
superare!, perché la Patria nostra sia grande e Because our Fatherland is big and rich and
ricca e che dia al mondo la Luce potente. gives to the world a powerful Light.
La nostra Forza è l’Alveo divino – l’Arte eroica Our Strength is the divine Channel – heroic
e sublime. and sublime Art.
Noi siamo una grande fiamma turchina We are a large turquoise flame of burning
d’acciaio acceso. steel.
E nutrano la fiamma col calore le fiamme And the daring flames nourish the flame with
ardite: le fiamme nere, vermiglie, verdi e blu. heat: black, crimson, green, and blue flames.
Noi vogliamo giustizia sociale e libertà We want the sacred gift of social justice and
dell’individuo che è sacra. individual freedom.
E perciò dividiamo i poveri carcerati del And therefore we separate the poor prisoners
Lenin. of Lenin.
Cooperazione, sì! Ma non comunismo a la Cooperation, yes! But not in the way of
Trotzky. Trotsky’s Communism.
Il “bolscevismo” è per gli schiavi non per gli “Bolshevism” is for slaves, not for the
eredi spirituali dei grandi geni. spiritual heirs of great geniuses.
La nostra fede è quella di Mazzini che disse: Our faith is that of Mazzini, who said:
“Solo alzando la produzione della terra, “Only by increasing the yield of the earth, we
daremo l’agiatezza a tutte le classi”. will give prosperity to all classes.”
E perciò, fratelli – lavoratori – arditi, nelle And therefore, brethren – workers – assault
vostre mani sta la grandezza d’Italia! troopers, the greatness of Italy lies in your
hands!
Tendete lo sguardo e la mano d’aiuto Direct your eyes and helping hands to Africa,
all’Africa che ci chiama. Volgete le spalle alla which calls us. Turn away from the rancid
putrida banca giudea dell’Occidente marcito. Jewish bank of a rotting West.
Andate, lavorate la terra – sorgente divina di Go, till the land – divine source of riches
ricchezze senza fondo. without end.
Seminate i campi! Sown fields!
Zappate le vigne! Hoe vineyards!
Piantate fiori, ortaggi, olivi! Plant flowers, vegetables, olives!
Pescatori d’Italia! Coprite di vele bianche Fishermen of Italy! Cover our sea with your
il nostro mare. Dateci pesci, coralli e perle! white sails. Give us fish, corals and pearls!
Vogliamo libere le spiagge per tuffarci nel We want public beaches to dive into the sea,
mare, sorgente di salute e di gioia. source of health and joy.
Artigiani d’Italia, amate la Bellezza che deve Artisans of Italy, love the Beauty that must
regnare nelle case! reign in all houses!
Costruiteci eliche – vogliamo volare! Construct propellers for us – we want to fly!
Costruiteci case piene di sole con stanze da Build houses for us, filled will sunshine and
bagno! containing bathrooms!
Donne d’Italia! Date vera gioia agli eroi- Women of Italy! Give true joy to the returning
guerrieri che tornano. Siate grate per la warrior-heroes. Be grateful for the great
grande vittoria! victory!
Tessete la tela linda da colori vivi e belli! Weave the tidy cloth from bright and beautiful
colours!
Ornatevi di perle veneziane: sono più belle Dress up in Venetian beads: they are fairer
dell’oro e dell’argento di cui ha bisogno la than gold and silver, which is needed by the
Patria! Fatherland!
Preparate profumi oleosi e squisiti: è ricca di Prepare oily and exquisite perfumes: Italy is a
fiori la terra d’Italia! land full of flowers!
Raccogliete aranci, fragole, fiori. Pick oranges, strawberries, flowers.
Cantate la gioia eterna, amate e studiate i Intone the eternal joy; love and study the
grandi immortali! great immortals!
Italiani – Eroi – Titani! Lavoratori silenziosi Italians – Heroes – Titans! Silent and strong
e forti! workers!
Già spunta l’alba della “Nuova Italia”. The dawn of the “New Italy” is coming near.
Che dirà al mondo la “Nuova Parola” It will announce the “New Message” to the
world.
Magamal, futurista72 Magamal, Futurist
72
Eva Kühn’s appeal shows her belief in a renewal of Italy, her patriotism and opti-
mism, her desire to help and bring about social reform. However, the proclama-
tion remained her only intervention in Roma futurista. In the years 1921–22, she
frequented the circle of Anton Giulio Bragaglia at Via degli Avignonesi,73 which
was a meeting point for the Roman Futurists and the entire Italian avant-garde.74
Bragaglia published at that time the magazine, Cronache d’attualità (Chronicles
72 Magamal: “Appello al popolo italiano.”

73 Bragaglia had acquired a Roman thermal bath in Via degli Avignonesi and installed a gallery
and bar there, called Casa d’Arte Bragaglia. Its Sala futurista was decorated by Giacomo Balla,
Fortunato Depero, Virgilio Marchi and Ivo Pannaggi. In 1922, Bragaglia set up the Teatro degli
Indipendenti here.
74 See Berghaus: Italian Futurist Theatre, pp. 384–388.
of Current Events),75 in which Eva Kühn published two contributions: an article, A

Umberto Boccioni futurista due giorni dopo la sua morte (To the Futurist Umberto
Boccioni Two Days After His Death),76 and a contribution to the Polemiche sul tat-
tilismo (Debates on Tactilism), a documentary section which reported on Marinet-
ti’s Tactilism Manifesto77 and the controversial reception it received at the Théatre
de l’Œuvre in Paris on the evening of 14 January 1921. The new creative method
proposed by Marinetti included the introduction of a communication strategy
designed to strengthen the tactile sense. Outlining her point of view, Eva Kühn
proposed:
I do not think you can reach a transmission of thought through Tactilism. Only the cells of
the brain can transmit a thought, by means of a psycho-electric current, to the thoughts
of another person. The epidermis transmits sympathy or antipathy, passion, tenderness,
strength, warmth, ecstasy, etc. But not thoughts. Tactilism must never become magnetism,
hypnotism. For tactile boards I’d propose boxes of varying sizes, with compartments inside
that are made of cardboard. Each compartment is filled with a different material, and
everything is covered with a very thin veil, through which the hand must guess the material.
Magamal.78
In this short intervention, Eva / Magamal for the first time demonstrates her inde-
pendence from Marinetti’s views and proposes her own approach to Tactilism. It
may well be that this was prompted by the fact that, in the early 1920s, she was
not only in contact with the Futurist, but also the Dadaists, including Julius Evola,
who attended the Grotte dell’Augusteo.79 At this point, Magamal’s Futurist–trajec-
75 Issued in Rome in three consecutive series from 1916 to 1922. Magamal collaborated in the
more specifically Futurist third series (January 1921-October 1922). Almost every issue contained
a section, “Futurist chronicles”, directed by Marinetti. See the indexes in Mondello: Roma futur-
ista, pp. 132–140, and Porto: “Cronache di attualità”.
76 Kühn Amendola: “A Umberto Boccioni futurista due giorni dopo la sua morte.” In the origi-
nal, the name is wrongly spelled Kuln.
77 Marinetti: “Il tattilismo.” An English translation of the two manifestos can be found in Mari-
netti’s Critical Writings, pp. 370–382.
78 “Non credo che attraversso il Tattilismo si può giungere alla trasmissione del pensiero. Soltan-
to le cellule del cervello possono trasmettere un pensiero, per mezzo di una corrente psico-elet-
trica, al pensiero di un altro. L’epidermide trasmette simpatia o antipatia, passione, tenerezza,
forza, calore, estasi, ecc. Ma non pensieri. Il tattilismo non deve mai diventare magnetismo, ipno-
tismo. Per le tavole tattili, proporrei scatole di varia grandezza, con dentro scompartimenti fatti in
cartone. Ogni scompartimento si riempie di una materia diversa, e si copre tutto quanto con un
velo sottilissimo, attraverso il quale la mano deve indovinare la materia.” Magamal: “Polemiche
sul tattilismo.” For a detailed discussion of Marinetti’s experiments and the controversial recep-
tion see Berghaus: Italian Futurist Theatre, pp. 364–366.
79 Amendola: Una scelta di vita, pp. 54–55.
tory stops. Soon after, she was admitted into psychiatric care, from where she
re-emerged only a decade later.
Conclusions
Although Eva / Magamal was an innovative voice amongst the Futurist women,
she seems to have been resistant to form any close alliance with them. Most of
her literary works – perhaps due to the disappointment caused by Marinetti’s
rejection of her novel Eva, the Futurist – remained unpublished, in accordance
with her will. Perhaps if she had found more encouragement, this cultured and
refined woman would have made a more significant contribution to the Italian
Futurist movement.
Her writings and documented activities demonstrate that she felt misunder-
stood in her inclination towards Futurism, but was aware of her artistic poten-
tial. Her outbursts of creativity produced many works that were left unfinished,
perhaps because of the conservative moral values of the time or her mental insta-
bility or her inability to deal with those “electric currents” she felt in her head. The
works that can still be found in print are her elegant translations, for example of
Dostoevsky and Schopenhauer. Although she faced many difficulties, Eva Kühn
was animated by a desire to renew society and to abolish the “rancid and mori-
bund” world that impeded the development of creative and intellectual talents.
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Carabona, 2011. 93–118.
Pattarozzi, Gaetano et al.: Carlinga di aeropoeti futuristi di guerra. Roma: Edizioni di
“Mediterraneo futurista”, 1941.
Peters, Karin Sabine: Gilbert Clavel e il futurismo caprese: La figura di un intellettuale svizzero
e il suo ruolo. Tesi di laurea. Relatore Aldo Mastropasqua. Roma: Università degli Studi,
Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, 1993.
Piscopo, Ugo: Capri futurista. Napoli: Guida, 2001.
Ponzi, Mauro, ed.: Spazi di transizione: Il classico moderno (1888–1933). Milano: Mimesis, 2008.
Porto, Silvia: “Cronache di attualità.” Ezio Godoli, ed.: Dizionario del futurismo. Firenze:
Vallecchi, 2001. 333.
Rampazzo, Elena: “Marinetti’s Periodical ‘Poesia’ (1905–09) and Spanish-language Literature.”

Günter Berghaus, ed.: Iberian Futurisms. Special issue of International Yearbook of
Futurism Studies. Vol. 3. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2013. 64–95.
Re, Lucia: “Futurism and Feminism.” Annali d’Italianistica 7 (1989): 253–272.
Russo, Umberto: “Giovanni Amendola, Eva Kühn e la casa editrice Carabba.” Rivista abruzzese
35:4 (1982): 181–190.
Ryersson, Scot D., and Michael Orlando Yaccarino: Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the
Marchesa Casati. New York: Viridian Books, 1999.
Salaris, Claudia: “Donne nel futurismo dal 1920 al 1944.” I luoghi del futurismo (1909–1944).
Roma: Multigrafica, 1986. 193–204.
—: “L’impresa di Fiume tra futurismo e dannunzianesimo”. Annamaria Andreoli, et al. eds.:
Volare!: Futurismo, aviomania, tecnica e cultura italiana del volo, 1903–1940. Roma: De
Luca, 2003. 193–198.
—: “Profilo di Eva Kühn Amendola.” Lapis (Faenza) 3 (March 1989): 57–60.
—: Bibliografia del futurismo 1909–1944. Roma: Vascello, 1998.
—: Futurismo. Milano: Editrice Bibliografica, 1984.
—: La Roma delle avanguardie: Dal futurismo all’underground. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1999.
—: Le futuriste: Donne e letteratura d’avanguardia in Italia (1909/1944). Milano: Edizioni delle
Donne, 1982.
—: Luciano Folgore e le avanguardie. Con lettere e inediti futuristi. Scandicci: La nuova Italia,
1997.
Semerari, Antonio: Storia, teorie e tecniche della psicoterapia cognitiva. Roma: Laterza, 2010.
Shamdasani, Sonu: “‘Psychotherapy’: The Invention of a Word.” History of the Human Sciences
18:1 (2005): 1–22.
Spini, Giorgio: Italia liberale e protestanti. Torino: Claudiana, 2002.
Staliūnas, Darius, ed.: Making Russians: Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and
Belarus after 1863. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.
Thaden, Edward C.: Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914. Princeton/NJ:
Tomasello, Dario: “Se i sensi m’ingannano: Marinetti e il tattilismo futurista.” I quaderni del
ramo d’oro 2 (2009): 156–166.
Tonini, Paolo: “Siamo nella città inquieta e diversa...: Futurismo arte-vita a Fiume.” Marino de
Grassi, ed.: Futurismo: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, l’avanguardia giuliana e i rapporti
internazionali. Mariano del Friuli: Edizioni della Laguna, 2009. 239–261.
Vaškelis, Bronius. “Jurgis Baltrušaitis (1873–1944): Lithuanian and Russian Symbolist.”
Lituanus 10:3–4 (1964): 45–61.
Vergine, Lea, ed.: Capri 1905/1940: Frammenti postumi. Milano: Feltrinelli 1983. Reprint Capri:
La Conchiglia, 1993.
Vinci, Vanna: La Casati: La musa egoista. Milano: Rizzoli Lizard, 2013.
Weeks, Theodore R.: “Russification and the Lithuanians, 1863–1905.” Slavic Review 60:1
(Spring, 2001): 96–114.
Manuscripts
Papers of F.T. Marinetti and Benedetta Cappa, Getty Research Institute, Series III, Box 9,
Folder 4: Amendola, Eva (pseud. Magamal): Perché noi futuristi abbiamo il diritto ad un
posto speciale nel cuore paterno del Duce? (4 November 1936).
Papers of F.T. Marinetti and Benedetta Cappa, Getty Research Institute, Series III, Box 9,
Folder 5: Amendola, Eva (pseud. Magamal): N. 2 delle “Lettere futuriste” di Magamal a
Mafarka (12/I/1919);
—: Lettera a Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (11/IX/1918); Il tradimento nell’amore sessuale (9/
VIII/1917); Il Canto d’amore della donna cosmica (Agosto 1918); Il guerriero che torna
(1917); Certe carezze (s.d.); Lettera a Marinetti (4/X/1917).
Umberto Boccioni papers, 1899–1986, Getty Research Institute, Series II-A, Box 3, Folder 16:
Amendola, Eva (pseud. Magamal): Trattato sintentico sulle tre gradazioni
dell’amore sessuale (5–6/XII/1913).
Fondo Somenzi, Archivio del Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto,
Som.I.6.8: Magamal: Il Canto d’amore della donna cosmica (Capri, Agosto 1918).
Archivio Generale del Vittoriale degli Italiani (Gardone Riviera), folder Amendola Giovanni (AG
XVI, 6): 8 letters and 1 postcard of Eva Amendola sent in large part from Rome between
1919 and 1921; Appello al popolo per il 1° maggio 1919 (dated Rome 4.V.19 and signed
‘Africa’); paper La nuova donna “all’eroe poeta Gabriele D’Annunzio con animo grato e
con fede”; essay Il grido d’angoscia e di fede di una donna italiana (signed ‘Africa’ and
published in L’epoca of 29 March 1919).
Web sources
Eva Amendola Kühn: http://www.russinitalia.it/dettaglio.php?id=442

Giovanni Amendola, una vita per la democrazia. Catalogo della mostra documentaria, biblio-
grafica e iconografica (Napoli-Salerno, Oct. 1996): http://www.sacampania.beniculturali.
it/eventi/Amendola/Archivio%20Amendola.htm
Russification, in Encyclopedia Lituanica I-VI, Boston 1970–1978: http://www.spaudos.lt/
LietKalba/Rusifikavimas.en.htm
Irina Subotić
Magamal in Fiction: A Novel by Mira Otašević
Abstract: The Belgrade writer Miroslava Mira Otašević published in 1994 a novel
on the Futurist Eva Kühn. Written in the form of short diary notes, intricately inter-
woven fragments create a picture of Futurist Italy somewhere between dream and
reality, in which a highly unconventional woman pursues a life of adventure and
strives towards absolute freedom.
Keywords: Futurism in fiction. Eva Kiun (later Amendola Kühn, pseud. Magamal)
Miroslava Mira Otašević is a dramaturg and writer from Belgrade. For many years,
she worked in the Drama Department of Radio Television Belgrade where, among
other achievements, she initiated the establishment of a television museum and
archive. For some years, she was a member of the international jury of the Prix
Europa television festival in Berlin. Her field of interest focusses on performance
theory, particularly the field of the historical avant-garde. She has served on the
editorial boards of the Belgrade magazines Književnost (Literature) and Književne
novine (Literary Gazette), contributed to the Zagreb theatre magazine Prolog, the
magazine for performance arts Frakcija, as well as the Belgrade magazine for
visual culture, New Moment. She has also published a number of texts in Sara-
jevske sveske (Sarajevo Notebooks), such as The Angel of History, Flight from the
Language, The Mirror Game and The Wanted Circular for Oneself. Her book of
essays, Spojni sudovi (Communicating Vessels, 1980) and five ‘synthetic’ novels
were published by one of the most eminent Serbian publishing houses, Geopo-
etika. As critics have noted, in these novels she transverses genres so that essay,
drama and fiction are interrelated as ‘trustworthy friends’.
All of Mira Otašević’s novels are set in the twentieth century, from the birth
of Marinetti’s Futurism to the most recent tragic siege and urbicide of Sarajevo.
Her protagonists are more or less well-known personalities who live through
familiar events against a backdrop of political extremes that determine the desti-
nies of individuals, even that of entire nations. Her novels are undoubtedly post-
modern; written after intensive research into the biographies of her chosen, par-
adigmatic, congenial characters, she fuses this multitude of intimate data with
great artistic freedom in her interpretation of the facts. Each sentence discloses
a personal, never a neutral position, particularly accentuated by auto-reflexive
discourses: all the characters speak or write in the first person. Mira Otašević
uses a dynamic form of quick, rhythmic, almost film-like successions of events,
scenes, images and personalities. All this indicates the author’s immense dram-
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0017
328 Irina Subotić
aturgical experience, her erudition, knowledge, sensibility and strong dedication

to her topics.
The first novel by Mira Otašević, Magamal (1994) offers numerous dimensions
of reading and sums up everything we expect from the reconstruction of a Futur-
ist love story which, as Marinetti believed, should be read in an aeroplane while
the engine is roaring! First of all, there is the ideal of the emancipated woman:
her activism, bravery, lively intellect, her new rôles and responsibilities, but also
her tragic destiny about which Otašević says: “Everyone who is an autonomous
individual must be terribly lonely”. The novel Magamal encourages an exaltation
of modernocracy; it never doubts the issue of progress, but presents a challenge
to the political authorities and their omnipresent power.
Magamal was the Futurist pseudonym of Eva Kiun (later Amendola Kühn,
1892–1920). But besides this point of convergence, the protagonist of the novel
distinguishes herself from the historical figure in many respects: there is no
mention of Vilnius, nor the Soviet Union, the translations of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy
or Schopenhauer which Eva Kiun engaged in. Nevertheless, the two Magamals
are related to each other in as much as they share common roots in a distinctly
modern period: both display unconventional behaviour, pursue adventures and
strive towards absolute freedom. They practice the art of seduction, cause scan-
dals with their passions and erotic desires – particularly when they demand the
freedom to choose their partners and the fathers of their children. But they also
have an avant-garde dedication to learning about the New: they love experiment-
ing with fashion, speedy driving and giving in to the force of their emotions. They
are linked together by their short-term adherence to the Futurist movement and
their love of Marinetti’s exhibitionist arrangement of life as a work of art, but also
by their interest in the then-popular fashion of occultism and numerology.
Mira Otašević’s Magamal interprets Kiun’s credo in the following way:
I am a Futurist because Futurism means delineation of new roads towards a future, an insur-
mountable desire for new sensations, emotions and full freedom. I am a Futurist because
Futurism means enthusiasm for untested dangers, for unattained heights and unknown
depths. I am a Futurist because Futurism means not being afraid of ridicule, scorn or hatred,
because it means overcoming the relationships of good upbringing, depressed and somno-
lent existence in an upper-class society! (p. 26).
Marinetti’s metaphysical muse, Magamal, makes love to the rhythm of a march

and the sound of shrapnels. She is educated and is familiar with the works of
Baudelaire, Marx, Nietzsche, H. G. Wells, Bergson, D’Annunzio, Freud, and the
theosophy of Rudolf Steiner (but not Annie Besant, as Eva Kiun was); she accepts
Sorel’s dream of revolution, worries about her friend Natalia Goncharova, gets
lost in the whirlwind of a revolution, admires Sonia Delaunay-Terk, who endeav-
Fig. 1. Cover of Mira Otašević’s novel, Magamal: Ex libris, in the Geopoetika edition of 1994.
ours to embellish the ugly world with colours, becomes furious with Valentine de
Saint-Point’s Manifesto of the Futurist Woman, and meets Lou Andreas-Salomé
and Rosa Luxemburg.
According to the literary critic Svetislav Jovanov, this minimalistic novel is
a “literary apocrypha of unusual subject matter”, similar to epistolary novels.1
However, owing to the chosen point of narration it is also relatable, in gentle
hints, to the genre of women’s writing. There are roaring automobiles and speedy
little aeroplanes, incessant smoking of cigarettes and sniffing of drugs, and we
are bombarded with a succession of toponyms such as Trieste, Paris, Rome,
Basel, Saint-Petersburg, Venice, Milan, Verona, Caporetto, Moscow, Alto Adige,
Terre d’Astura, Naples and Santo Castello. Characters are defined by their strong
1 Jovanov: “Akt koji silazi s uma” (The Nude Losing Her Mind), p. 45.
330 Irina Subotić
passions while “light beams destroy the materiality of the body”. Personalities
come and go like in a film screened in fast motion: Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir
Malevich, Sergei Diaghilev, Umberto Boccioni, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ricciotto
Canudo, Dimitrije Tucović, “the only dignified figure at the Basel International
Congress”, the pilot Fedele Azari, who identifies aeroplanes with his own sexual-
ity. Only “the handsome young lad Antonin Artaud” stays a little longer.
Mira Otašević’s novel is historically situated within the early twentieth
century and alludes to crucial events such as the assassination of Grand Duke
Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, temporary government and anarchy in Russia, the
beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as Marinetti’s fascination with
Mussolini and the Fascist action squads. The plot unfolds mostly in Trieste – that
“mythical area”2 on the borders of civilizations, in an ambience that implies a
disjunction of dream and reality, and thereby creates an undefined space some-
where in-between art and life.
Written in the form of short diary notes, with precise indications of dates and
places, the novel Magamal does not paint a broad canvas or presents a sweeping
totality of events; instead, it lets an overall picture emerge from a myriad of frag-
ments that are intricately interwoven and follow in quick succession, and thus
leaving no time for detailed descriptions or reflections. Every page brings a new
episode; sentences are short and apodictic; pages sometimes contain only a few
phrases. This pounding rhythm suggests cross-references and opens up unusual
vistas that disrupt logic and often make situations absurd. The book requires an
educated reader who will fill vague allusions with meaning and follow the novel’s
strong, almost Futurist pulse in an atmosphere driven by fascination and passion.
Through Magamal’s testimonial, “to invent means to possess reality, I have
not invented anything”, Mira Otašević puts down her own mark, suggesting that
we should accept the originality of her work which offers a special “beauty of
belated reception”. To the question of a journalist, why she had developed an
interest in Futurism, the author replied that the first authentic avant-garde move-
ment had caused great controversies, that Dadaism and Surrealism originated
from it, that it had been for a long time overshadowed by Fascism, that “Mari-
netti began as an Orpheus and ended as a clown”, a fate that has befallen many
others.3 Remembering that Magamal was printed in 1994 – three years after it had
been finished – at a time when wars were raging in the territories of former Yugo-
slavia, when social, moral, cultural, economic and all other suffering made life
2 Ibidem.
3 Lu: “Muškarac je jedno a žena – mnogi” (The Man is One and the Woman – Many). Interview
with Mira Otašević, 22 February 1995, p. 29.
meaningless, the novel can be read on two parallel levels: the heroine’s female
perception of the world, or the political foundation of totalitarianism as an agent
of evil and total destruction.
After Magamal, Mira Otašević published Ničeova sestra (Nietzsche’s Sister,
1999), where the female protagonist contributes to a richly articulated depiction
of the life, creativity and stratified metaphors of the great philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche. It reflects on how his works were susceptible to manipulations, beau-
tification and forgery. The editor of Geopoetika, Vladislav Bajac, believes that if
Samuel Beckett had been able to read Mira Otašević’s Beket i jastog (Beckett and
the Lobster, 2005), “he would think that, perhaps, he had written the book himself
and temporarily mislaid it in the cellar or in the recesses of his mind”.4 One can
sense Beckett’s concepts, expressions, his time and life, his way of walking or
speaking, his conduct, friendships and solitude. Various personalities emerge in
the book, interact and disperse again: James Joyce and Marcel Proust, Peggy Gug-
genheim and Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp and Bertolt Brecht, Igor Stravinsky
and Harold Pinter, as well as renowned personalities from Serbian culture, such
as Dušan Matić, Mića Popović, Jovan Hristić, Pavle Ugrinov and Radomir Kon-
stantinović.
In her novel Zmajevi od papira (Paper Kites, 2008), Mira Otašević paid homage
to the architect Selman Selmanagić, the heroes of the Bauhaus and their aston-
ishing destinies. However, the twist of the book is that the rise of Nazism and the
burning of books as a symbol of total destruction are hyperbolically transposed
onto the crimes committed in Bosnia during the 1990s, particularly in Srebrenica,
the place of Selmanagić’s birth. It is the author’s homage to all the victims of
totalitarian régimes and senseless wars.
After this book, Otašević moved into the domain of photography, which she
considers to be “the recording of transience by light”. Otašević’s fifth novel, Zoja
(Zoe, 2012), is yet another tale about the tragic twentieth century, told through the
destinies of many characters. The heroines of this book – Susan Sontag, Beren-
ice Abbot, Diane Arbus and Vivian Maier, as well as some of the heroes, such as
Robert Capa, Louis Aragon and Henri Cartier-Bresson, are related both by pho-
tography and the whirlwinds of fate, from Paris to New York and Israel, from the
Spanish Civil War to the horrors of the Second World War, and then the Vietnam
War, from the students’ unrest of 1968 to the vicious circle of violence and coun-
ter-violence in the Middle East. The climax of the crises takes place in ex-Yugosla-
via, in the siege of Sarajevo (1992 to 1996). The historian Milan Ristović believes
4 Bajac: Blurb for Beket i jastog (Beckett and the Lobster), in advertising brochure of Geopoetika
publishing house, 2005.
332 Irina Subotić
that, in this novel, Mira Otašević writes about the lives of women and men who
belonged to the artistic avant-garde, but simultaneously plunged into internal,
intimate spaces, where real events and experiences are just a pretext for a dense
and convincing journey through the past century.5
Translated by Ksenija Todorović
Bibliography
Bajac, Vladislav: “Mira Otašević: Beket i jastog” [Mira Otašević: Beckett and the Lobster].
Advertising brochure of Geopoetika publishing house 2005.
Jovanov, Svetislav: “Akt koji silazi s uma.” [The Nude Losing Her Mind] Vreme (Beograd), 23
January 1995. 45.
Lu, Luna: “Muškarac je jedno a žena – mnogi.” [The Man is One and the Woman – Many]. Nova
nada (Beograd), 22 February 1995. 29.
Mitrović, Marija: “Magamal”. M. Mitrović: Sul mare brillavano vasti silenzi: Immagini di Trieste
nella letteratura serba. Trieste: Il Ramo d’Oro, 2004. 203–214.
Otašević, Mira: Magamal: Ex libris. Beograd: Centar za geopoetiku, 1994.
Ristović, Milan: “Mira Otašević: Zoja” [Mira Otašević: Zoe]. Advertising brochure of Geopoetika
publishing house, 2012.
5 Ristović: Blurb for Zoja (Zoe), in advertising brochure of Geopoetika publishing house, 2012.
Lisa Hanstein
Edyth von Haynau: A Viennese Aristocrat
in the Futurist Circles of the 1910s
Abstract: Edyth von Haynau (1884–1978), who in the course of her career changed
both her name and her artistic interests, was a person who is difficult to grasp. There
are many reasons for this: in her youth, the Austrian aristocrat witnessed the slow
transformation of the rôle of women in Vienna, which she experienced in a per-
sonal way due to her interest in art. Later on, in Italy, she fought for her position as
a wife, a mother of four and as a sovereign artist within the extremely lively femi-
nist debate that dominated Futurism at that time. The remarkable œuvre she pro-
duced as an author and visual artist often reflected traces of these inner conflicts.
Her works also show an ever-growing fascination with the Unknown, which was
then being explored by Theosophists and Spiritists, not only in Vienna but also in
Rome and Florence. The following essay focusses on Edyth von Haynau’s drawings
that seek to represent stati d’animo (states of mind), a Futurist concept introduced
by Boccioni and closely related to Spiritist practices. Within this context, I analyse
Edyth von Haynau’s Austrian background, her activities within the group around
the Florentine periodical, L’Italia futurista, and discuss the scanty information we
possess on her paintings and ceramics.
Keywords: Futurism and occultism, Florentine proto-Surrealism, L’Italia futur-

ista, Futurist novels, parole in libertà (Words-in-Freedom), book illustration
“La geniale viennese”1 – this is how Filippo Tommaso Marinetti referred to

Edyth von Haynau, the young artist who became known as Rosa Rosà in Futurist
circles and, following her experiences with Futurism, went by the name of Edyth
Arnaldi. Due to her many interests she did indeed fulfil the Futurists’ ambition to
renew all spheres of art and life: during her Futurist phase she wrote a novel and
multiple short stories, designed parole in libertà (Words-in-Freedom), created oil
paintings, pastels, watercolours, portraits and illustrations, and was even active
in sculpting – a branch of art which, unlike ceramic or painting, was seen as a
rather masculine profession even in 1939.2 Throughout her life, von Haynau was
1 Cited from a conversation with Maria Ginanni, documented in Marinetti: Firenze biondazzurra
sposerebbe futurista morigerato”, p. 130.
2 On the topic of women and sculpture see Grasso: Donne e scultura (1920–1943): Temi, tecniche,
tipologie, p. 137.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0018
334 Lisa Hanstein
not only a versatile artist but also a campaigner within the feminist movement
who used her many skills to impress Italian readers with her enlightened ideas.
To describe Edyth von Haynau’s artistic work as a whole is a challenging task
because of her multi-disciplinary approaches and the stylistic diversity of her
œuvre. For example, the ten drawings that supplement ten poems by Mario Carli
in Notti filtrate (Filtered Nights, 1918), received Marinetti’s high praise: “Notti fil-
trate is extremely original, splendid, and powerfully Futurist. I really really like
it. A truly Futurist book. Perfect cover. Rosa Rosà has a very creative mind.”3 Yet,
categorizing them stylistically is extremely difficult as they feature both figurative
illustrations inspired by Symbolism as well as esoteric-cosmic representations in
an abstract Futurist manner. Furthermore, the loss or unknown fate of many of
her works makes it difficult to produce an overall analysis.
As a result of the newly emerging interest in the female protagonists of the
Futurist movement, Edyth von Haynau has received increased consideration, but
scholars have largely directed their attention to her literary works as well as her
contributions to the Florentine periodical, L’Italia futurista (1916–18), initially
directed by Emilio Settimelli and Bruno Corra, and then by Settimelli, Arnaldo
Ginna and Maria Ginanni.4 It is surely the merit of Mario Verdone to have high-
lighted the significance of her abstract Futurist drawings in an essay specifically
dedicated to them.5 Whilst her graphic work is repeatedly mentioned, it is rarely
discussed in any detail. Salaris’ excellent introduction to the novel Una donna
con tre anime (A Woman with Three Souls, 1918) features a paragraph on her book
illustrations, as does Zoccoli’s chapter in the collaborative volume on Women
Artists of Italian Futurism.6 Verdone and Salaris both stress the oneiric-esoteric
character of the drawings and relate them to the proto-Surrealist tendencies in
3 “Originalissimo splendido e potentemente futurista il tuo Notti filtrate. Mi piace molto molto.
Edizione veramente futurista. Copertina perfetta. Rosa Rosà ha veramente molto ingegno.” Mari-
netti in a letter to Carli, in Lettere futuriste tra arte e politica, p. 50.
4 Zoccoli provides a brief overview of the literature on female Futurists in “Futurist Women
Painters in Italy”, pp. 373–374. Other interesting surveys include Vergine: L’altra metà dell’avan-
guardia; Salaris: Le futuriste; Bello Minciacchi: Spirale di dolcezza + serpe di fascino; Bentivoglio
and Zoccoli: Le futuriste italiane nelle arti visive; Carpi: Futuriste; Mosco: Donna e futurismo, fra
virilismo e riscatto. Individual essays about Rosa Rosà include, amongst others, Fiumi: “Edyth
Arnaldi (Rosà)”; Verdone: “Disegni futuristi e astratti di Rosa Rosà”; Salaris: “Una donna con tre
anime”; Della Coletta: “Rosa Rosà (Edyth Von Haynau). (1884–1978?)”; Vittori: “Haynau Edith”,
and numerous excellent articles by Re, including her latest publication: “Rosa Rosà and the
Question of Gender in Wartime Futurism”.
5 Verdone: “Disegni futuristi e astratti di Rosa Rosà”. He returned to her in a later catalogue
entry, “Abstraktion, Futurismus und Okkultismus: Ginna, Corra und Rosà.”
6 Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, pp. 22–25, and Zoccoli: “Rosa Rosà.”
Edyth von Haynau: A Viennese Aristocrat in the Futurist Circles of the 1910s 335
the L’Italia futurista group, but lose sight of Edyth von Haynau’s possible Spiritist
experiences in Vienna and Rome.
In the following pages, I shall select examples of Edyth von Haynau’s graphic
works produced for her Florentine colleagues and discuss her interest in visual-
izing the invisible and in depicting ‘states of mind’, which were closely related
to the occultist discourses of her time. Through her book illustrations, Edyth von
Haynau was able not only to interpret the ideas behind the texts by means of her
art, but also to move beyond them. The point of departure for my analysis is the
fact that her fascination for the supernatural does not date back to the involve-
ment with L’Italia futurista, but had already been a significant aspect of her youth
in Vienna and was further strengthened during her period in Rome. For a better
understanding of her artistic development, I shall first outline her biography
before focussing on her graphic œuvre and analysing individual works in more
detail.
Youth in Vienna
The artist best known by her pseudonym Rosa Rosà was born in Vienna on 11
November 1884 as the only daughter of Ernst von Haynau and Harriet Mautner
von Markhof.7 Some Italian scholars, such as Mirella Bentivoglio, Franca Zoccoli
and Lucia Re, occasionally indicate her name as “Edith”,8 although the artist
herself signed her name as “Edyth Arnaldi”, as we witness in a letter to Emilio
Settimelli of 2 September [1923].9 The same signature appears on an oil paint-
ing from 1935, Anticolana alla fonte (Anticolana at the Source) which, so far, has
barely received any attention by scholars. 10
7 The family tree, available online, indicates the name “Editha”, see http://gw.geneanet.org/
genroy?lang=de;p=editha;n=von+haynau. Katz claims in “The Women of Futurism”, p. 5 that the
artist was still alive during an exhibition put on in 1980 in the Galleria La Feluca, which would
disprove that the year of her death was 1978. As the author does not provide evidence for this
information, I have disregarded it here.
8 See Bentivoglio and Zoccoli: Futuriste italiane nelle arti visive, p. 146 and Re: “Rosa Rosà’s Fu-
turist-Feminist Short Novel ‘A Woman with Three Souls’”, p. [1].
9 The letter mentions Marinetti’s wedding and can therefore be dated 1923. It is preserved in
Fondazione Primo Conti in Fiesole, FC/ES.C 143–145 CAM A.
10 The painting is held by the Civico Museo d’Arte Moderna, Anticoli Corrado. The catalogue
gives the following information on the painting: “Ante 1935, oil on canvas, 46.5 x 35, top left
signature ‘Edith Arnaldi’ (on the painting itself ‘Edyth Arnaldi’) by Edith von Haynau Arnaldi.”
Pancotto: “Pittrici nella valle dell’Aniene”, p. 54.
336 Lisa Hanstein
Little is known about her family, but it is regularly stated that Edyth’s
great-uncle was General Julius von Haynau, who served alongside Marshal
Radetzky in Italy and is historically known as the ‘Hyena of Brescia’. However,
this and the following biographical details have not been confirmed by any reli-
able sources and seem to derive from conversations the artist or her descendants
had with scholars such as Mario Verdone and Claudia Salaris, which later studies
uncritically adopted.11 During her childhood, Edyth von Haynau did not attend
any public schools but was privately educated at home.12 Her ‘typically feminine’
interests in drawing and music perfectly suited the image of young women in
turn-of-the-century Vienna.13 Some of her other interests later in life may also
have roots in her youth: according to Salaris, between 1896 and 1897 she edited a
periodical which was inspired by contemporary travel and adventure magazines.
She also wrote stories that were set in India, Italy and amongst Native Americans,
and were accompanied by illustrations.14
Her interest in India suggests that the Orientalist trend in European culture
at the turn of the century had also found a way into Edyth von Haynau’s parental
home. In particular, her aristocratic background suggests that she had witnessed
highly intellectual debates on Spiritism in Vienna from a young age onwards.15
After all, around 1900, Viennese academics, artists and upper-class citizens took a
great interest in this phenomenon and were often involved in its esoteric practices,
without, however, losing sight of the great social transformations of the period.16
In those years, the Austrian capital saw some revolutionary changes in the
arts, largely stimulated by the Vienna Secession, founded in 1897. The artists who
‘seceded’ from the Künstlerhaus (the exhibition space of the oldest artists’ associ-
ation, the Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Österreichs) were related to the Wiener
Werkstätte, a fine-arts society founded in 1903 with the goal of reforming the
11 See, for example, Bentivoglio and Zoccoli: Futuriste italiane nelle arti visive, p. 146 and Re:
“Rosa Rosà’s Futurist-Feminist Short Novel ‘A Woman with Three Souls’”, pp. [1]–[3] .
12 See Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, p. 27.
13 On women artists in Vienna at the time see Plakolm-Forsthuber: Künstlerinnen in Österreich
1897- 1938.
14 Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, p. 27.
15 On the significance of Spiritism for modern art in Vienna see Kury: “Spiritismus – die neue
Religion”, p. 390, and Pytlik: “Okkultismus und Moderne”. Kury suspects that the fascination for
Theosophical doctrines was also triggered by the Western discovery of Buddhism and the sacred
books of the East, which were being translated in Vienna at the time. See Kury: “Heiligenscheine
eines elektrischen Jahrhundertendes sehen anders aus”, p. 98.
16 The devotees of Spiritism also occupied themselves with social matters and, due to the influ-
ence of Charles Fourier’s Utopian Socialism, were discussing the rôle of women in society. See
Kury: “Spiritismus – die neue Religion”, p. 396.
nation’s arts and crafts. Both represented the iconoclastic spirit of turn-of-the-cen-
tury Vienna, but unlike other Modernist movements, the Vienna Secession did not
follow one style but adhered to the motto, “to give art its freedom”,17 meaning that,
above all, artists should be exploring all forms of expression and go beyond the
confines of academic tradition. At a young age, Edyth von Haynau witnessed these
developments as well as the upsurge of feminism. She wanted to study fine arts, but
opportunities for training young women were extremely limited at the time.
Although the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna had already been founded in
1692, in 1904 it still rejected the request to inaugurate an Academy for Women and
only in 1920 accepted women as students. 18 Until then, the only opportunity for
women, apart from private lessons given by individual artists, was the Kunstschule
für Frauen und Mädchen (Art School for Women and Girls),19 later known as the
‘Wiener Frauen Akademie’ (Vienna Women’s Academy). My archival research did
not find any confirmation that von Haynau was enrolled at the Universität für
Musik und darstellende Kunst (University for Music and Performing Arts), or at
the Kunstgewerbeschule (Academy of Applied Arts) in Vienna. Instead, she must
have studied for two years at the Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen.20
Women were granted the opportunity to attend art schools much later than
their male counterparts, and the quality of their artistic education was, at least
initially, on a much lower level. Although women artists in Vienna were not able to
attend prestigious academies and had to develop their artistic competence either
on their own or through private lessons, they nevertheless enjoyed the opportu-
nity to exhibit their works and thereby attract public attention. On the one hand,
young Edyth von Haynau saw pioneers of the feminist movement opening up
ways for women to gain an artistic education; on the other hand, her decision
to attend a women-only Kunstschule, against her parents’ wishes, indicates that
17 “Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit” was written above the entrance of the Secession
building.
18 To counteract the discrimination of female artists, women took their own initiative and,
around 1885, founded the Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen in Wien (Association
of Female Writers and Artists in Vienna), which exists to this day. For more information on this
association, see Harriman: “Olga Wisinger-Florian and Tina Blau”, p. 27.
19 It was founded in 1897 by the painter Adalbert Franz Seligmann (1862–1945), who was also
the only teacher there. Further information on the history of degree courses for women at the
Academy can be found in Forkl and Koffmahn: Frauenstudium und akademische Frauenarbeit in
Österreich, and Heindl and Tichy: “Durch Erkenntnis zu Freiheit und Glück ...”
20 Italian publications on Rosa Rosà sometimes speak in generic terms of “scuola d’arte di Vien-
na” (School of Art in Vienna), e.g. Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, p. 27. Fanelli and Godoli
mistakenly refer to the “Kunstgewerbeschule” (School of Applied Arts) in Vienna. See Fanelli and
Godoli: “Il futurismo e la grafica”, p. 198.
338 Lisa Hanstein
gender-discrimination still persisted in the arts. But she also grew up in an era
characterized by a revolt of artists who defined themselves as ‘Modernist’,21 by
the rise of feminism and by a strong interest in paranormal phenomena.
To this date, there is no evidence of Edyth von Haynau participating in Spir-
itist séances, either in Austria or in Italy. We can only surmise that, at an early
age, she developed a strong interest in this field. Her fascination with the occult
showed up in her paintings and novels of the 1910s, as I shall discuss below.
Similarly, her familiarity with the high level of abstraction and decorativeness
characteristic of the Viennese Secession became apparent in the decorative and
abstract style of her later years, although the visionary and spiritual component
in her work gives it an extremely dynamic quality that cannot be found in the Art
Nouveau of the turn-of-the-century. 22
Futurism and Spiritism in Rome
In 1908, Edyth von Haynau married the Italian author Ulrico Arnaldi (1878–1956),
whom she had met on a cruise to the North Cape in 1907. After their wedding, they
moved to Rome, where, between 1909 and 1915, she bore four children.23 During
the war years, whilst her husband fought at the front, Edyth Arnaldi, as she now
called herself in civil life, began to familiarize herself with Futurism and adopted
the name ‘Rosa Rosà’.24 The exact way in which she came into contact with the
Futurist movement has not been ascertained. Nevertheless, it is possible that she
frequented the circle of Giacomo Balla, visited the permanent Futurist Gallery of
Giuseppe Sprovieri, and came into contact with the Futurists who regularly met
at the Associazione Artistica Internazionale, located in Via Margutta.25 According
to Mario Verdone, Edyth von Haynau had a studio on the premises.26
21 The term ‘die Moderne’ is, strictly speaking, not identical with ‘Modernismus’, which did not
exist in the German-speaking countries at the time. See Wunberg: Die Wiener Moderne: Literatur,
Kunst und Musik zwischen 1890 und 1910.
22 Fanelli and Godoli: Il futurismo e la grafica, p. 66.
23 Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, p. 27.
24 She chose her Futurist pseudonym after the small city of Rosà in the Veneto region. For an
interpretation of the name see Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, p. 27 and Re: “Rosa Rosà’s
Futurist-Feminist Short Novel ‘A Woman with Three Souls’”, pp. [2]–[3].
25 Like Boccioni, Balla is listed as a member and visitor to the Associazione Artistica Internazi-
onale. See Moncada di Paternò and Salmeri: “Atelier a via Margutta”, p. 314.
26 See Verdone: “Disegni futuristi e astratti di Rosa Rosà”, p. [56]. Verdone may have received
this information from the artist herself, yet the very comprehensive report on artists residing in
Given the important rôle the association played in the life of foreign artists
resident in Rome, it is quite possible that Edyth von Haynau made the acquaint-
ance here of two female artists, with whom she had much in common: Irma von
Duczynska (1869–1932) and Růžena Zátková (1885–1923). Von Duczynska had
attended the same art school as Edyth von Haynau and had co-founded one of
Europe’s first art schools for women and children in Vienna (1909).27 She moved
to Rome six years after von Haynau and became a member of the Munich artist
group, AENIGMA (1918 – c.1928), whose work was strongly influenced by anthro-
posophical philosophies. A peculiar feature of AENIGMA was its unusually large
number of female members.28 This was a very rare phenomenon at the time, but
could also be observed in the Florentine magazine, L’Italia futurista, which Edyth
von Haynau started to work for in 1917. It is quite possible that Edyth and Irma
made each other’s acquaintance in Rome through their shared interests. After all,
they both tried to establish themselves in a male-dominated art world, pursued
a similar interest in the occult and joined avant-garde groups that distinguished
themselves by accepting a large number of female participants.
One of them was the Czech artist, Růžena Zátková, who began exploring
Futurism in Rome from 1914 onwards.29 In her diary, she recorded not only her
interest in paranormal phenomena, Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy and theo-
sophical ideas, but also recorded the Spiritist séances she attended in Rome in
1916.30 We also learn that Giacomo Balla participated in a mediumistic session
held in Růžena’s home in 1916.31 A number of studies have explored Balla’s
occultist background, his contact with General Ballatore (1839–1920), the presi-
dent of the Theosophical Society in Rome, as well as the impact that these inter-
ests had on his painting and sculpture.32 Moreover, the Corradini brothers, from
the L’Italia futurista group, are known to have debated occultist phenomena in
Via Margutta does not mention her name. See Moncada di Paternò and Salmeri: “Atelier a via
Margutta”.
27 This information is taken from Reinhold J. Fäth’s lecture, “Artists within and around the
group AENIGMA (1918-ca. 1928)”, given on 27 September 2013 in Amsterdam at the conference,
Enchanted Modernities: Theosophy, Modernism and the Arts, c. 1875–1960.
28 Fäth: “Artists within and around the group AENIGMA (1918-ca. 1928)”, lecture held on on
27 September 2013. See also Fäth and Voda: AENIGMA: Anthroposofické umění.
29 Pomajzlová: “Růžena: Příběh malířky Růženy Zátkové”, p. 287. Giorgini also examines Zátk-
ová’s activities in Via Margutta in her essay: “Růžena Zátková e i futuristi a Roma nel secondo
decennio del Novecento”.
30 Giorgini: “Růžena Zátková e i futuristi a Roma nel secondo decennio del Novecento”, p. 113.
31 Ibid., p. 115.
32 See the studies by Benzi, Calvesi and Matitti.
340 Lisa Hanstein
Balla’s home.33 We might therefore assume that Edyth von Haynau had met them
in Rome before she began working with them on L’Italia futurista.
The present state of scholarship does not offer sufficient evidence that Edyth
von Haynau ever moved to Florence. In the Mostra degli adornatori del libro
(1923), her name appeared as “Arnaldi Edyth Rosa (Roma)”,34 which suggests that
her main residence always remained in the capital.
Passéist Florence – esoteric Florence
Apart from Rome, Milan and Turin, the exploration of paranormal phenomena
was especially prominent in traditionalist Florence. Hence, Simona Cigliana ded-
icated two whole chapters to occultist trends in this city in her volume, Futur-
ismo esoterico (Esoteric Futurism, 1996).35 She conveyed the general atmosphere
in Florence and highlighted the particular rôle played by Futurists from L’Italia
futurista, who were united by a common interest in the paranormal and the occult.
The fascination with the unknown, the invisible and the occult was also shared
by Maria Ginanni and Irma Valeria. In contrast, Eva Amendola Kühn (Magamal)
turned her back on this trend, possibly because of the bad experiences she had
had during Spiritist events.36 Her rejection became very clear in her review of Sam
Dunn è morto, which she concludes by calling the Theosophist leaders “charla-
tans” and stressing the need to distance oneself from occultism and Theosophy
and also to dissociate Futurism from these trends.37
33 Poggianella: “Okkulte Elemente und das Licht im Werk Ballas”, p. 461.

34 See the catalogue Prima esposizione internazionale delle arti decorative. Firenze: Bestetti &
Tumminelli, 1923, p. 160. This exhibition is reproduced in Crispolti’s Nuovi archivi del futurismo,
p. 210, but not listed in the index under von Haynau’s exhibitions.
35 See chapter 2, “La Biblioteca Filosofica di Firenze”, pp. 47–66 and chapter 11, “Il gruppo di
L’Italia futurista”, pp. 269–296. Further information on the influence of esoteric trends on L’Italia
futurista can be found in Notte: “Esoterismo”, pp. 414–416.
36 See Cigliana’s study, Futurismo esoterico, chap. II, “La Biblioteca Filosofica di Firenze”,
pp. 47–66 and chap. XI. “Il gruppo di L’Italia futurista”, pp. 269–296, and Donatella Di Leo’s es-
say, “Eva Amendola Kühn (Magamal): A Futurist of Lithuanian Extraction” in this volume. For
further information on the influence of occult thinking on the women of L’Italia futurista, see
Mosco: Donna e futurismo, fra virilismo e riscatto, Chap. 3, “Le veggenti del futurismo: Le donne
de “L’Italia futurista” tra esoterismo e diritti femminili”, pp. 87–133.
37 L’Italia futurista 2:28 (9 September 1917), p. 3. See the excerpts translated in Di Leo’s essay,
p. 300.
Around 1903–05, the Biblioteca Filosofica (Philosophical Lending Library)

was founded in Florence by the American Theosophist Julia H. Scott. It had some
reading rooms, offered book loans and organized conferences and some relevant
publications, which contributed to the spread of Theosophical ideas in the city.38
The objectives of the Theosophical Society, which were outlined in 1896, were:
1. To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinc-

tion of race, creed, sex, caste or color.
2. To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science.
3. To investigate unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in man.39
Interestingly enough, these three points are very similar to some of the objec-
tives propagated by the Futurists in the Florentine periodical, L’Italia futurista, for
example in the manifesto, La scienza futurista (Futurist Science, 1916),40 which
was published in the magazine’s second issue, or Irma Valeria’s article, “Occult-
ismo e arte nuova” (Occultism and New Art).41 The second and third objective
of the Theosophical Society are also reflected in Ginna’s treatise, Pittura dell’av-
venire (Painting of the Future, 1917) which, like its predecessor, Arte dell’avve-
nire (Art of the Future, 1910), drew on Leadbeater and Steiner’s theories42 and
propagated the notion of “occult painting”.43 Eventually, Ginna’s comprehensive
theoretical discussion of the visual representation of stati d’animo and of the sub-
conscious spheres44 found their way into Edyth von Haynau’s work.
38 See Giovanni Papini’s report on Arturo Reghini’s establishment of the ‘Biblioteca circolan-
te di Scienza, Filosofia, Religioni’ in 1903 on Piazza Donatello. Papini: “Passato remoto, 1885–
1914”, p. 125. Pasi claims that the library was founded in 1904. See Pasi: “Teosofia e antroposofia
nell’Italia del primo Novecento”, p. 589. Cigliana states that it was founded in 1905. See Cigliana:
Futurismo esoterico, p. 51.
39 The editors of Blavatsky’s The Key to Theosophy write on p. 24: “In 1896 the following wording
was adopted and there has been no further change since then.”
40 “La scienza futurista (antitedesca – avventurosa – capricciosa – sicurezzofoba – ebbra d’ig-
noto)”, in L’Italia futurista 1:2 (15 June 1916), p. 1, signed by Bruno Corra, Arnaldo Ginanni, Remo
Chiti, Emilio Settimelli, Mario Carli and Oscar Mara.
41 Published in L’Italia futurista 2:17 (10 June 1917), p. 2.
42 Notte: “Esoterismo”, p. 415.
43 Ginna: “Pittura dell’avvenire”, pp. 52, 54. The treatise was published in six instalments in
L’Italia futurista, between 3 June and 8 July 1917.
44 See Tedeschi: “Arnaldo Ginanni Corradini”, pp. 537–538.
342 Lisa Hanstein
New Women in a New World
In 1917, Edyth von Haynau entered the spotlight of L’Italia futurista with the pub-
lication of “Le donne del posdomani” (The Women of the Near Future), 45 signed
‘Rosa Rosà’. She participated in the vivid debates that raged in L’Italia futurista
over the publication of Marinetti’s ‘manual’, Come si seducono le donne (How to
Seduce Women, 1917). Other contributions analysed the positive development of
new rôles for women due to the absence of men during the Great War: “Risposta
a Jean-Jacques” (An Answer to Jean-Jacques) and “Le donne cambiano final-
mente” (Women Are Finally Changing).46 In these short essays, she outlined the
great changes that had taken place in Italian society. Women had finally become
liberated from hearth and family and had entered the public sphere. The ‘new
woman’ was transforming herself due to the influence of modern urban life and
was developing a stronger and more autonomous self. Edyth von Haynau saw
Futurism playing a leading rôle in this change which, eventually, would lead to
women’s full citizenship and the right to vote. Just like Marinetti wanted to blow
up the walls of the museum, Futurist women were now engaged in blowing up
“the walls of the gynaeceum.”47
In addition to her interests in the occult, Edyth von Haynau was one of the
few female authors of parole in libertà (Words-in-Freedom). For example, Ricevi-
mento – thé – signore – nessun uomo (Reception – Tea – Ladies – No Men, 1917;
see Fig. 1)48 depicts a simplified layout of a salon and conveys the atmosphere
of a classic tea party. In contrast to the Spiritist séances in High Society salons,
which were mostly attended by men, social meetings in the afternoon, at which
light refreshments were served, belonged to the traditionally domain of women.
For this reason, snippets of female conversation, written in italics, float around
a centrally located table. Conducted exclusively by women, this banter is subdi-
vided into three groups: in the top left corner, five triangles are surrounded by
undulating lines and themes such as fashion, husbands and children; they are
summarized by the word ‘noia’ (boredom). The top right corner is dedicated to
45 L’Italia futurista 2:18 (17 June 1917), p. 1.

46 Published in L’Italia futurista 2:20 (1 July 1917), p. 2 and L’Italia futurista 2:27 (26 August 1917,
p. 2, respectively. For a detailed discussion of these articles see Mosco: Donna e futurismo, fra
virilismo e riscatto, pp. 116–121, Re: “Rosa Rosà’s Futurist-Feminist Short Novel ‘A Woman with
Three Souls’”, pp. [5]-[6] and Re: “Rosa Rosà and the Question of Gender in Wartime Futurism”.
47 Rosà: “Women of the Near Future”, p. 246.
48 Printed in L’Italia futurista 2:35 (9 Dicembre 1917), p. 3. Amongst others, Bello Minciacchi
analyses the panel in “Spirale di dolcezza + serpe di fascino”, p. 160, as does Lucia Re in “Scrit-
tura della metamorfosi e metamorfosi della scrittura”, p. 325, note 11.
Fig. 1. Edyth von Haynau: Ricevimento – thé – signore – nessun uomo (Reception – Tea – Ladies
– No Men, 1917).
the topic of lovers, amongst others, and the three sub-themes are summarized
by the word ‘maldicenza’ (malicious gossip), which spirals out into three stars.
The last group, located in the bottom right corner, addresses the topics of female
intelligence and male malevolence and is subdivided into three circles and three
squares.
The different symbols might have been used to create a visual distinction
between the three groups. But they could also have had a more symbolic func-
tion: the triangle might represent cosmic birth, and the circle could represent God
and eternity, whereas the spiral is often associated with death and rebirth.49 The
bottom left corner indicates the exact location of the author, and both the arrow
49 Balla was wont to operate with such symbolic patters, and Edyth von Haynau may have been
familiar with these. For more information on Balla and the meaning of these symbols, see Poggi-
anella: “Okkulte Elemente und das Licht im Werk Ballas”, p. 460.
344 Lisa Hanstein
and the sentence “mi pare che ne ho abbastanza” (I think I’ve had enough) indi-
cate that she wishes to leave this tea party. Edyth von Haynau’s ability to capture
both her own (extremely bored) internal condition as well as the general atmos-
phere that charges the room is noteworthy. She accomplished this with the simul-
taneous representation of individual conversations and she perfectly summa-
rized the charged atmosphere at the intersection between these points with three
accurate expressions: ‘Impertinenza’ (boldness), ‘Fluidi ostili’ (hostile flows) and
‘Noia sbadiglie represse’ (boredom repressed yawns).
The use of wave patterns can be explained by the widespread belief in the
early twentieth century that space is saturated with invisible forces. The discovery
of radiation, energy and magnetic fields demonstrated just how limited human
perception is.50 Max Planck and Niels Bohr’s discovery of quantum physics in
1900 led to the “the shocking discovery […] that matter should not be understood
as a solid mass, but rather as a system of varying forms of energy”,51 a discovery
that rapidly destabilized the established physical models of the world.
Edyth von Haynau’s critical stance towards the middle class and the tradi-
tional rôle of women was also taken up in some of her literary works. The short
story, Romanticismo sonnambulo (Sleepwalking Romanticism, 1917), stands also
as proof of her interest in sleepwalking. This can be derived not only from the
title but also from its traces of automatic writing and the Theosophical belief in
reincarnation.52 The novel, Una donna con tre anime, published in 1918, criticizes
the stereotypical image of a middle class woman and combines Futurist princi-
ples with a search for a gender identity and occult themes.53 As the title suggests,
the main character, the rather mundane housewife Giorgina Rossi, experiences
three transformations. They are caused by a scientific experiment that brings her
into contact with the future and simultaneously transforms her into three very
different types of woman. The number three can be related to Edyth von Haynau’s
interests in occult sciences and in Rudolf Steiner’s classification of the elements
50 Especially Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays and Henry Becquerel’s discovery of
radioactivity in 1896. For more information on this topic, see Dalrymple Henderson: “Die mod-
erne Kunst und das Unsichtbare”, p. 14.
51 Schneider and Jäger: “Geist und Materie”, p. 198.
52 The short story was published in L’Italia futurista 2:17 (10 June 1917), p. 3. See Notte: “Esoter-
ismo”, p. 414.
53 See Steiner: “Welche Bedeutung hat die okkulte Entwicklung des Menschen für seine Hüllen
(physischen Leib, Ätherleib, Astralleib) und sein Selbst? Ein Zyklus von zehn Vorträgen gehalten
in Den Haag vom 20. bis 29. März 1913” (What Does the Occult Development of Man Mean for His
Shells [Physical, Etheric, Astral Body] and His Self? A Cycle of Ten Lectures Held in The Hague
between 20 and 29 March 1913).
that characterize mankind: the physical, etheric and astral bodies, to which he
added the human being’s ego or ‘I’, which is also tripartite in structure: sen-
tient, rational and conscious.54 Von Haynau’s incorporation of esoteric practices,
mediumship and telepathy testify to her enthusiasm for these topics, which were
widely discussed in esoteric circles at the outset of the twentieth century.55
Fig. 2. Edyth von Haynau: Danzatrice (Dancer, 1921).
The adoption of multiple personalities was significant in contemporary litera-

ture.56 A famous Italian example can be found in Luigi Pirandello’s novel Uno,
nessuno e centomila (One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, 1926). Its protag-
onist struggles with his identity after discovering that he has not only one person-
ality but different selves and ends up declaring himself to be a ‘nessuno’ (no one).
Sections from the novel were printed in 1921 in Bragaglia’s magazine Cronache
54 See Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, p. 13.

55 See, for example, Fletcher: Art Inspired by Rudolf Steiner: An Illustrated Introduction.
56 Asendorf: “Ströme und Strahlen”, p. 78.
346 Lisa Hanstein
d’attualità, accompanied by Edyth von Haynau’s drawing, Danzatrice (Dancer;

See Fig. 2).57
Edyth von Haynau’s interest in multiple personas was also linked to the
Spiritualists’ exploration of the possibilities of duplicating the human body, or
rather the human soul. That these ideas were vividly discussed in Florence, and
therefore might be known to von Haynau, is testified by Giovanni Papini, who
describes that the director of the Philosophical Lending Library, Arturo Reghini,
announced to him that he would meet, as his doppelgänger, a “fratello terribile”
(a terrible brother), an encounter that Papini waited for in vain.58 The phenom-
enon of a ghostly counterpart of a living person appeared not only in Edyth von
Haynau’s work but also in that of other Futurist artists. As I mentioned above, it is
unknown whether Edyth von Haynau ever participated in mediumistic séances.
We are on much firmer ground with the Futurist painter and musician Luigi
Russolo, who attempted to separate his etheric body from his physical body. His
wife stated that Russolo went into a state of rapture after having encountered
his spiritual doppelgänger in his sleep.59 Such occurrences found their way into
his works, for example Autoritratto con doppio eterico (Self-Portrait with Etheric
Double, 1910–11).
After 1919, there was a long break in Edyth von Haynau’s literary career. As
she confessed in a letter to Emilio Settimelli on 11 April 1921, she felt too restricted
in her artistic freedom to go on writing novels or short stories.60 Eventually, she
revived her interest and published two volumes: Eterno mediterraneo (Eternal
Mediterranean, 1964) and Il fenomeno bisanzio (The Phenomenon of Byzantium,
1970).
Illustrating ‘States of Mind’
Edyth von Haynau’s interest in occult phenomena can also be gleaned from her
book illustrations for works written by members of the Futurist circle of L’Ita-
57 The original was displayed at the exhibition, Mostra lavoro di donna: Tra necessità e virtù chi-
aroscuro del lavoro femminile, held in the Sala della Crociera del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività
Culturali, in Rome, from 13 June to 17 October 2011.
58 See Papini: “Passato remoto, 1885–1914”, p. 127.
59 See Zanovello Russolo: “Russolo. L’uomo e l’artista”, pp. 78–79. For more information on Rus-
solo’s connection with occultism, see Chessa: Luigi Russolo and the Occult, and Valotti: “Luci (e
ombre) sulla città.”
60 The letter is currently being safeguarded by the Fondazione Conti in Fiesole (FC/ES.C 143–145
CAM A).
lia futurista. Alongside Carli’s aforementioned Notti filtrate, she also illustrated
Ginna’s Le locomotive con le calze (The Trains that Wore Stockings, 1919). Her
drawings translated the texts quite accurately into visual language, abstaining
from the use of abstract elements that previously rendered her drawings so inter-
esting. Her illustrations for Bruno Corra’s 1917 edition of Sam Dunn è morto (Sam
Dunn is Dead, 1917) were instead inspired by the esoteric and proto-Surrealist
tendencies in the text. The protagonist Sam Dunn is the narrator of his own story,
which is located in the future. He is a member of the upper classes and seems to
live in a reality that is different to that of the other people around him. The novel
emphasizes the protagonist’s occult powers and the rôle of the unknown, and the
six illustrations are an excellent example of how to represent ‘states of mind’.61
Edyth von Haynau signed every image “R. R.” or “Rosa Rosà” and, instead of
giving them a title, wrote brief captions that were excerpted from the text of the
novel (see Fig. 3).62
The image depicts a closed room confined by curtains decorated with circles
and waves. On the bottom left we see two women, or rather two views of the
same woman in different positions. They are sitting on a bench and appear to
be amused. From the wall behind them, an organic, tree-like form grows out
across the entire length of the image. The chequered pattern on the floor gives the
drawing some perspective and conveys the room’s spaciousness. The merging of
inner and outer space suggests the presence of some hidden forces and energies:
abstract patterns, which might be a wall décor, merge with the tree-like protuber-
ances and cover the ceiling, from where dotted circles, looking like eyes, stare
at the viewer. The text to which the image refers reveals that this scene is set in
the Palace of Prince Valerio Dimitreff and that it depicts a moment of irrational
behaviour that is typical of the protagonist. The guests, including Clara Dimitr-
eff who assumes an un-ladylike position on the sofa, are laughing hysterically
at Sam Dunn, who justifies his odd manners by passing the blame to the salon’s
“strangely spirited” atmosphere.
The idea that non-living things could become alive was widely discussed at
the time, for example in Jean Piaget’s psychology or Alexander Aksakow’s theory,
according to which animism originates from the soul of earthly beings without
intervention from any other beings or spirits. This suits Sam Dunn’s slightly child-
61 On the novel, first published in six instalments in L’Italia futurista in 1916, see De Vincenti:
Il genio del secondo futurismo fiorentino tra macchina e spirito, especially chapter 5: “Follia e
genialità: Sam Dunn è morto di Bruno Corra”, pp. [99]–134.
62 Almost all the drawings were reprinted in Corra: Madrigali e grotteschi. Milano: Facchi, 1919,
the only difference being the page number of the passages the illustrations are referring to.
348 Lisa Hanstein
Fig. 3. Edyth von Haynau: “Why blame me for it? That living room had a strangely spirited
atmosphere. That’s all.” Illustration for Bruno Corra: Sam Dunn è morto (1917 edition).
ish character and reflects his occult skills – which distinguish him from the outer
world that forms the core of the novel.63 The invisible forces and willpower that
animate the room may have been the cause for the duplication of Clara Dimitreff
whilst the organic form may visualize the transformation of a column into a tree,
whose branches are decorated with circles that have a point in the middle. Are
63 For more information on animism, see Werner: Lexikon der Esoterik, p. 35. Aksakow is dis-
cussed Ibid., p. 19.
they meant to represent Clara’s move from a room lit by electric lamps to a terrace
illuminated by the sun? In any case, it should be noted that, in astronomy, the
symbol of a circle with a dot in the middle stands for the sun.64 Another plausible
interpretation of the symbol lies in its association with eyes, as this would obvi-
ously bestow the organic form with life.65
Fig.4. Edyth von Haynau: “A million instances of dizziness add up to a balanced lucidity.”
Illustration for “Attimo” in Corra: Madrigali e grotteschi (1919).
64 By contrast, in alchemy, the symbol stands for gold. See Poggianella: “Okkulte Elemente und
das Licht im Werk Ballas”, p. 461.
65 This can also be found in Ginna’s drawing, “Occhio sul mondo” (An Eye on the World, 1911),
reproduced in Verdone: “Abstraktion, Futurismus und Okkultismus: Ginna, Corra und Rosà”,
p. 495.
350 Lisa Hanstein
The element of duplication is also to be found in a drawing of a woman lying

on some sort of bed in a room that opens up into the night sky (see Fig. 4). The
lady is reaching for the moon and the stars with two of her five arms – one star is
already lying on the floor next to one of her arms. In this way, she is surmount-
ing the barrier between in- and outside, marked by a curtain hanging from a
pole between two columns. Even her hair gradually fades into the pattern on the
curtain. Whilst Verdone presumed that this image, which was created as an illus-
tration for another of Corra’s works, depicts a woman in an opium-induced dream,
in my opinion Cigliana interprets the illustration correctly when she remarks that
the woman’s elongated arm is an extension of her willpower.66
The extension of inner forces and skills was not only an aspiration of the The-
osophists, but also of the Futurists. Marinetti dealt with it in L’uomo multiplicato
e il regno della macchina (Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine, 1911)
and indicated its connection to Spiritualism:
The day when it will be possible for man to externalize his will so that, like a huge invisible
arm, it can extend beyond him, then his Dream and his Desire, which today are merely idle
words, will rule supreme over conquered space and time.67
Von Haynau’s multiple extended arms may thus represent the willpower of the
lying woman. Given that the artist repeatedly pursued the idea of ‘manifold
humans’, both in her literary and graphic work, and that occultism encompassed
the notion of a multidimensional reality,68 the question arises whether the Futur-
ist alias ‘Rosa Rosà’ reflects the multi-faceted character of von Haynau’s artistic
persona.
Whilst, in the previous examples, Edyth von Haynau attempted to represent
the atmosphere of a text or of the state of mind of a figure from the novel, another
illustration, “C’era veramente nella realtà lo smarrimento di chi si sente assalito
alle spalle da una forza gigantesca e ignorata” (In reality there was exactly the
bewilderment of someone who feels that he is being attacked from behind by a
gigantic and unknown force; see Fig. 5)69 is characterized by an abstract style.
The text it refers to describes the formation of a new worldview following the
66 For an interpretation of the image see Verdone: “Disegni futuristi e astratti di Rosa Rosà”,
p. 53; Verdone: “Abstraktion, Futurismus und Okkultismus: Ginna, Corra und Rosà”, p. 489, and
Cigliana: Futurismo esoterico, p. 289.
67 “Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine.” F.T. Marinetti: Critical Writings. 85–88,
here p. 86
68 See Hjartarson: “Visionen des Neuen”, p. 331.
69 Corra: Sam Dunn è morto: Romanzo sintetico futurista, between pp. [80] and 81.
Fig. 5. Edyth von Haynau: “In reality there was exactly the bewilderment of someone who feels
being attacked from behind by a gigantic and unknown force”. Illustration from Sam Dunn è
morto (1917).
collapse of old values at the turn of the century. Gigantic and unknown forces
stealthily overcome the human being, which may be a reference to occultism.
The text suggests that the most complex revolution will set in when the age-old
materialistic attitudes crumble. New possibilities emerge through the rejection of
Positivism and a turn towards a new type of science; unforeseeable events will
352 Lisa Hanstein
occur and new laws of logic will come into force.70 In her illustration, Edyth von
Haynau portrays the collision of tradition with the forces of the New through an
arrangement of two contrasting forms: undulating, organic forms rising against
a crystalline mountain.
Fig. 6. Edyth von Haynau: “Conflagrazione geometrica” (Geometric Conflagration, 1917).
Perhaps the image, “Conflagrazione geometrica” (Geometric Conflagration, 1917),

printed in L’Italia futurista, elaborates on this theme (see Fig. 6).71 Compared to the
previously discussed illustrations for literary texts, this abstract Futurist drawing
is far more dynamic. A total of six geometric forms collide in a sweeping X shape.
They rise in waves of black and white and conjoin in the middle of the page. The
image can be seen as a visualization of the clash of different forces, possibly in a
(Futurist) revolution that unites a variety of ideas into a solid whole.72
70 Described in Corra: Sam Dunn è morto: Romanzo sintetico futurista, p. 63. This development
was also a theme in two theoretical works by Ginna and Corra: Arte dell’avvenire (1910), and Arte
dell’avvenire: Paradosso (1911).
71 L’Italia futurista 2:30 (7 October 1917), p. 1.
72 Re proposes an alternative interpretation, namely that Futuristic representations of powerful
propellors are ironically reversed here. See Re: “Rosa Rosà and the Question of Gender in War-
time Futurism”, p. 184.
Fig. 7. Edyth von Haynau: Mona Vanna (early 1920s).
One of Edyth von Haynau’s later coloured drawings, “Mona Vanna” (see Fig. 7),
presumably dating from the 1920s, may have been an attempt to include the
meaning of colour tones, but unfortunately only a black and white picture is avail-
able to date.73 Although we are dealing with a predominantly abstract drawing
73 Depicted in the auction catalogue of the Münchner Kunstauktionshaus Neumeister (Fig. 388
Table 51). The following relevant information is also available there: Drawing in coloured pencil,
monogrammed, 44x30 cm, R. Coloured pencil on top of pencil on Schoeller-Hammer cardboard.
The drawing was offered at 4500,- DM. Private property. Three of her sketches were listed in the
354 Lisa Hanstein
here, the construction and deployment of ornamental lines showing a woman’s

silhouette surrounded by oval shapes is reminiscent of several women portraits
by Gustav Klimt. The oval shapes in different sizes and different intervals, featur-
ing up to three inner circles of diverse colours, also bring to mind Arnaldo Ginna’s
studies of elementary forces and are suggesting an association with eyes. This
particular element was already present in Edyth von Haynau’s earlier illustration,
“Why blame me for it?...” (see Fig. 3), namely between the tree-like protuberances
and the ceiling. They can be interpreted as a window onto the soul, but also as an
object to revive lifeless things.
The title of this coloured drawing might be an allusion to Maurice Maeter-
link’s play, Monna Vanna (1902), wherein a new type of woman is introduced. The
eponymous protagonist represented a further development of two popular types
of the nineteenth century – femme fragile and femme fatale – and was a popular
showpiece for theatre stars such Eleonora Duse. Monna Vanna as a strong and
vigorous heroine represented a new female image at the time and seamlessly
fitted into Edyth von Haynau’s own interests. Moreover, she was surely famil-
iar with Maurice Maeterlink’s book, L’Hôte inconnu (The Unknown Guest, 1914)
which, like Corra’s novel Sam Dunn è morto, explores the characteristics of a
person who communicates with the spirits of the dead and possesses extrasen-
sory capacities.74
Edyth von Haynau’s stylistic progress did not lead to abstract works alone,
as her figurative and imaginative illustrations for the Tuti-namah (The Persian
Parrot Book, 1922) and an adaptation of the Kitāb alf laylah wa-laylah (A Thou-
sand and One Nights, 1923) by Ernst Roenau (pseud. of Ernst Rosenbaum) show.75
These works, however, were created after her Futurist phase and do not interest
us here.
same auction (“Die Witwe”, “Salome” and “Cherchez la femme”. See auction catalogue Neu-
meister: Auktion Jugendstil – angewandte Kunst und Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. 19th November
1994, p. 56. I’d like to thank Ms Constance Tittus for her kind collaboration.
74 See Giorgini: “Růžena Zátková e i futuristi a Roma nel secondo decennio del Novecento”,
p. 113.
75 Das persische Papageienbuch. Nacherzählt von Ernst Roenau. Mit Buchschmuck von Rosà.
Wien: Artur Wolf, 1922. Tausend und eine Nacht. Bilder und Zeichnungen von Rosà zu Erzählun-
gen von Ernst Roenau. Wien: Verlag Markus Munk: Abteilung der Gesellschaft für Graphische
Industrie, [1923]. There was also an English-language edition: Thousand and One Nights. Pictures
and drawings by Rosà to illustrate tales by Ernst Roenau. Chicago: Julius Wisotzki, [1924].
Traces of paintings and sculpture
The coloured drawing, “Mona Vanna”, which has thus far been neglected by
Futurism scholars, not only constitutes a peak in Edyth von Haynau’s attempts
at visualizing abstract ideas; but also gives us an impression of the style of her
other, now vanished abstract Futurist drawings.76 Salaris suggests that only few
of Edyth’s artworks have survived because her family may have thrown them out
after the artist’s death, or given them away, due to the fact that her involvement
with Futurism had caused serious rifts within the family.77 We can only get a
vague impression of these works from a photograph of 1919, which shows the
artist working on a drawing entitled Bandiere (Flags).78 Otherwise, there are wit-
nesses, such as Maria Luisa Fiumi, who enthusiastically describes the expressive
power of many canvases displayed in the ‘Lyceum’ of Palazzo Theodoli: “Auda-
cious in their synthetic expression which conveys the artist’s vision with vibrant
directness.” She compares the luminous impression that the drawings had made
on the viewer with that of a star from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.79 Even though
this is not a clear indication that the exhibited drawings stem from the artist’s
Futurist phase, it must be noted that ‘espressione sintetica’ (dense expression) is
not the only hint that relates to Futurist aesthetics. Edyth von Haynau was able to
visualize her (invisible) vision in these drawings and thus satisfied a very Futur-
ist demand, namely to give expression in art to the revolutionary experiences of
modern life.
It would be interesting to see whether or not the artist also satisfied Boccio-
ni’s demand with her sculptures:
We want to bring through our altered and developed sensibility, refined by the new ferment
of modern life, to painting and sculpture those elements of reality that until now have been
76 The only other painting of Edyths that is known to date, Anticolana alla fonte, which was
presented on the occasion of the exhibition Pittrici nella valle dell’Aniene (2004), is no longer
stylistically assigned to Futurism. See Pancotto: “Pittrici nella valle dell’Aniene”, p. 54.
77 See Salaris: “Incontri con le futuriste”, p. 53. The same suggestion was made by Trasforini:
Donne d’arte: Storie e generazioni, p. 50. As the Neumeister auction reveals, there is still hope
that some currently unknown works in private possession may one day resurface and become
available to scholars.
78 Depicted in Salaris: “Una donna con tre anime”, p. 26, the information relevant to this piece
and its date of origin are also to be found there, p. 24, note 38.
79 “Audaci nell’espressione sintetica che rende la visione dell’artista con vibrante immediatez-
za.” Fiumi: “Edyth Arnaldi (Rosà)”, p. 23. Presumably the poem referred to was Poe’s Al Aaraaf
(1829), which was inspired by Tycho Brahe’s discovery of a supernova, here identified with a
messenger star traversing the sky between paradise and hell.
356 Lisa Hanstein
obligatorily treated as plastically non-existent and invisible, due to the fear of offending
tradition and due to our own lack of maturity.80
Unfortunately, none of her sculptures or ceramics are known to this date. Two of
her letters which report on these works suggest that she valued them highly, espe-
cially her ceramics. In the aforementioned letter to Settimelli from 1921, Edyth
von Haynau writes that she produced many ceramics and printing patterns for
fabrics, illustrations and other things, which she exhibited with great success at
the Esposizione artistica femminile in the Lyceum Club. Whilst, in reference to
some book covers, she almost apologized that their style was very much deter-
mined by the editors, while ceramics gave her an opportunity to set her creativity
free.81 She enclosed a few replicas in the letter and, in a second letter to Settimelli
dated 2 September (s.a.), she writes once more about the many casts that she had
produced for the ceramic factory. Presumably, she was talking about one of the
Albisola enterprises the other Futurists also made use of.82
It should be noted that Edyth von Haynau was not only devoted to highly
divergent practices, but also that she received much recognition as an artist.
Alongside Marinetti’s and Fiumi’s consistently positive comments, her frequent
participation in exhibitions gives credit to the esteem she commanded. According
to Zoccoli, in 1918 she exhibited at the Mostra d’arte indipendente in Rome.83 One
year later, at the Grande Esposizione Nazionale Futurista, she was represented
by five works in the section “Quadri, disegni, complessi plastici, teatro plastico
futurista”.84 Fiumi and Verdone mention two exhibitions at the Lyceum Club in
1920 and 1921, where the original panels of her illustrations for A Thousand and
80 “Noi vogliamo, attraverso la nostra sensibilità trasformata, sviluppata e raffinata nei nuovo
brivido della vita moderna, portare nella pittura e nella scultura quegli elementi della realtà che
fino ad oggi la paura di offendere il tradizionale e la nostra rozzezza ci avevano fatti considerare
plasticamente inesistenti e invisibili.” Boccioni: Pittura scultura futuriste, pp. 179–180.
81 Presumably, she also meant the exhibition of 1920 in Rome, mentioned by Fiumi, “Edyth
Arnaldi (Rosà)”, p. 23.
82 Both letters are being held by the Fondazione Primo Conti in Fiesole (FC/ES.C 143–145 CAM
A).
83 Bentivoglio and Zoccoli: Futuriste italiane nelle arti visive, p. 154. In her letter to Settimelli of
11 April 1921, Edyth writes about drawings that were exhibited in Milan in 1918 and that were not
returned.
84 Although exhibit no. 250 entitled “Autunno” (Autumn) may have been a painting, the other
pieces were drawings (251. Compenetrazione; 252. Notte filtrata; 253. Ponte nella nebbia; 254.
La Città impazzita). See Grande esposizione nazionale futurista. Galleria Centrale d’Arte, Milano,
Genova, Firenze, marzo 1919. Re-printed in Pacini: “Esposizioni futuriste 1918 – 1931” and Cris-
polti: “Nuovi archivi del futurismo. Cataloghi di esposizioni”, p. 144–146.
One Nights and The Parrot Book were displayed.85 In Monza, she participated in
1923 in the Prima esposizione internazionale delle arti decorative.86 The catalogue
for the Esposizione italiana d’arte avanguardia a Praga (1921) not only lists her
exhibits but also their respective prices. A comparison with the other displayed
artworks reveals the high price commanded by Edyth von Haynau’s Krajina
(Landscape): 3,500 Kč (Czech crown) approximately corresponds to one of Boc-
cioni’s nude portraits displayed in the show.87 This elevated price tag suggests
that this work must have been a painting. In contrast, landscapes by Marasco cost
800 Kč or 2,200 Kč. In total, Edyth von Haynau’s four drawings cost 3,300 Kč. The
exhibition, organized by Prampolini, was touring to Brno und Košice and in large
parts corresponded to the Große futuristische Ausstellung held in Berlin (January–
February 1922), which probably also featured one drawing and 10 illustrations by
Edyth von Haynau.88
Subsequently, Edyth von Haynau participated in three further exhibitions:
the Mostra di aderenti all’Associazione Donne Professioniste e Artiste in the
Palazzo Valadier in Rome (1932–1933); the Mostra dell’Associazione Nazionale
Donne Artiste e Laureate in the Mercati Traianei in Rome (1936); as well as one
Mostra personale alla galleria La Feluca in Rome (1957).89 These exhibitions dis-
prove Katz’s assumption that Edyth von Haynau barely participated in any exhi-
bitions during the Fascist period.90 According to Katz and Zoccoli, in 1980 another
exhibition was held in the Galleria La Feluca in Rome, where drawings emulating
85 Fiumi: “Edyth Arnaldi (Rosà)”, p. 23 and Verdone: “Disegni futuristi e astratti di Rosa Rosà”,
p. [56]. Even Edyth von Haynau mentioned the success of her exhibition at the Lyceum in a letter
from 11 April 1921, see (FC/ES.C 143–145 CAM A).
86 Prima esposizione internazionale delle arti decorative: Catalogo. Firenze: Bestetti & Tum-
minelli, 1923, p. 160.
87 See Crispolti: Nuovi archivi del futurismo: Cataloghi di esposizioni, pp. 180–181. The distinc-
tion between paintings and drawings was also made at the Die große futuristische Ausstellung in
Berlin: 120. Landscape; 121–124 Illustrations; 125–130 Illustrations, documented, amongst oth-
ers, in Crispolti: Nuovi archivi del futurismo, pp. 187–188.
88 Der Futurismus, no. 1, May 1922, as well as Crispolti: Nuovi archivi del futurismo: Cataloghi di
esposizioni, (1922/3), pp. 187–188.
89 Pancotto documents these exhibitions in Pittrici nella valle dell’Aniene, p. 28. However, the
indicated pieces in the exhibition may be incomplete or incorrect, for the complete title of the
Associazione is Associazione Nazionale Fascista Donne Artiste e Laureate. For more information
on their activities, the relationship between artists and Mussolini’s régime, their sponsorship as
well as the different names of the association see Spinazzè: “Donne e attività artistica durante
il Ventennio.”
90 Katz: “The Women of Futurism”, p. 5.
358 Lisa Hanstein
Etruscan and Roman sculptures were displayed.91 This clearly contradicts the
impression generated by scholars in the past, who only mention two exhibitions,
namely the Grande Esposizione Nazionale Futurista (Milan, Genoa and Florence,
1919) and Die große futuristische Ausstellung (Berlin, 1922).92
The critical reception of Edyth von Haynau’s œuvre
To this day, the reception of Edyth von Haynau’s graphic work remains largely
unexplored.93 The visualization of the invisible and the juxtaposition of forces
played an important rôle for other Futurists, and it is probable that these par-
ticular interests stem from the same sources of inspiration. For example, in
Balla’s oil painting Pessimismo e ottimismo (Pessimism and Optimism, 1923),
two opposing forces are juxtaposed in a split-image composition that can be
compared to Rosa Rosà’s Conflagrazione geometrica. Both have a great deal
of similarity with the interplay of hard/pointy and soft/round forms in Besant
and Leadbeater’s Thought Forms, as well as Leadbeater’s book, Man Visible and
Invisible (1902).94 These ‘thought forms’ were also important for Ginna, who
depicted the encounter of different types of energies in some of his drawings.95
The rendition of invisible forces and of stati d’animo led Ginna and Edyth von
Haynau to create partially abstract drawings. Ginna himself commented on
one of his sources:
Whoever has consulted Leadbeater’s books Man Visible and Invisible and Thought-Forms
cannot help but notice the similarity between the representation of a state of mind by a
hypersensitive mystic such as Leadbeater and that by a very modern painter.96
91 From Katz: “The Women of Futurism”, p. 5, and Bentivoglio and Zoccoli: Futuriste italiane
nelle arti visive, p.155, note 38.
92 Růžena Zátková was not, as Giorgini assumes, the only female Futurist who had a solo ex-
hibition in Rome. See Giorgini: Růžena Zátková: Una boema in Italia tra avanguardia russa e
futurismo, p. 139.
93 For more information on the literature see Re: “Futurism and Femminism”, as well as Sica:
“Una donna con tre anime di Rosa Rosà: Un romanzo protofemminista”.
94 Benzi: Giacomo Balla: Genio futurista, p. 140ff.
95 Note Ginna’s very early piece “Dolore fisico pungente con emicrania nevralgica: Dolore den-
tario” from 1908, reproduced in Forti, Collarile and Margozzi: Armonie e disarmonie degli stati
d’animo, p. 91, fig. 17, “Gioia intensa” from 1910, p. 92, fig. 20, and “Forme espressive di letizia e
pessimismo” from 1911, p. 93, Fig. 22.
96 Ginna: Pittura dell’avvenire, p. 41.
We must not underestimate Leadbeater’s importance for the development of

abstract art97 in Futurist circles and beyond. Benedetta Cappa Marinetti’s graphic
syntheses in her esoteric novel, Forze umane (Human forces, 1924), offer some
indication of this; yet, it is not impossible that she was also influenced by Edyth
von Haynau’s earlier illustrations of different states of mind. However, while
the latter illustrated the works of other authors, Benedetta was able to combine
text and illustrations in her novels and make these mutually dependent on each
other.98
Conclusion
Contemporary sources that describe Edyth von Haynau’s works clearly indicate
that part of her artistic inspiration arose from her interest in esoteric themes.
It cannot be said with absolute certainty whether Edyth von Haynau – like her
colleagues Zátková, Balla and Ginna – participated in mediumistic séances.
It is also possible that her drawings were inspired by the direct observation of
paranormal phenomena, or the then popular literature on occult themes, such
as Leadbeater’s Thought Forms. The fact remains that her interest in these phe-
nomena opened up new opportunities for visualizing the invisible. Von Haynau’s
exchanges with Ginna and other members of the L’Italia futurista circle was surely
of utmost importance for her artistic formation, yet the esoteric fashions in fin-de-
siècle Vienna, which she had become familiar with in her youth, and the Spiritist
societies in Rome, which she might have been in contact with, may have paved
her way.99 To establish oneself as a female artist at the outset of the twentieth
century was not an easy task. The enlightened ideas in Spiritist circles and the
Theosophical Society, where women could also assume leadership rôles, helped
Edyth von Haynau to find a way out of her middle-class environment and gain
access to the world of the avant-garde. The question of whether her participation
in the exhibitions organized by the Associazione Nazionale Fascista Donne Artiste
97 See Ringbom’s study on Kandinsky: “Art in the ‘Epoch of the Great Spiritual’: Occult Elements
in the Early Theory of Abstract Painting” and The Sounding Cosmos, and the catalogues by Tuch-
man: The Spiritual in Art and Loers: Okkultismus und Avantgarde.
98 In Benedetta’s work, we also witness the encounter of different genders, for example in “Con-
tatto di due nuclei potenti (femminile e maschile)”. See Marinetti Cappa: Le forze umane, p. 130.
99 For more information on the graphic illustrations of States of mind by von Hagnau, Ginna and
others, as well as possible historical roots in Symbolism of the Vienna Secession, see Fanelli and
Godoli: Il futurismo e la grafica, pp. 70–75.
360 Lisa Hanstein
e Laureate in the 1930s required her to support Mussolini’s régime remains to be

settled.
It needs to be emphasized that today we are only familiar with a small part of
Edyth von Haynau’s artistic œuvre. Nonetheless, we can say with confidence that
she was one of the most remarkable female artists in the Futurist movement. She
applied her multifaceted talents to the most diverse media and, thanks to her ver-
satility, came very close to the Futurist idea of an ‘artista totale’. Having remained
artistically active, ingenious and energetic up to an old age, her persona epito-
mizes the slancio vitale that is manifested in her drawing of a spirited dancer (see
Fig. 2).
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Allison E. Carey
“The Pleasure of Being at the Wheel”:
The Mechanical Aesthetics of Gertrude Stein
and F.T. Marinetti
Abstract: Although F.T. Marinetti and the American Modernist writer Gertrude
Stein would seem to have little in common, one of their similarities – neglected by
many critics in the past – reveals important overlaps in their visions of subjectiv-
ity, of the valence of the past and time’s passage, and of the transformative poten-
tial of objects. This essay suggests that automobiles functioned throughout their
aesthetic and creative works as a Bakhtinian “chronotope”, a motif that embodies
the connectedness of time and space. Their shared fascination with automobiles
is the nexus for key aesthetic commonalities that can be summed up in the trip-
tych machine – speed – crash. In three sections, this essay examines their shared
interests in machines, in escaping the past and in evanescence (whether through
violence, dissolution or crime). Their shared love of automobiles is emblematic
of deeper aesthetic commitments they shared: their interest in the machines
and gadgets of the modern Machine Age, their desire to escape the past and to
remain alert to the quotidian, and their fascination with destructive forces that
can impart new energies to the stultifying routines of everyday life.
Keywords: Aesthetics of the machine, technophilia, speed, time-space nexus,

violence in art, automobiles
Introduction
On the surface at least, F.T. Marinetti and the American Modernist writer Gertrude
Stein would seem to have little in common. Perhaps their differences seem so
dramatic due to Stein’s well known and widely quoted antipathy for Marinetti
and his work. In Stein’s bestseller The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933),
she describes her reaction to Marinetti’s 1912 visit to her weekly salon in Paris:
“Marinetti came by himself later as I remember. In any case everybody found
the futurists very dull.”1 Perhaps this impression of their differences was rein-
forced by Stein’s mockery of him in “Marry Nettie”, a prose poem which Marjorie
Perloff explores in “‘Grammar in Use’: Wittgenstein / Gertrude Stein / Marinetti”
1 Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, p. 787.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0019
The Mechanical Aesthetics of Gertrude Stein and F.T. Marinetti 367
(of this, more below). Perhaps their personas and the oversimplified, superficial
images of them – Marinetti’s bombast and Italian nationalism contrasting with
Stein’s carefully cultivated image of herself as a quirky, America-loving genius
and best friend to Pablo Picasso – simply seem too different. Perhaps Marinetti’s
infamous “scorn for women” voiced in The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism
(“We wish to glorify war – the sole cleanser of the world – militarism, patriotism,
the destructive act of the libertarian, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn
for women”2), however much that phrase has been misinterpreted, appears too
contradictory to Stein’s feminist poetics, expressed perhaps most famously in her
poem “Patriarchal Poetry”.
Perhaps, these superficial differences explain why there are so few schol-
arly comparisons of these two important Modernists, of their aesthetics or their
works. Yet, their commonalities are striking: both were brilliant self-promoters
and experimenters with form, both were committed to an aestheticization of
everyday life (especially food and mechanical objects). In this essay, I shall focus
on one of their similarities which many critics in the past have neglected, one
which reveals important overlaps in their visions of subjectivity, of the valence of
the past and time’s passage, and of the transformative potential of objects and of
the artistic will: they both loved cars (see Figs. 1 and 2).
Fig 1. Marinetti at the wheel of his Fiat, before the crash of 15 October 1908.
2 Marinetti: “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”, p. 14.

368 Allison E. Carey
Fig 2. Stein at the wheel of ‘Auntie’, her first Ford, in the service of the American Fund for French
Wounded, 1916 or 1917.
Not only were F.T. Marinetti and Gertrude Stein both car lovers, but also they
had in common a passion for speeding and for driving dangerously. Their shared
love of automobiles reveals deeper aesthetic commonalities: their fascination
with the material trappings of the Machine Age, in the form of not only auto-
mobiles but also aeroplanes, telephones and electrical gadgets of various kinds;
their attempts to escape the weight of the past and to remain attentive to daily
experience, inspired by Henri Bergson and others; and their shared love of vio-
lence, danger, destruction, dissonance and all those forces that disrupt the fabric
of everyday life and defamiliarize the quotidian. They celebrated machines that
undermine the limitations of time and space, allowing one to move quickly from
place to place with the tantalizing, exciting possibility of a crash that offers a
physical experience of the impermanence of the self and the frisson of one’s own
evanescence.
The automobile served both Marinetti and Stein as a chronotope (literally,
‘time-space’), which Bakhtin defines as “the intrinsic connectedness of tempo-
ral and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.”3 Bryony
Randall explains that a Bakhtinian chronotope is “a characteristic motif […]
where time and space are indeed intrinsically connected”,4 a motif that pervades
and shapes a text. I would suggest that it is exactly in this sense that the automo-
3 Bakhtin: “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel”, p. 84.

4 Randall, Modernism, Daily Time and Everyday Life, p. 25.
bile is a chronotope for these two authors: it is a motif that highlights temporal
and spatial relationships that are key to an understanding of these two authors’
works and aesthetics.
Their shared fascination with automobiles is the nexus for aesthetic similar-
ities that can be summed up in the triptych machine – speed – crash. Marinetti
and Stein adored and, in Marinetti’s case, eroticized the machine. Stein had a
favourite spark plug and a favourite brand of car, and she celebrated electric fans
and the coming of electricity to her French country house. According to Stein, the
mass production of machines in the United States of America – later to include
the Model T Ford, colloquially known as the ‘Tin Lizzie’ – ushered the U.S.A. into
the twentieth century. In much of Marinetti’s work, machines were represented as
both the saviour of and the supplement to humankind, with particular attention
given to machines of transportation, especially the automobile and aeroplane.
Marinetti and Stein both celebrated the phenomenon and experience of
speed, of moving quickly through space, and both authors appreciated the speed
of the automobile (and the aeroplane) because speed remakes time, revises one’s
relationship to time and temporarily undermines the limitations that time – and
by association, the past – imposes. Through the automobile, human agency is
able to rewrite the rules, if only a little, and by vanquishing time, humans can
further Stein’s and Marinetti’s shared project of escaping the past and achieving a
‘continuous present’ or a ‘continuous becoming’ (more on this below). Both Stein
and Marinetti celebrated impermanence, evanescence and the dissolution of
matter. They preferred the temporary to the permanent, the fleeting to the lasting.
Consequently, they were both attracted to the dangerous potential of automo-
biles, and they were both veterans of car crashes – preserved in their writing –
whose highly symbolic value make them emblematic of Stein’s and Marinetti’s
modernist project to escape the past at all costs.
Stein as a Modernist icon
Gertrude Stein was an expatriate U.S-American writer who made her home in
Paris from 1903 until her death in 1946. She was known for her patronage of
and friendship with artists, such as Matisse, Apollinaire, Duchamp, Braque and
Picasso, and for the weekly salons she hosted with her brother Leo (and, later,
with her partner Alice B. Toklas), events, “which [became a] cultural centre of
Bohemian Paris and primary showcase of modern art.”5 Writers, as well as the
5 Stimpson and Chessman in an editorial note for Gertrude Stein: Writings 1903–1932, p. 920.
American public, came to know Stein through her experimental writing. In diffi-
cult texts of both prose and poetry, texts that refused conventions of syntax and
representation, Stein undertook her project of “the recreation of the word”. As
Stein explained, “words had lost their value in the Nineteenth Century, particu-
larly towards the end, they had lost much of their variety, and I felt that I could
not go on, that I had to recapture the value of the individual word.”6 According
to Marjorie Perloff, Stein’s work can be situated within a tradition of “poetic
indeterminacy” within Anglo-American Modernism, a tradition marked by “the
‘anti-Symbolist’ mode of indeterminacy or ‘undecidability,’ of literalness and free
play.”7 The resulting work – in a variety of genres including poetic word portraits
such as Marry Nettie, novels, plays, libretti, and even a children’s book – was
often dense, marked by repetition and word play.
Although Stein was admired among contemporary writers (including more
popular or acclaimed Anglo-American Modernists, such as Ernest Hemingway
and T.S. Eliot), the experimental nature of Stein’s work meant that she was rarely
published and was often dismissed by publishers and readers alike. Stein’s
1914 collection of prose poems, Tender Buttons, was recently described as “the
touchstone work of radical modernist poetry, the fullest realization of the turn to
language and the most perfect realization of ‘wordness’, where word and object
are merged.”8 At the time, it was dismissed by a reviewer: “The sentences indi-
cated by punctuation do not make complete sense, partial sense, nor any other
sense, but nonsense.”9 Similar responses continued until 1933, when Stein pub-
lished her breakthrough book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a relatively
straightforward memoir written in the voice of her partner. In this bestseller, Stein
– through the voice of Toklas – dishes out gossip about bohemian Paris in the
1920s and mentions nearly every Modernist painter and writer who had passed
through Paris between 1903 and 1933. The book’s first printing sold out nine days
before its release, and it went through four printings in the first year alone, not
to mention being excerpted in the Atlantic Monthly magazine and translated into
French in 1934 and Italian in 1938.10 The Autobiography made Stein “a [literary]
lion”, wealthy and in her own description “a celebrity a real celebrity who can
decide who they want to meet and say so and they come or do not come as you
6 Stein: “A Transatlantic Interview 1946”, p. 504.

7 Perloff: The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage, p. vii.
8 Bernstein’s blurb on Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition, back cover.
9 Louisville Courier-Journal, quoted in Perloff: “‘Grammar in Use’: Wittgenstein / Gertrude Stein /
Marinetti”, p. 36.
10 See Mellow: Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company, pp. 424–425.
want them.”11 She and Toklas embarked on a sold-out 1934/35 lecture tour of
the U.S.A. Stein’s travels and pithy pronouncements made front-page news, and
publishers were suddenly anxious to print Stein’s unpublished works. After she
returned to France, Stein remained a celebrity for the rest of her life. Her death
in 1946 made the headlines in the U.S., as did Toklas’s nearly twenty years later.
In discussing F.T. Marinetti and Gertrude Stein in one essay, one inevitably
evokes the concept of ‘influence’, which carries with it many decades of literary
critical debate.12 Ultimately, to consider Marinetti and Stein together, we must
acknowledge that here are two artists who are seemingly dissimilar and even
hostile to each other, yet, at a deeper level, are attracted to the same or similar
things. Hence, they can be linked to each other, and a comparative / contrasting
analysis of their works and theories can be illuminating.
Marjorie Perloff is a rare example of a critic who does compare Marinetti’s and
Stein’s work, first in her article “‘Grammar in Use’: Wittgenstein / Gertrude Stein /
Marinetti” (1996), then again in “The First Futurist Manifesto Revisited” (2007).
In “‘Grammar in Use’”, Perloff examines Marinetti’s and Stein’s poetic projects,
noting that they share the goals of destroying syntax and avoiding adjectives, but
that they differ on nouns: Stein declaring that nouns “are completely not inter-
esting”13 versus Marinetti’s call to “scatter nouns at random” and to pair each
noun with its double.14 Calling Stein “one of Marinetti’s most discerning critics”,
Perloff focusses on Stein’s Marry Nettie (composed between 1915 and 1917 but not
published until 1955), “Stein’s own counter-Futurist manifesto”, which Perloff
calls “brilliant but difficult” and “a comic but also mercilessly satiric portrait of
the impresario of Futurism.”15 Perloff analyses not only Stein’s personal jabs at
Marinetti (references to Marinetti’s Sudanese nurse and to his cane), but more
importantly her riposte to Marinetti’s poetic project: “The text of Marry Nettie
11 Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, pp. 91, 3–4.

12 As Ihab H. Hassan wrote, “few problems can prove more vexing to the critic or historian of
literature than the problem of influence” (66). T.S. Eliot, in “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
(1919), called for a turn away from biography, arguing for “the importance of the relation of the
poem to other poems” (72). Harold Bloom’s latest consideration of literary influence acknowledg-
es that “the structure of literary influence is labyrinthine, not linear” (9) and defines “influence
simply as literary love tempered by defense” (8). In Hassan’s discussion of influence, he argues
“that the question of influences be considered as one of intracultural significance, articulating
itself with equal vigor in the historical, social, psychological, and aesthetic contexts of a literary
work” (66).
13 Stein: “Poetry and Grammar”, p. 211.
14 Marinetti: “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature”, pp. 107–108.
15 See Perloff: “‘Grammar in Use’: Wittgenstein / Gertrude Stein / Marinetti”, pp. 48–56, and
Perloff: “The First Futurist Manifesto Revisited”, pp. 13–14.
depends precisely on those parts of speech abjured by Marinetti in his ‘Techni-

cal Manifesto of Futurist Literature’ – conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary verbs,
adverbs, and especially the dreaded pronoun ‘I.’”16 However, Perloff argues that
“many of the paintings and writings [Stein] most admired [...] had close links to
Futurist aesthetics” and that her use of visual poetics (a new development in
Stein’s work, evident no earlier than 1914) demonstrates that “Marry Nettie is thus
more Marinettian than Stein cared to admit.”17
Other critics are not so willing as Perloff to explore the similarities between
Marinetti’s Futurism and Stein’s aesthetic. Ulla Dydo insists that “the Italian
futurist Marinetti is not the subject of Marry Nettie. Rather, the name offered Stein
the pun. In this piece done in Mallorca, there is no futurism [...].”18 Although Eliz-
abeth A. Frost agrees with Perloff that Marry Nettie is Stein’s statement on Mari-
netti and Futurism, she sees little likeness between the two writers’ aesthetics.
Instead, she argues against Stein’s aesthetic preoccupations that I shall highlight
in this essay, including Stein’s love of technology and speed. Frost contrasts Stein
with the Futurists, arguing that “Stein was largely uninterested in the technologi-
cal changes taking place in Europe and the West [...] In contrast to the speed and
forward motion championed by Marinetti, Stein was fascinated with repetition
and circularity, the retrograde motions Futurists and Vorticists combated with the
powerful thrust of the contemporary.”19 Instead, as I shall demonstrate below,
Stein’s appreciation of the same technology and velocity that the Futurists cele-
brated coexists with her love of repetition and circularity.
Machine
Although Marinetti and Stein both glorified and adored the machine in its many
forms, the differences in their celebrations reveal important distinctions between
their visions of subjectivity and of the capacity of the artistic will. For Marinetti,
the machine was a means to ‘extend’ (moltiplicare20) the human being and to help
propel humankind into the age of modernity (“With us, the day of the rootless
16 Ibid., p. 48.
17 Ibid., pp. 57.
18 Dydo: “Introduction to Marry Nettie”, p. 308.
19 Frost: The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry, p. 8.
20 Early translators have rendered “L’uomo moltiplicato e il regno della macchina” as “Multi-
plied Man and the Reign of the Machine”. However, Marinetti was not seeking to ‘multiply’ or
to ‘duplicate’ humanity; rather, he used ‘moltiplicare’ in the sense of augmenting or extending
the capacity of humankind: ‘accrescere, aumentare, incrementare, intensificare i propri sforzi’.
man begins, of extended man who fuses with iron, who feeds upon electricity.”21)
For Stein, the machine was merely a pleasant and harmonious addition, com-
panion, convenience and helper that demonstrates (rather than enables) human-
ity’s transition into the twentieth century. By examining Stein’s and Marinetti’s
representation of the machine and of its rôle in everyday life, we can see their
mutual devotion to modern technology, yet also their diverging visions of the art-
ist’s relationship with machines.
Marinetti and Stein were of course not alone among the Modernists and avant-
gardists in being fascinated by the technology of the early twentieth century, and
they were also not unique in reflecting on the impact of these machines on human
identity. Barbara Beth Zabel argues in Assembling Art: The Machine and the Amer-
ican Avant-Garde that “both the European and the American avant-garde were
intent upon defining self in terms of technology in this period”,22 and Günter
Berghaus notes that “long before Futurism entered the scene, the subject-matter
of modern industry and life in the machine age had become a focus of attention for
artists and critics alike.”23 Many studies of the Modernists’ technological fancies
address Francis Picabia’s machine portraits: portraits of various artists associ-
ated with the 291 Gallery in New York, rendered as drawings of lamps, cameras,
flashlights, and even schematics of electrical systems.24 One particular machine
portrait, Portrait d’une jeune fille américaine dans l’état de nudité (Portrait of a
Young American Girl in a State of Nudity, 1915; see Fig. 3), is a precisely-rendered
image of a spark plug, on which is inscribed the word(s) ‘FOR-EVER’.
Some critics, when discussing Picabia’s Portrait of a Young American Girl,
mention Marinetti,25 because the sexualization of the machine in this and other
machine portraits evokes Marinetti’s eroticization of machines in texts such
Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine, where he celebrates “mechanical
beauty” and describes engines that “often glistened sensuously”.26 The link to
Hence, Berghaus and Thompson opted for “extended” in their edition of Marinetti’s Critical Writ-
ings of 2006.
21 Marinetti: “We Renounce Our Symbolist Masters, the Last of All Lovers of the Moonlight”,
p. 44.
22 Zabel: Assembling Art: The Machine and the American Avant-Garde, p. 88.
23 Berghaus: “Futurism and the Technological Imagination Poised between Machine Cult and
Machine Angst”, 14.
24 See Camfield: Francis Picabia: His Art, Life, and Times, pp. 76–90.
25 For example Zabel in Assembling Art: The Machine and the American Avant-Garde, pp. 89–91.
For more on the sexualization of machines in Picabia’s images, see Fer, Batchelor, and Wood:
Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars, pp. 37–39.
26 Marinetti: “Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine”, pp. 85–86.
Fig. 3. Francis Picabia’s Portrait of a Young Fig. 4. A charm in the shape of a spark plug,
American Girl in a State of Nudity (1915). from the author’s collection. Stein’s charm was
Francis Picabia: © 2014 Artists Rights probably glass rather than metal.
Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Stein is more direct, as she had become friends with Picabia in 1913, only two years
before he produced the Portrait of a Young American Girl, and during this period
Stein herself was engaged in creating object portraits, specifically word portraits
of common household objects. For example, in Tender Buttons (1914), the entire
“Objects” section is devoted to word portraits such as “A Chair”: “A widow in a
wise veil and more garments shows that shadows are even. It addresses no more,
it shadows the stage and learning.”27 In addition, as we shall see below, spark
plugs were among Gertrude Stein’s favorite objects of the Machine Age.
A brief look at Picabia’s Portrait of a Young American Girl may serve to illu-
minate Stein’s and Marinetti’s aesthetics. Many of Picabia’s machine portraits
27 Stein: Tender Buttons, p. 18.

have human subjects who are clearly identified by inscriptions on the drawings,
such as “Ici, c’est ici Stieglitz” (Here, This Is Stieglitz) or “Gabrielle Buffet. Elle
corrige les mœurs en riant” (Gabrielle Buffet. She Corrects Manners Laughingly).
However, Picabia did not link his Young American Girl with a specific person or
name, merely the word “For-ever” placed vertically on the body of the spark plug
(the young girl’s torso?).28 Art critics have discussed this work’s relation to the
Machine Age and the title’s sexual connotations. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, for
example, examined the correlations between spark plugs and the popular image
of young American girls in the 1910s, and noted that “the jeune fille américaine
[is] a catalyst for modernization analogous to a mass-produced interchange-
able part” and that “her insignia FOR-EVER guaranteed perpetual satisfaction
and activity.”29 Notable here is the lack of fusion between machine and human
being that Marinetti calls for in Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine.
Instead, in Picabia’s Portrait of a Young American Girl, the machine has usurped
the subject position, serving as a replacement for – rather than a complement
to – the human subject.
Spark plugs also figure prominently in narratives about Gertrude Stein’s life.
Alice B. Toklas, Stein’s partner, reminisced about their early days as automobile
owners, noting that “Gertrude Stein was changing spark plugs – and when was
one not in those days.”30 Stein had a favourite brand of spark plug (Champion),
visited the owners of the factory when she was on her tour through the U.S.A.,
and was thrilled with the miniature spark plugs she was given as a present (see
Fig. 4).31 Moreover, in a strange confluence of events and of Stein’s aesthetic pre-
occupations, Picabia visited Stein’s home in the French countryside during the
same summer (in 1933) when Stein’s house and car were sabotaged – someone
cut the telephone wires and broke the spark plugs – and when a series of suspi-
cious deaths occurred around her village.32 It was this curious summer of Pica-
bia’s visit and of the sabotaged spark plugs that inspired Stein to write a book on
violence and crime, the detective novel Blood on the Dining-Room Floor (of that,
more in the “Crash” section below).
28 For speculations on the identity of the ‘young girl’ memorialized in the portrait, see Turner:
“La Jeune Fille Américaine and the Dadaist Impulse”, p. 12 and Camfield: Francis Picabia: His Art,
Life, and Times, p. 83.
29 Turner: “La Jeune Fille Américaine and the Dadaist Impulse”, pp. 13 and 15.
30 Toklas: The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, p. 63.
31 For Stein’s description of her Champion visit and miniature spark plugs, see Stein’s letter
of 20 December 1934 to Carl Van Vechten in Stein and Van Vechten: Letters, vol. 1., pp. 367–368.
32 See Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, pp. 56–62.
In Stein’s view, machines served purposes both literal and metaphorical. She
was enchanted by electrical appliances and by the modern conveniences that
facilitated travel and communications. For example, in Everybody’s Autobiogra-
phy, she describes the excitement of having a telephone installed in her Paris
home and her country house, and she similarly comments on the installation of
an electric stove, sounding positively Marinettian in her celebration of electric-
ity: “Just as lighting should be done by candles or electricity, coal and gas are a
mistake, like railroad trains, it should be horses or automobiles or airplanes.”33
In Stein’s aesthetics, machines – especially the automobile – served as metaphor-
ical analogues for art and the human mind, two fields of a lifelong fascination.
The fact that she would represent art and the human mind as machines reveals
the central position that machines occupied within her aesthetics. Although she
may not have been convinced – as Marinetti was – that humans would fuse with
machines, in her reflections about issues important to her she nearly always took
recourse to the language of machines.
One of Stein’s key observations about cars concerned mass manufacturing
(which began in the 1880s and was transformed through automated assembly
lines in 1913). In her memoir about occupied France in the Second World War,
Wars I Have Seen (1945), she observed that “America is at the present moment the
oldest country in the world because she had her twentieth century birthday in
the eighteen eighties, long before any other country had their twentieth century
birthday.”34 For Stein, mass production – including of her beloved Ford car –
marked the beginning of the twentieth century: both the production of the car as
well as its means of its production in a modernized factory.
In “Portraits and Repetition”, one of Stein’s Lectures in America (1935), she
likens genius to an automobile and asserts that “it is necessary if you are to be really
and truly alive it is necessary to be at once talking and listening, doing both things,
not as if there were one thing, not as if they were two things, but doing them, well if
you like, like the motor going inside and the car moving, they are part of the same
thing.”35 In Stein’s description, the movement of the engine inside the chassis and
the movement of the car itself are inseparable, as are – for her – the simultaneous
cognitive and communicative work that marks genius. However, as she explains,
“my business my ultimate business as an artist was not with where the car goes as
it goes but with the movement inside that is of the essence of its going.”36
33 Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, p. 44.

34 Stein: Wars I Have Seen, p. 258.
35 Stein: “Portraits and Repetition”, p. 170.
36 Ibid., p. 195.
Similarly, Stein framed a discussion on the nature of art in terms of machines.

In Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), she writes that art is like “mechanics and
science” in its ability to enact change, in that art “makes another thing move
around” just as a machine would. In Stein’s view, art has the qualities of both a
machine and of a living being, in that it can either effect change or fail to do so:
art “does make something move around by coming in contact with that thing but
also it fails to do so that is it has failed to do so and so it has to do with something
living.”37 In both sets of descriptions, machines are key to Stein’s concept of cog-
nitive function and of the power of art.
Marinetti’s embrace of the machine, as expressed in his manifestos and crea-
tive writings, is more emphatic and more ecstatic than Stein’s. In Noi rinneghiamo
i nostri maestri simbolisti ultimi amanti della luna (We Renounce Our Symbolist
Masters, the Last of All Lovers of the Moonlight, 1911), Marinetti asserts that the
Futurists “cooperate with triumphant machines, which keep the earth enclosed
in their net of speed” and connive with them, as partners and co-operative actors,
in order to destroy a variety of enemies, including nostalgia and sentimentalism,
and to assist humankind in their march towards a brighter future. In L’uomo molti-
plicato e il regno della macchina (Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine,
written in 1910, published in 1915), Marinetti broadens his claims regarding the
relationship between humans and machines. No longer does humankind merely
co-exist, cooperate or connive with machines. Rather, Marinetti predicts a fusion
of man and machine and “the formation of the nonhuman, mechanical species of
extended man, through the externalization of his will.”38 Prior to this creation of a
man-machine hybrid, Marinetti seeks to foster the love-affair between the human
being and “his great, faithful, devoted friend, whose heart was ever giving and
courageous.”39
Marinetti’s sexualization of the relationship between man and machine is
noticeable not only in his eulogies on “mechanical beauty” but also in his descrip-
tion of a locomotive driver’s caresses of the “steel that had so often glistened sen-
suously beneath the lubricating caress of his hand”. Marinetti makes the analogy
of machine and woman explicit when he notes that “an engine driver lovingly
washing the great powerful body of his engine [...] uses the same little acts of
tenderness and close familiarity as the lover when caressing his beloved.”40
However, it is also true that Marinetti celebrates the very qualities in machines
37 Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, pp. 58–59.

38 Marinetti: “Extended Man and the Kingdom of the Machine”, p. 87.
39 Ibid., p. 85.
40 Ibid., pp. 85–86.
that he describes as enervating and destructive in women. In We Renounce Our

Symbolist Masters, the Last of All Lovers of the Moonlight, he speaks of the “tri-
umphant machines, which keep the earth enclosed in their net of speed”.41 This
image of the liberating, yet also encircling machine provides a key contrast to
an element of the Futurist “scorn for women, for we fear their supplicating arms
being wrapped around our legs, the morning of our setting forth!”42 Clearly, not
only does fusion with machines produce a much-desired hybrid, but the power of
the machine is also so compelling that being enclosed by it seems to be a libera-
tion rather than restriction.
However, at this point it is crucial to take note of the ambivalence in the
Futurists’ attitudes toward the machine. Marinetti’s assessment of machines
underwent distinct evolutions throughout his career. Christine Poggi argues
that Marinetti’s pre-1907 writings about modern technology reveal discomfort:
“Marinetti’s earliest encounters with modern, industrial reality were a source
of profound shock and alienation to him.”43 Likewise, Günter Berghaus argues
that “Marinetti’s technological imagination should [...] be seen as a complex and
often contradictory tool.”44 As Berghaus convincingly demonstrates, the Futur-
ists did not speak with one unified voice about technology, and he highlights the
fact that “Marinetti was not indifferent to the machine angst that came to be dif-
fused amongst fellow Futurists in the late 1920s.”45 As part of his shift in thought,
Marinetti “became a key figure in the Futurist trend towards a spiritualization
of the machine and its portrayal as a cosmic force.”46 Marinetti’s appreciation
of machines was both more variable and more complex than many critics have
acknowledged.
Speed, time, and identity
For both Stein and Marinetti, the appeal of automobiles and aeroplanes hinged
not only on their status as machines but also on their speed. Contemporary
descriptions of Stein’s driving reveal that Stein was a fast driver and liked to
p. 44.
42 Marinetti: “Second Futurist Proclamation: Let’s Kill Off the Moonlight”, p. 23.
43 Poggi: Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, p. 30.
44 Berghaus: “Futurism and the Technological Imagination Poised between Machine Cult and
Machine Angst”, p. 34.
45 Ibid., p. 31.
46 Ibid., p. 32.
hear about others who drove fast. Similarly, Marinetti celebrated speed in more
documents than we can count, including § 4 of The Foundation and Manifesto of
Futurism: “We believe that this wonderful world has been further enriched by a
new beauty, the beauty of speed.” As Marinetti made clear only a few paragraphs
later, the value of speed lies in its transformative, triumphant power, its ability
to facilitate victory over our old masters: “Time and Space died yesterday. We are
already living in the realms of the Absolute, for we have already created infinite,
omnipresent speed.”47
It is on this nexus of time, speed and the machine that this section will focus.
The issue of speed connects Stein and Marinetti to their mutual fascination with
time and with escaping the past, fascinations which take aesthetic form through
Stein’s quest to achieve a “continuous present” in prose and Marinetti’s attempts
to achieve a “continuous becoming.”48 For both Stein and Marinetti, the appeal
of speed – whether via an automobile or aeroplane or railway – resides in part in
its relationship to time: “Speed destroys the laws of gravity, it makes the values
of time and space subjective and therefore turns them into slaves.”49 Speed abol-
ishes the constraints of time, as Stein found out when she travelled to Chicago in
an aeroplane to see her opera, Four Saints in Three Acts.50
Marinetti’s critical writings repeatedly highlight the need to escape from or
destroy the past, and he attributes to speed the power to enable an escape from
the clutches of tradition. Marinetti calls the past “our most dangerous enemy”
and asserts that “the past is necessarily inferior to the future.”51 For Marinetti,
the past carries a valence of mood (“gloomy”, “tearful”, “morbid”), of manner
(“billing and cooing”, “fawning”), and effect (“enervating”). He decries history
(“a falsifier, or at best a miserable little stamp collector”), “the poetry of far-off
times, of faraway places”, and “the poignant nostalgia of parting.”52 In contrast
to these influences that stifle, weaken and pacify the modern subject, Marinetti
offers “the tragic lyricism of speed” to a subject he calls “extended man who fuses
47 Marinetti: “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”, pp. 13–14.

48 Marinetti writes: “Instead of the concept of the immortal, the imperishable, in art, we pro-
pose that of continuous becoming, the evanescent, the transitory, and the ephemeral.” Marinet-
ti: We Renounce Our Symbolist Masters, the Last of All Lovers of the Moonlight, p. 44.
49 Marinetti: “The New Ethical Religion of Speed”, p. 257.
50 See Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, pp. 189–190, and Goble: “Cameo Appearances; or
When Gertrude Stein Checks into Grand Hotel”, p. 156.
p. 44.
pp. 44–45.
with iron, who feeds upon electricity and understands nothing beyond the desire
for danger and day-to-day heroism.”53
One of Marinetti’s most extended reflectons on speed is his 1916 manifesto,
La nuova religione-morale della velocità (The New Ethical Religion of Speed, 1916),
in which he claims that speed imparts not only physical but also spiritual benefits
and that speed will enable humanity to “command Time and Space”.54 Further-
more, Marinetti traces the history of transportation, especially the machines that
run on electricity and fossil fuels, and enumerates the benefits of speed for the
body: it is “naturally pure” and it “increases agility, it increases the circulation of
the blood.”55 Concerning its spiritual qualities, Marinetti maintains that “hurtling
along at great speed is a prayer”, and he encourages the reader to worship celes-
tial and cosmic objects that move at great speeds, including stars, particles, light
and electromagnetic waves.56 In addition, he repeatedly highlights the pleasures
provided by speed, at one point advocating travelling in a restaurant car because
it not only enhances the pleasures of eating while moving at top speeds but also
privileges “that very special pleasure of feeling oneself to be a speeding body.”57
Such a hurtling through space was also well known to Gertrude Stein.
Stein’s love both for automobiles and for speed is described repeatedly in her
writings and in critical accounts of her life. In 1916, Stein and Toklas bought a
Model T Ford (named ‘Auntie’ after Gertrude Stein’s aunt Pauline), in which they
criss-crossed France during the First World War in the service of the American
Fund for French Wounded. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Toklas [i.e.
Stein] describes Stein’s growing fascination with cars, even before the purchase
of the car: “[William] Cook and Gertrude Stein spent all their time talking about
automobiles. They neither of them had ever driven but they were getting very
interested.” Cook learned to drive before Stein did, and Stein was able to enjoy
vicariously the thrills of automotive speed: “I can remember how exciting it was
when he described how the wind blew out his cheeks when he made eighty kilo-
metres an hour.”58 Cook later taught Stein to drive at the wheel of his taxicab in
Paris.
Stein remarks on her driving style in Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), a
follow-up to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: “When I first began driving
53 bid., p. 44.
55 Ibid., pp. 254 and 259.
56 Ibid., p. 255.
57 Ibid., p. 258.
a car myself in Chicago and in California I was surprised at the slowness of the
driving, in France you drive much faster, you are supposed not to have accidents
but you drive as fast as you like [...]. In France you drive fifty-five or sixty miles an
hour all the time, I am a very cautious driver from the standpoint of my French
friends.”59 However, Stein’s account of her cautiously manoeuvring her vehicle
is contradicted by contemporary accounts that characterize her driving as being
similar to her writing: unconventional, ignoring rules and strictures, and at times
frightening.
Stein did not equate her fast driving with modernity, nor did she claim that
speed would allow her to escape the past. However, like Marinetti, Stein une-
quivocally rejected the past and insisted on living in the present and the future.
In language redolent of Marinetti’s call to destroy museums, Stein criticized the
American author Ernest Hemingway: “He looks like a modern and he smells of
the museums.”60 Later she wrote that “it is the people who generally smell of the
museums who are accepted, and it is the new who are not accepted.”61 Similarly,
Stein faulted other writers for their inability to immerse themselves in “what is
contemporary long before the average human being”, lambasting one writer in
particular for living “in the past and present but not the future.”62
One facet of Stein’s rejection of the past was her attempt to capture in lan-
guage “a continuous present”, which involves “beginning again and again and
again” as well as “the complexities of using everything.”63 In describing the
earlier part of her career (especially the work leading up to Tender Buttons, pub-
lished in 1914), Stein focussed on the way one’s perception shifts through time,
and the rôle of the artist in capturing that feeling: “The only thing that is dif-
ferent from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon
how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very
different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a compo-
sition.”64 Here, Stein outlines her project of ‘describing’, noting the vicissitudes
of time that complicate an artist’s life. Stein’s focus on time persisted throughout
her writing career, and in 1946, a few months before her death, she admitted in an
interview that “I am still largely meditating about this sense of time.”65
59 Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, p. 196.

62 Ibid., p. 515.
63 Stein: “Composition as Explanation”, p. 525.
64 Ibid., p. 523.
Mina Loy, poet, intimate of Marinetti and one-time advocate of Futurism

described Stein’s use of time as the literary embodiment of Henri Bergson’s concept
of duration, a perception of consciousness as a continuous and ever-changing
set of stimuli, or as “the continual elaboration of the absolutely new.”66 In her
1924 essay, “Gertrude Stein”, Loy argues that Stein’s work was in fact the “literary
conclusion” of Bergson’s theories, and that in reading Stein, she “was connected
up with the very pulse of duration.”67 Other Stein exegetes, although in agree-
ment about the centrality of the issue of time in Stein’s work, disagree on the
extent to which Henri Bergson influenced Stein. The writer apparently attended
some of the philosopher’s lectures in Paris, but her work was also influenced by
the theories of William James and Alfred North Whitehead.68 Irrespective of the
question of who exactly influenced Stein, her concept of ‘continuous present’ and
Marinetti’s notion of a ‘continuous becoming’ certainly share deep affinities with
Bergson’s writings.
According to Günter Berghaus, Marinetti acknowledged the influence of Henri
Bergson as early as 1902. As Berghaus explains, Bergson’s notion of duration (or
durée) characterizes time as a “dynamic process of uninterrupted change, which
constitutes the essence of life”, and a “continuity of mutually interpenetrating
moments, with qualitative but not quantitative differentiations.”69 Berghaus
further explains that Bergson depicts self-consciousness – of time, duration and
self – as key to true agency: “Through our consciousness we create ourselves in
every moment of our existence, and the more conscious we are of this process, the
more complete is our self-creation. [...] A decision to be free can only result from
the action of gaining consciousness of our duration.”70 Marinetti was equally
convinced of the importance of such self-consciousness, arguing in The New
Ethical Religion of Speed that one must avoid becoming accustomed to (and thus
unaware of) one’s fast motion: “You have to be continuously altering your speed
so that your conscious mind may also take part in it.”71 For Marinetti, remaining
conscious of one’s experience was another way of maintaining control.
In a similar vein, Stein criticized distraction and argued that it made people
neglect the importance of time and was detrimental to art. Stein’s criticism of
distraction was part of a larger discourse in the late nineteenth and early twen-
66 Bergson: Creative Evolution, p. 11.

67 Loy: “Gertrude Stein”, p. 432.
68 See Stewart: Gertrude Stein and the Present, p. 5; Miller: Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibil-
ity, p. 90.
69 Berghaus: The Genesis of Futurism, pp. 19 and 18.
70 Ibid., p. 19.
tieth centuries.72 Walter Benjamin also addressed the issue of Zerstreuung73 in

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner mechanischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936), within a discussion of speed,
art and automobile traffic. Benjamin contrasts distraction with concentration,
which he says can be restored by modern-day “shocks”: “profound changes in
the apperceptive apparatus – changes that are experienced on an individual scale
by the man in the street in big-city traffic.”74 Stein and Benjamin make calls for
alertness, similar to Marinetti’s call for the attention of the conscious mind. Just
as Stein cautioned against allowing distraction to cloud one’s “consciousness of
the passage of time”, Benjamin noted that all shock effects “should be cushioned
by heightened presence of mind.”75 Moreover, Benjamin argued that modern man
should “expose himself” to such shocks – film, big-city traffic – as a kind of inoc-
ulation against “the increased threat to his life which modern man has to face.”76
However, one of these shocks – specifically, traffic – is a fixture of modernity
celebrated by both Stein and Marinetti.
One might think that Marinetti and Stein would have railed against traffic
since, as Marjorie Perloff notes, “traffic, to put it most directly, is the enemy of
speed – the speed that seemed so promising when F.T. Marinetti wrote his first
futurist manifesto.”77 However, both Marinetti and Stein found traffic, or at least
the noise of traffic and the hustle and bustle of crowded streets, to be inspiration-
al.78 Later, after the 1913 publication of the manifesto, L’arte dei rumori, Marinetti
became an advocate of Russolo’s ‘Art of Noise’, a musical aesthetic inspired by
the noises of the modern city, including the combination of “the noises of trams,
of automobile engines, of carriages and brawling crowds.”79 Marinetti was an
advocate of the Art of Noise in practice – hosting the first presentation of Russo-
lo’s intonarumori (instruments specially designed by Russolo to produce the Art
of Noise) and organizing concerts in Milan, Paris and London – and in theory,
72 See Randall: Modernism, Daily Time and Everyday Life, pp. 35–38.

73 Variously translated as distraction, diversion, dissipation, amusement.
74 Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, p. 250.
75 Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, p. 59; Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction”, p. 238.
77 Perloff: “Traffic”, p. 92.
78 Already in The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, Marinetti considered big-city noise as
motivational, especially the “terrifying clatter of huge, double decker trams” and the “sudden
roar of ravening motorcars, right there beneath our windows.” See Marinetti: “The Foundation
and Manifesto of Futurism”, p. 11.
79 Russolo: “The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto”, p. 25.
arguing in 1914 that the Art of Noise was one of the “six fundamental principles”
of Futurism.80 For Marinetti and the other Futurists, the noise of the modern
metropolis was a phenomenon from which art could be made.
Similarly, Stein experienced traffic and big-city noise not as a shock, as Ben-
jamin would have it, but rather as inspiration for her writing. Stein’s aesthetic
embraced what she called ‘dissonance’, as in when she wrote of Matisse that
“he used his distorted drawing as a dissonance is used in music or as vinegar or
lemons are used in cooking or egg shells in coffee to clarify.”81 In Stein’s case, the
dissonance of traffic noise created a productive atmosphere for writing. In The
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein’s writing habits after the Second World
War were referred to as her “days of working in the automobile while it stood in
the crowded streets. [...] She was much influenced by the sound of the streets and
the movement of the automobiles. She also liked then to set a sentence for herself
as a sort of tuning fork and metronome and then write to that time and tune.”82
The tone of this passage suggests that Stein found the sound and rhythmic move-
ment in the streets of 1920s Paris to be regulatory and soothing, not shocking.
Like Marinetti, Stein found artistic inspiration in the noise of the streets. For both
artists, even aspects of car culture that ought to be frustrating or – as we shall see
in the next section – frightening were in fact appealing and productive.
Crash
Although both Stein and Marinetti celebrated speed and the ways in which time
can be transcended through a rejection of past and tradition and through captur-
ing in language an always-present-future, they were simultaneously enchanted
by the seeming drawbacks of time: its inexorable pull towards impermanence,
dissolution and death. Stein and Marinetti celebrate in their literary works the
temporary nature of matter: violence, evanescence, dissolution, loss, destruc-
tion, and (in Stein’s case) crime; they both liked the inevitable result of speed:
the crash. However, Stein and Marinetti differed in the focus of their fascination.
While Marinetti dwelled more upon the point of impact, the moment of dissolu-
tion or destruction, Stein’s aesthetic interest centred on the aftermath: The Blood
on the Dining-Room Floor, as she titled one of her later novels. Nonetheless, they
80 Marinetti: “The Exploiters of Futurism”, p. 178; also see Morgan: “‘A New Musical Reality’:
Futurism, Modernism, and ‘The Art of Noises.’”
82 Ibid., p. 862.
were joined in their aesthetic interests in evanescence and their shared commit-
ment to an aesthetics of transgression, including the transgression of the human
body.
Although often misunderstood, Marinetti’s well-known celebration of vio-
lence and war framed violence as a generative force, and presented war as an
occasion for rebuilding. For example, in “The Necessity and Beauty of Violence”,
a lecture delivered in 1910 and 1911, Marinetti contrasts violence with stagnation,
action with passivity, heroism with cowardice, and notes that “in the unfolding
of human events, a period of idealistic, self-sacrificing violence is inevitably fol-
lowed by one of self-centred, avaricious mercantilism, such as that in which we
now find ourselves.”83 In the current circumstances, Marinetti argues, violence is
a necessary purgative to cleanse the nation of the social and economic systems
that are stultifying and enervating Italy. Moreover, he represents the force of vio-
lence as one stage in a recurrent historical cycle, a cycle that gradually moves
closer to the ideals embraced in The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism.
As Günter Berghaus has demonstrated, Marinetti’s notion of violence was
shaped by the Anarcho-syndacalist notion of ‘rejuvenating violence’ and by the
writings of Georges Sorel, in which “violence was not to be mistaken for terrorist
bloodshed; rather it was a motive force in history and a creative principle. ‘Vio-
lence’, as [Sorel] understood it, could equally be translated as ‘struggle,’ ‘effort,’
or energy.”84 If we understand violence as a force or as a form of energy, then one
can see that in his theoretical writings, as surely as in his literary works, Mari-
netti celebrated energy and struggle as a co-requisite of violence, making clear
his espousal of progress even at great personal cost.
Marinetti’s celebration of violence, even his characterization of it as beauti-
ful, has been misconstrued, in part because readers view his work through lenses
not available to Marinetti when he wrote his manifestos and speeches: the brutal-
ities of the First World War (including trench warfare and chemical weapons) and
the genocides of the Second World War. In one such critique of Marinetti, Walter
Benjamin, in his epilogue to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc-
tion, largely equates Futurism with Fascism and argues that “[mankind’s] self-al-
ienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction
as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.”85 Although Benjamin presents this
aesthetic as the nadir of humankind, Marinetti considered his own destruction,
83 Marinetti: “The Necessity and Beauty of Violence”, p. 63.

84 Berghaus: “Violence, War, Revolution: Marinetti’s Concept of a Futurist Cleanser for the
World”, p. 29 and pp. 25–26.
even death itself, as productive, like any other instance of destruction or violence.
Marinetti’s concept of violence was influenced by both Anarchist and Nietzschean
thought. He viewed “death as midwife of the New Man” and maintained “that
Death is not an Untergang (‘going-down’), but an Übergang (‘going over’).”86 Mari-
netti indeed portrayed his own destruction, or at least his serious injury while
serving in an artillery battalion in 1917, as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.87
As Christine Poggi argues in Inventing Futurism, “Marinetti regards his burned
and bleeding flesh as if it were an aesthetic phenomenon seen from a distance,
indeed seen anaesthetically.”88 To illustrate her point, Poggi quotes from L’alcova
d’acciaio (The Alcove of Steel, 1921): “Wounded in the groin by a large piece of
shrapnel, fallen under the heap of stones and sandbags of the dazzling battery,
I rose up with a burned face and taking off my blood-soaked trousers, I admired
the extraordinary violet of my thighs and of my battered knee.”89 The beauty that
Marinetti describes here – the precise shade of violet of his wound – evokes the
“beauty of violence” and reminds the reader that danger can reinvigorate by
defamiliarizing the everyday, “elevat[ing] man, by giving maximum splendor and
value to every moment that he lives.”90
The most famous example of Marinetti’s aestheticization of destruction
and danger can be found in The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism when he
evokes the car accident that inspired him to write the manifesto, in a vignette
that yet again frames destruction as regenerative and death as friendly (see Fig.
5). Marinetti describes himself as crawling out from under his overturned car in a
muddy, sludge-filled ditch, and he does so in the most glowing terms, calling the
ditch “mother” and “repair shop” – suggesting the ditch’s nurturing and restor-
ative qualities – and calling the sludge “strength-giving.”91 Thus, the destructive
force of this crash has given re-birth to Marinetti and has helped to inspire Futur-
ism’s foundational manifesto. As Jeffrey Schnapp observed: “Here, as in Futur-
ism’s subsequent history, shocks, or, as they were often referred to in the scien-
tific literature, thrills [...] sunder bonds to the past and, in their place, forge new
links: links between men, machines, and their environment: links that extend the
World”, pp. 33 & 37.
87 See Ibid., p. 37.
88 Poggi: Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, p. 162.
89 Marinetti: L’alcova d’acciaio, p. 118, quoted in Poggi: Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics
of Artificial Optimism, p. 162.
90 Marinetti: “The Necessity and Beauty of Violence”, p. 65.
91 Marinetti: “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism”, p. 13.
individual’s physical and mental reach.”92 The violence of Marinetti’s crash – the
most famous car wreck in Modernism – is indeed ‘productive’, as it generated a
manifesto and “a metallized and multiplied humanity.”93
Fig. 5. The aftermath of Marinetti’s car crash of 15 October 1908.
In seeking to understand Marinetti’s celebration of danger, one must situate The

Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism within its precise historical context. In her
essay, “The First Futurist Manifesto Revisited”, Marjorie Perloff describes the
first manifesto as a poignant anticipation of future historical events: “The call
for speed and violence, for overturning the world, was to be answered in sinis-
ter ways Marinetti could never have anticipated.”94 Similarly, Günter Berghaus
reminds readers that Marinetti’s presentation of war as a cleanser and purgative
was not uncommon prior to World War I: “Without the experiences of the mass
slaughter of WWI and the millions of dead soldiers and civilians in WWII, many
intellectuals in the early twentieth century took a favourable attitude towards war
and saw it as an exhilarating cleansing process beneficial for their Nation.”95
92 Schnapp: “Crash: Speed as Engine of Individuation”, pp. 7–8.

93 Ibid., p. 8.
94 Perloff: “The First Futurist Manifesto Revisited”, p. 13.
World”, p. 34.
Just as Marinetti framed violence and danger as productive and generative,

Stein touted the value of breakage, violence and crime in defamiliarizing the
everyday and in clarifying human identity. Evanescence – the impermanence of
both material objects and people – was a key element of Stein’s aesthetic project,
from the violent imagery of Tender Buttons (1914) to the flurry of crime-related
works in the period surrounding the publication of Stein’s bestseller, The Autobi-
ography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Stein’s most sustained explorations of crime and
violence can be found in the short stories “A Water-fall and A Piano” (1936) and
“Is Dead” (1936); the detective novel Blood on the Dining-Room Floor (written in
1933); and the essays “Why I Like Detective Stories” (1937) and “American Crimes
and How They Matter” (1935). Stein’s interest in crime and violence was deeply
imbricated with her aesthetic interests in the nature of identity and of everyday
life. Stein argues that crime enables one to “see it from the outside”,96 and she
claims for art a privileged rôle: that of recording the aftermath of violence and
crime. Stein emphasized the importance of such external perception in Blood on
the Dining-Room Floor, through the narrator / detective’s analysis of the novel’s
crimes: “That is the way to see a thing, see it from the outside.”97
Stein used her reveries in “American Crimes and How They Matter” as a
means to foreground her persistent points of interest: the nature of identity and
the possibility of enumerating various character types, issues that were previ-
ously explored in her portraits and in her encyclopaedic catalogue of charac-
ters, The Making of Americans. Stein discusses typology here in the context of an
evening she spent with the Chicago police: “They asked us to go out one night
with the homicidal [sic] squad car in Chicago and we did.”98 While there was little
crime to pursue that night, Stein looked for insights from the police into criminal
types: “We talked together a lot about not crime but whether any one would know
a criminal if one saw one in another place than where one was accustomed to see
them I asked the sergeant could he tell in a town he had never been in which ones
were men who could commit crimes.”99 In this case, as in her other works, Stein
was most interested in those crimes and criminals who defy easy explanation and
categorization: “It does make a big difference, it is why Robin Hood lives, crime if
you know the reason if you know the motive if you can understand the character
if it is not a normal one is not interesting.”100 Stein clearly prefers the seemingly
96 Stein: Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, p. 19.

97 Ibid., p. 19.
98 Stein: “American Crimes and How They Matter”, p. 100.
99 Ibid., p. 101.
100 Ibid., pp. 104–105.
normal criminal to the obviously abnormal one; she specifically mentions the
famous gangster, John Dillinger, and notes “that his father naturally could say
that he was a good boy he always had been a good son. [...] If they could not say
that of him he would not have been on the front page of the newspaper.”101
The “killer that is a natural killer and not a mean one”102 fascinated Stein,
because such a figure violates the assumptions that one could know a criminal
on sight and that criminal motivation – or any human motivation – is ultimately
knowable. Stein found more interest in the figure of Dillinger and in the Lizzie
Borden case, the Lindbergh baby case, and the Hall-Mills case because of their
mystery, their ultimate unknowability: “That is something that so complicates
everything that no one really can know anything by anything one does mean
everything.”103 It is the search for meaning that appeals to Stein more than the
discovery of that meaning. Stein’s primary focus was on famous (and usually
unsolved) crimes because “everybody remembers a crime when nobody finds
out anything about who did it and particularly where the person mixed up with
it goes on living.”104 The crimes on which Stein concentrated had “a mystery
behind the answer” and a sense of enigma: “It is more interesting if you do not
know the answer at all.”105
Stein was convinced that art had the function to chronicle evanescence and
to explore various enigma, even if it was ultimately more interesting if those mys-
teries are not resolved. Much of Stein’s work on crime was inspired by a series
of suspicious deaths in the French countryside near her summer home, and by
a strange set of events, during which her car was sabotaged and the telephone
wires to her house cut. Rather than lamenting these cases, Stein argues that they
were natural, and that it was the job of artists (those who live in “the city”) to
describe them: “There have to be changes in the country, there had to be breaking
up of families and killing of dogs and spoiling of sons and losing of daughters
and killing of mothers and banishing of fathers. [...] Nothing happens in the city.
Everything happens in the country. The city just tells what has happened in the
country, it has already happened in the country.”106 The emphasis on change and
simultaneity sounds very Bergsonian, and also very much like Marinetti in his
101 Ibid., p. 104.
102 Ibid., p. 104.
103 Ibid., p. 103.
104 Ibid., p. 102–103.
105 Ibid., p. 103.
106 Stein: Everybody’s Autobiography, pp. 50–51.
celebration of constant change. Stein’s continuous present approximates here

Marinetti’s continuous becoming.
Just as Marinetti celebrated the value of personal danger, Stein seems to have
cultivated that frisson of danger through speeding and reckless driving, a habit
frequent enough to have been noted by several of Stein’s contemporaries. In a
New Yorker column published shortly before Stein’s highly-anticipated arrival in
the U.S.A. in October 1934, Janet Flanner claims that Stein “takes corners fast,
doesn’t put out her hand, drives on the wrong side of the street, pays no more
attention to traffic signals or intersections than she does to punctuation marks,
and never honks.” Although all of this seems to be affectionate commentary,
Flanner reports that “that Miss Stein is the worst driver in the history of automo-
tive engineering.”107 Another friend, W.G. Rogers, wrote that she seemed “often to
be about to run [her French friends] down with her car. Though possessed with
lighting-fast reflexes and a knowledge of how to handle a Ford, she felt she owned
the road. She spent a good deal of time driving for visits, on errands, or just for
the pleasure of being at the wheel. But she regarded a corner as something to cut,
and another car as something to pass, and she could scare the daylights out of all
concerned.”108 Toklas (Stein herself, of course) is more tempered in her descrip-
tion of Stein’s driving in The Autobiography: “She goes forward admirably, she
does not go backward successfully. The only violent discussions that we have
had in connection with her driving a car have been on the subject of backing.”109 I
would suggest that we can take this pronouncement on Stein going forward admi-
rably, but not backward successfully, as the trope for both Stein’s and Marinetti’s
approaches to literature, art and aesthetics.
Conclusion
Regardless of Stein’s skill or lack thereof at backing up a car, it is notable that both
she and Marinetti had automobile accidents caused by older modes of transpor-
tation – by a horse-drawn wagon and bicycles, respectively – almost as though
they were enacting the inevitable clash of their modernity with the remnant of
the past from which they were so earnestly trying to escape. In Marinetti’s case,
this crash of 15 October 1908 was chronicled in The Foundation and Manifesto of
Futurism, a wreck that helped give birth to Futurism and to Marinetti’s articulated
107 Flanner: “The Talk of the Town.”

108 Rogers: When This You See Remember Me: Gertrude Stein in Person, p. 88.
vision of the modern subject. The obstacle and remnant of the past that caused
the accident was a pair of cyclists, who were stuck in the past not only due to their
antiquated mode of transportation but also because of their failure to act deci-
sively. Unlike Marinetti and the Futurists, who in The Foundation and Manifesto
were hurling themselves along the roads and were chasing death, the bicyclists
were plagued by “stupid uncertainty” and were “dithering about in front of me
like two different lines of thought.”110 It is this dithering and indecision that made
Marinetti end up in the ditch.
In Stein’s case, her car accident, which Toklas calls “our first and only acci-
dent”, was caused by a horse-drawn army kitchen that kicked out of line and
collided with ‘Auntie’ on the backroads of a recently-liberated Alsace, resulting in
damage to their Ford’s “mud-guard [and] tool-chest, and worst of all the triangle
of the steering gear.”111 The notion of Stein’s Ford – totem of the U.S.A.’s early
entrance into the twentieth century, according to Stein – being knocked out of
alignment by a horse-drawn vehicle seems too perfectly scripted to be true: the
nineteenth century – dragging domesticity behind it, no less – collides with Ger-
trude Stein in her bastion of modernity.
Both Stein and Marinetti were taken down, albeit briefly, by ‘lesser’ vehicles.
As Marinetti made clear in the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, his “beau-
tiful shark” of a car was soon “back from the dead, darting along”; and Stein’s
Auntie was back on the road quickly thanks to repairs performed by American
and French forces.112 In these incidents, so redolent of the aesthetic pre-occu-
pations of both Marinetti and Stein, we can see their projects and trajectories in
microcosm: the past – and its modes of transportation – may have slowed Mari-
netti and Stein down, but it did not stop them.
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—: “American Crimes and How They Matter.” New York Herald Tribune, 30 March 1935.
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Toklas, Alice B.: The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
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Zabel, Barbara: Assembling Art: The Machine and the American Avant-Garde. Jackson/MS:
University Press of Mississippi, 2004.
Tim Klähn
Rea Nikonova and the Legacy of Russian
Futurism
Abstract: Rea (or Ry) Nikonova (pseud. of Anna Aleksandrovna Tarshis, 1942–
2014) was a founder of the Uktus School and, together with her husband Serge
Segay, of Transfurism, a literary and artistic movement in the Soviet Union which
exhibited a strong interest in, and affinity for, the experiments of Russian Futur-
ism. One of Nikonova’s major achievements was, again with Segay, the pub-
lication of the now legendary samizdat journal Transponans (1969–1987). This
journal started out as the main platform for the Transfurists, but soon counted an
impressive number of influential contemporary writers and artists among its con-
tributors, such as Anna Al’chuk, Genrikh Sapgir, the conceptualists Ilya Kabakov,
Dmitry Prigov, Lev Rubinshtein, and Andrey Monastyrsky. Thanks to collabora-
tions with surviving protagonists of the Russian historical avant-garde, Transpo-
nans also helped to make accessible a treasure trove of previously unpublished
works, especially by the Futurists Aleksei Kruchenykh and Vasilisk Gnedov, but
also by Kazimir Malevich, Olga Rozanova, Daniil Kharms, Igor’ Bakhterev, as
well as by lesser-known avant-gardists such as Aleksandr Tufanov, Yuri Marr and
Andrei Egunov. This essay aims to explore to what extent this obvious interest in
the history of Russian Futurism is reflected in the works of Rea Nikonova and in
her theoretical writings.
Keywords: Rea Nikonova, Serge Segay, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Vasilisk Gnedov,

Velimir Khlebnikov, Transfurism, Transponans, Nomer, Double, Samizdat, Mail Art
Introduction
Rea Nikonova1 (1942–2014) was one of the most inventive and prolific Russian
neo-avant-gardists, employing an impressive multitude of different techniques
and styles, and producing several hundreds of samizdat2 books of poetry, prose,
1 Rea, or Ry, Nikonova, was the pseudonym of Anna Aleksandrovna Tarshis. Until 1982, she
tended to sign “Anna Tarshis”, since 1982 “Ry Nikonova”, and “Rea Nikonova” in non-Russian
publications; in recent Russian publications, her name is often given as Anna-Ry Nikonova-
Tarshis.
2 Samizdat is a Russian term (‘sam’ for ‘self, by oneself’, and ‘izdat’, an abbreviation for ‘iz-
datel’stvo’, ‘publishing house’) for clandestine, self-published literature, usually passed from
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0020
396 Tim Klähn
drama, and essays.3 Striking examples of Nikonova’s multivaried artistic and lit-
erary œuvre include visual poetry (with and without linguistic content),4 concep-
tual works,5 ‘vacuum poetry’ (which explores absences of various kinds), ‘vector
poetry’ and ‘architextures’ (which map the internal correspondences within
a given text), ‘pliugms’ (in which linguistic source materials are subjected to
transformations),6 the so-called ‘system’ (a work-in-progress in which Nikonova
describes, classifies and illustrates every possible poetic device), and, together
with her husband Serge Segay,7 the publication of the samizdat journals Nomer
(1965–1974) and, most notably, Transponans (1979–1987).
During the second half of the 1980s, Nikonova and Segay participated in the
mail art network and, in 1991, Nikonova began publishing the international mail
art journal Double, of which eight issues appeared until 2000. In 1993, after the
demise of the Soviet Union, her first ‘official’ book was published in Russia.8 In
1998, Segay and Nikonova moved to Kiel, Germany; the same year, they were hon-
oured with the Andrey Bely Prize for “special services to literature”, namely the
publication of texts by the historical avant-garde in their samizdat journal Tran-
sponans.
hand to hand. It was a method of avoiding censorship and carried harsh punishments when
found out.
3 The sheer number of Nikonova’s works, her constant reworking of previous works, and the
circumstance that her (often unique) mail art and samizdat publications are literally spread
around the world prevents an exhaustive survey in this article. For a discussion of a wider ar-
ray of Nikonova’s literary strategies see for example Janecek: “Tysiacha form Ry Nikonovoj” [A
Thousand Forms of Rea Nikonova], Greve: “Infinite Permutation as Poetic Principle in the Work
of Ry Nikonova” and Greve: Writing and the ‘Subject’: Image-Text Relations in the Early Russian
Avant-Garde and Contemporary Russian Visual Poetry, pp. 217–256.
4 See Nazarenko: “Writing Poetry Without Words: Pictographic Poems by Rea Nikonova and
Sergej Sigej.”
5 See Janecek: “Conceptualism in the Work of Sergej Sigej and Rea Nikonova.”
6 See Janecek: Sight and Sound Entwined: Studies of the New Russian Poetry, pp. 110–124.
7 Serge Segay, or Sergei Sigei, pseudonym of Sergei Vsevolodovich Sigov (1947–2014), a poet,
artist, essayist, publisher and literary scholar, who founded the Anarcho-Futurist group, Budu-
shchel, before joining Nikonova’s Uktusskaia shkola, from which time he closely collaborated
with her on numerous projects. He is especially known for his unique Sobukvy visual poetry, for
his artists’ books, and his editions of works by Vasilisk Gnedov and other avant-gardists.
8 Nikonova: Epigraf k pustote: Vakuumnaia poeziia [Epigraph to Emptiness: Vacuum Poetry].
Transposing Futurism
Transponans started out as a journal for members of the neo-avant-gardist group

of Transfurists, which Nikonova and Segay had founded in Yeisk. The name
‘Transfurism’ (or, in its Russian spelling, ‘transfurizm’) already alludes to the two
concepts that are central to the aesthetics of this group: the ‘transposition’ of any
source material, and an apparent interest in one of the historical avant-gardes of
the beginning of the twentieth century, Russian Futurism.9
The concept of ‘transposition’, or, in Russian, ‘transponirovanie’, was devel-
oped by Nikonova in 1968. It can be applied to any readymade material and signi-
fies any adaptation or appropriation of that material, including one’s own texts,
texts by other authors, found texts, and any non-linguistic material.10 An admit-
tedly rather random example of one of the infinite possible transpositions of a text
is given by Nikonova in a polemical essay, in which she proposes to improve a line
from another writer’s poem by transforming its words and rearranging its letters:
“Кто нищий, тот не может пробросаться”. “A beggar cannot lose anything through inat-
Эх, сократить бы фразу вдвое, уже tention”. Ah, if one would halve this phrase, it
запахло бы поэзией, например, можно would already smell like poetry, for example, it
было бы так: could be like this:
Кто Ни...,тот не... A be… cannot…

ПРО–БРО LOS–ETH
–“– –“–
или: or:
Щий не может Gar can not
Жет про – Ь Ot los – ‘
–“– –“–
9 The coinage ‘furizm’ seems to be deliberately indeterminate, evoking ‘Futurism’, but also, as
Mikhail Evzlin proposes, ‘furia’, ‘fury’. See Evzlin: “Mifosemioticheskaia interpretatsiia avan-
gardnykh tekstov” [Mytho-Semiotic Interpretation of Avant-Garde Texts], p. 59. Occasionally,
‘Transfurism’ is misread as ‘Transfuturism’; the Transfurists, however, have never used the terms
‘Transfuturists’ or ‘Transfuturism’.
10 According to Nikonova, “‘transposing’ is the translation into another tonality (semantic or for-
mal) of one’s own or someone else’s works (not necessarily literary and even not necessarily from
the sphere of the arts)” (“‘транспонирование’ – перевод в другую тональность (смысловую
или формальную) своего или чужого произведения (не обязательно литературного и
даже не обязательно из сферы искусств).”) Nikonova: “Vmesto manifesta” [Instead of a Man-
ifesto]. Transponans No. 16, p. 17. See also Nikonova: “Uktusskaia shkola” [The Uktus School],
p. 226 and Lehmann: “Die Transpositionskunst von Ry Nikonova und Sergej Sigej.”
398 Tim Klähn
или даже: or even:
Кто – тот A – can

Тот – кто (ся)11 Can – a (on)
11
The transformations render the source text unintelligible and either focus on a
combination of real words interspersed with fragments of zaum’, the so-called
transrational language of the Russian Futurists, which Nikonova considered to be
one of the “main components” of her “poetic spectrum”;12 or they focus on struc-
tural similarities within the source material, or on the sound of inherent letter
combinations, including the absence of sound. For example, the Russian letter
‘Ь’, the ‘soft sign’, which is isolated in Nikonova’s second transformation, cannot
be pronounced on its own.
This rather simplistic transformation, again, is in itself a poetic technique
that Nikonova seems to have appropriated from the Russian Futurist Aleksei
Kruchenykh. Kruchenykh notoriously claimed that Pushkin’s complete Evgeny
Onegin “can be expressed in two lines: / eni-voni / si-e-tsia”.13 In the preface to
Chachikov’s book Krepkii grom [Solid Thunder], he exemplifies his own ‘concen-
tration’ of one of Chachikov’s poems by creating a zaum’-text from the source
material: “С проспекта Юрт-Шахе и Консульской / Аллеи” (“From the Yurt-
Shakhe Prospekt and the Consul / Alley”), for example, becomes, after a couple
of anagrammatical permutations and the deletion of several letters: “кта прос |
сульксон ехаш” (“kta pros | sul’kson ekhash).14 Thus, in this instance, Nikonova
appropriated a text by another author and transposed it by subjecting it to a
poetic technique appropriated from yet another writer.15
11 Nikonova: “Kostyl’izdat” [Publisher on Crutches].

12 “Одной из главных составляющих поэтического спектра была ЗАУМЬ” (“One of the
main components of the poetic spectrum was ZAUM’ [the transrational language of the Russian
Futurists].”) Nikonova: “Uktusskaia shkola” [The Uktus School], p. 225. See, for example, also
the title of the book Nikonova and Segay: Zaum.
13 “[в]сего “Евгения Онегина” можно выразить в двух строчках: / ени-вони / си-е-тся”.
Kruchenykh: Apokalipsis v russkoi literature. Chort i rechetvortsy. Tainye poroki akademikov. Slo-
vo, kak takovoe. Deklaratsii [The Apocalypse in Russian Literature. The Devil and the Wordmak-
ers. Secret Vices of the Academicians. Word as Such. Declarations], p. 32.
14 Kruchenykh: “Predislovie” [Preface], p. 1.
15 Assuming that Nikonova appropriated Kruchenykh’s poetic technique here, one could also
see her isolated use of the Russian soft sign (see above) as a reminiscence of the equally unpro-
nounceable Russian hard sign which adorns the cover of Kruchenykh’s book Vselenskaia voina
Ъ [Universal War Ъ, 1916].
A significant difference between the Russian Futurists and the Transfurists

is apparent here, insofar as – contrary to the ductus of the Russian Futurists to
throw “Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy” and any previous generations of writers
“overboard from the Ship of Modernity”16 – Nikonova and the Transfurists
clearly do not show any inclination towards throwing the Futurists or any other
author overboard. In fact, as the art critic Tatiana Nikolskaya stated in a review
of a performance by Nikonova and fellow Transfurists Segay and Konstriktor:
“The poets don’t throw anybody overboard from any ship. They know and love
their predecessors – the group 41°, OBERIU and other avant-gardists. And they
are not ashamed of their love.”17 Nikonova even claims in an autobiographical
note that she developed her avant-gardism from “Pushkin’s workshop”18 and
that, initially, her favorite writer was Goethe.19 At the same time, shе admits
her “love” of Malevich’s Chernyi kvadrat (Black Square, 1915) and describes that
the Futurists “found” her late, “approximately in 1977–1978”, but “managed to
stay”.20
The tradition of the avant-garde
Compared to Segay’s enthusiasm for and more direct homages to Russian Futur-
ism, Nikonova’s attitude towards it was rather ambivalent. While Segay proudly
exhibits his knowledge of the avant-garde21 and his works abound with allusions
to it, Nikonova at times tended to downplay her knowledge of the avant-garde
16 Burliuk et al.: Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu [A Slap in the Face of Public Taste], p. 3.
17 “[п]оэты никого ни с какого парохода не сбрасывали. Они знают и любят своих
предшественников – компанию 41°, обэриутов и других авангардистов. И не стыдятся
своей любви.” Transponans No. 15, pp. 122f. The group 41° was a Futurist group around Kruche-
nykh, Zdanevich and Terentyev in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, which was called ‘Tiflis’ in Rus-
sian until 1936. OBERIU was the absurdist “Association for the Real in Art” around Kharms and
Vvedensky.
18 “А я свой авангардизм, честно сказать, выкатила из мастерской Пушкина” (“And, to be
honest, my own avant-gardism I got out of Pushkin’s workshop”). Nikonova: “Vektor vakuuma”
[Vector of the Vacuum], p. 244.
19 Ibid., p. 243.
20 Ibid., p. 244: “Футуристы нашли меня поздно (примерно в 1977–1978 гг.), успели
отстояться.”
21 See for example, his letter to A. Nik, in which he claims “Ры и я неплохо знаем прежней
русск. авангард, в моем распоряжении немало и неопубл. футуристов и заумников /
неопубл., правда, только в типограф. смысле, поскольку я не из чего не делаю секрета.”
(“Rea and I know the previous Russ. avant-garde quite well, and I’ve got a lot of unpublished
400 Tim Klähn
(“I never read anything”22) as well as its influence on her works, claiming to
have invented similar poetic techniques unknowingly and independently. She
recounts that Segay kept telling her “Darling, but that has already been done”,23
which supposedly encouraged her that she was on the right way:24 “I know this is
a shortcoming. But I find it easier to invent the bicycle than spend time looking for
formulas for it in the past. Anyway, the bicycle that gets invented later is already
not so very bicycle-like”.25
Despite Nikonova’s slight coquetry with an alleged naiveté and dilettantism
(for several issues, the subtitle of Transponans was “journal of dilettantism”),
she clearly exhibited a thorough knowledge of the history of the Russian avant-
garde and especially of all kinds of poetic techniques used by it, which can
be detected in her essays, annotations and afterwords to works by writers as
diverse as Igor’ Bakhterev, Konstantin Vaginov or Neol Rubin, to mention but
a few. The avant-gardists Nikonova referred to the most were “Khlebnikov, and
Zdanevich, and Chicherin, and Gnedov, and Tufanov, and Kruchenykh, and Ter-
entyev, with one word, the real ‘golden pléiade’ of the finally real Russian poet-
ry”.26 Among those, Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh, the Cubo-Futurist inventors
of the nonsensical ‘transrational’ language zaum’ and co-authors of Igra v adu
(Game in Hell, 1912), are probably the best-known. Terentyev and Zdanevich
collaborated with Kruchenykh in the more radical Futurist group 41° in Tbilisi,
and Zdanevich later emigrated to Paris and joined the Dadaists. Gnedov was
an Ego-Futurist whose most notorious work, Poema kontsa (Poem of the End,
1913), consisted of a title and an empty page.27 Tufanov was a transitional poet
between Futurism and the absurdist group OBERIU, as well as a theoretician of
Futurists and Zaumniks at my disposal [true, only typographically unpublished, since I don’t
keep anything a secret]”). Nikonova and Segay: [Dossier], p. 547.
22 “[н]икогда ничего не читаю”. Transponans No. 16, p. 21.
23 Ibid., p. 22: “Голубушка, но это уже было”.
24 Ibid., p. 22: “Значит, я правильно придумала, на верном пути” (“That means, I devised
it correctly, the right way”).
25 “Я знаю, что это недостаток. Но мне легче изобрести велосипед, чем тратить время
на поиски его формулы в прошлом. Да и не так уж ‘велосипеден’ бывает велосипеда,
изобретенный поздно.” From a letter by Nikonova to Brooks (2005), quoted and translated in
Brooks: “On One Ancestor”, pp. 204f.
26 “И Хлебников, и Зданевич, и Чичерин, и Гнедов и Туфанов, и Кручёных, и Терентьев,
одним словом, настоящая ‘золотая плеяда’ русской наконец-то настоящей поэзии”. Tran-
sponans No. 23, p. 177.
27 On Gnedov and Nikonova see Brooks: “On One Ancestor: Vasilisk Gnedov in the Work of
Sergej Sigej and Ry Nikonova”, p. 204–218.
zaum’. The Russian Constructivist Chicherin’s influence on Nikonova, finally,

would merit a separate article.
In her correspondence with the conceptualist poet and artist Dmitry Prigov,
Nikonova chided him for (supposedly) not knowing the Russian avant-garde
well enough: “It seems to me, that you are not quite aware of what has been
done at that time”, adding that the difficulty of knowing the Russian avant-
garde arose not mainly “because of the interruption of the tradition, but because
of the unavailability of the results.”28 The avant-garde had, indeed, been suc-
cessfully silenced in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, after the imposition
of the doctrine of Socialist Realism, which forbade any ‘formalism’ in art. An
efficient censorship system had been set up to not only prevent any publica-
tion that did not comply with this doctrine, but also to retroactively enforce the
removal of paragraphs, pages, chapters, or complete books from libraries and
book stores.29 Moreover, the mere possession of forbidden materials could lead
to repression.30 It was, thus, relatively difficult to obtain any information on
the Russian historical avant-garde, or on Modernist forms of Western art and
literature.31
Some of the surviving avant-gardists played an important rôle in the trans-
mission of texts from the 1910s and 20s and keeping the ‘tradition’ of the avant-
garde alive, as did clandestinely distributed samizdat publications.32 Copies of
28 “Вы, как мне кажется, не совсем в курсе тогда сделанного.” Transponans No. 12, p. 59.
“Ибо дело не в прерванности традиций, а в недоступности результатов.” Ibid.
29 For a concise overview see, for example, Blium: “Crippled Books.”
30 Segay recounts Boris Konstriktor’s bonmot that editing a samizdat journal was “not about
how many authors you print, but about how many you put in prison.” (“Дело не в том,
Сергей Всеволодович, скольких авторов Вы напечатаете, а в том – скольких посадите.”)
Khardzhiev: Pis’ma v Sigeisk [Letters to Sigeisk], p. 223.) In a letter to the poet Scherstjanoi,
Nikonova describes the repressions that her family had to endure, see Nikonova and Segay:
TRANSPONANCE TRANSSFURISMUS [sic] oder kaaba der abstraktion, p. 46. Among the authors
of the historical avant-garde that were published in Transponans, the Futurist Vasilisk Gne-
dov, for example, spent decades in a prison camp; Igor Terentyev, Nikolai Oleinikov and Daniil
Kharms died in prison or were executed.
31 One of the few times that examples of concrete poetry became officially published in the
Soviet Union, was in 1964, when an article condemning modern poetry provided translations
of poems by Gomringer, Mon, Rühm, Jandl and Heißenbüttel. Golovin: “Lirika ‘modern’.” For a
comparative description of Transfurism and the Vienna Group, see Keith: “Wiener Gruppe und
Transfurismus: Zwei Beispiele für die literaturgeschichtliche Weiterwirkung der historischen
Avantgarden im deutschen und russischen Sprachraum.”
32 The word ‘samizdat’ (‘sam’ for ‘self, by oneself’, and ‘izdat’, an abbreviation for ‘izdatel’stvo’,
‘publishing house’) mirrors the official state publishing house’s name ‘Gosizdat’ (abbr. for ‘State
402 Tim Klähn
these hand-written or type-written books and journals were distributed among

like-minded friends, and quite reliably found their way around the cultural scene
of the ‘second’, ‘unofficial’ culture. Nomer and Transponans, the two samiz-
dat journals that Nikonova edited with her husband Segay, were among those
sources.
The samizdat journals Nomer and Transponans
Nomer was a hand-written journal that appeared in an ‘edition’ of one copy, mainly
focussing on contributions by members of the Uktus School, which Nikonova had
founded in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) in 1965, and whose members included
Evgeny Arben’ev, Valery D’iachenko, Aleksandr Galamaga and Serge Segay, who
had previously been the founder of a group whose members called themselves
‘anarkho-futuristy’ (Anarcho-Futurists). In an attempt to ensure an interactive
exchange with its readers, Nomer was known to have provided an empty margin
to allow readers to add comments; later, a section for comments about the com-
ments was added, and there were recurring sections entitled “WRITE YOUR
OWN”33 and “PASTE IN YOUR OWN”.34 In 1974, most of Nomer’s 35 issues were
confiscated by the KGB.35
After they had settled in Yeysk in 1979, Sergay and Nikonova began the pub-
lication of the now legendary samizdat journal Transponans, this time in an
edition of five copies.36 While, at first sight, it may seem unlikely that a journal
Publishing House’); it is usually attributed to Nikolai Glazkov, who first used the term ‘samsebi-
aizdat’, ‘self-publ.’, for his unofficial publications.
33 “ВПИШИ СВОЕ”. Nikonova: “Uktusskaia shkola” [The Uktus School], p. 226.
34 “ВКЛЕЙ СВОЕ”. Reproductions of pages with these sections are published in Parisi: “Samiz-
dat: Problemi di definizione”, p. 25.
35 See Nikonova: “Uktusskaia shkola” [The Uktus School], p. 226. Some materials of the jour-
nal Nomer survived and can now be consulted in the archive of the Forschungsstelle Osteuropa
at the University of Bremen. The name Uktus School, incidentally, refers to a local ski jump in
Sverdlovsk.
36 The most complete sets of Transponans can be found in the Sackner Archive of Concrete and
Visual Poetry, Miami/FL, USA, and in the archive of the Forschungsstelle Osteuropa at the Uni-
versity of Bremen. The University of Bremen’s copies are accessible online in an electronic edi-
tion by Ann Komaromi and Il’ia Kukui with annotations by Kukui. See Kukui, ed.: “Zhurnal teorii
i praktiki ‘Transponans’: Kommentirovannoe elektronnoe izdanie. Work in Progress” [Journal of
Theory and Practice “Transponans”: Annotated Electronic Edition. Work in Progress].
that existed only in an edition of five copies might have had any impact at all
on the reception of the historical avant-garde, Transponans has been described
as having been comparably ‘popular’ in ‘unofficial’ Moscow and Leningrad
(Saint-Petersburg),37 and its rôle in the reception of the historical avant-garde in
the Soviet Union cannot be overestimated.38
Transponans started out as a comparably straight-forward type-written samiz-
dat journal with texts by former members of the Uktus School as well as by the newly
founded group of Transfurists, which included Boris Konstriktor, Vladimir Erl’ and
A. Nik (pseudonyms of Boris Aksel’rod, Vladimir Gorbunov and Nikolai Aksel’rod,
respectively). Slowly, Transponans started attracting a wider range of contributors,
and its design also became more sumptuous, with hand-drawn illustrations or col-
lages adorning the pages, eventually making each issue a unique artists’ book in
its own right,39 with recurring allusions to Russian Futurist book designs and the
Futurists’ concept of ‘faktura’ (the material quality of a publication).
Samizdat book art
From Transponans No. 22 onwards, the journal’s design started to resemble the
aesthetics of Segay’s artists’ books, which in turn seem to have taken Russian
Futurist book art as their point of departure, incorporating, for example, materi-
als with unexpected textures, using different types of paper, including wallpaper
and sandpaper, adding objects like buttons or needles to a page, mixing print and
handwriting, rubber stamps, handcoloured letters and drawings.40
37 See Volchek in Krivulin: “Interv’iu s Viktorym Krivulinym”, p. 265: “А как Вы расцениваете

популярность Транспонанса […]?” (“And how do you interpret the popularity of Transponans
[…]?”)
38 The art historian Evgeny Shteiner, for example, who was not part of the closer group around
Nikonova or Segay, remarked in an essay that particular works of visual poetry were known to
him only thanks to Transponans. Shteiner: “Kartiny iz pis’mennykh znakov: Zametki o vizual’noi
poezii” [Pictures out of Written Signs: Notes on Visual Poetry], p. 316.
39 Some of the later issues of Transponans counted several hundred pages (the largest issue, No.
25, had 344 pages); the last regular issue, No. 36, came out in January 1987. In 1990, an additional
issue, No. 37, was produced as a one-off publication for the exhibition, Fanzine as an … Object,
organized by Jan de Boever and Emma di Lemma in Brussels and Hagen, later transferred to the
Lindley Hall (Royal Horticultural Society Old Hall) in London, De Media (Small Mags) in Eeklo
(Belgium) and Confort Moderne in Poitiers.
40 Segay’s artists’ book Chitantologia zaumi 1910–1972 [Readology of Zaum 1910–1972], which
contains an anthology of zaum’-texts by writers ranging from the historical avant-garde to
Nikonova, is bound in rough colourful tissue paper reminiscent of the wallpaper and rough linen
404 Tim Klähn
The intentionally imperfect and ‘primitive’ character of some publications

by the Russian Futurists found an echo in the literary samizdat, since the ele-
mentary style of its production means seemed to have directed its focus on the
visual aspects of writing, favouring visual poetry and experimenting with dif-
ferent book formats.41 Kruchenykh’s radical experiments with the book form,
for example in the minimalist books he produced in Tbilisi, never destroyed the
page on which a text was written, or the basic concept of what a book should
look like. Nikonova, on the other hand, continued to question what still con-
stitutes a book by experimenting with incisions, foldings, larger cut-outs and
transparent pages. According to Sabine Hänsgen, “the boundaries of a book are
playfully called into question by fold-out elements, forms extending beyond the
traditional rectangle, or – conversely – various means of subtraction from that
rectangle, for instance by cutting into it.”42 In various essays, Nikonova describes
potentially new forms of books. One of her projects was a ‘book-pillow’ that was
to contain sheets of paper with texts, an homage to Khlebnikov, who is said to
have misappropriated his pillow as a container for his manuscripts.43 In her
manifesto, Vandaletto (Little Vandal, 1984), Nikonova describes performances
that involve vandalizing books;44 projects such as her kniga-fleita (book-flute,
1984, see fig. 1) open up the incised book to be used as a musical instrument; her
kulin-art, inspired by the Russian Constructivist Chicherin’s baked letters, seeks
to create edible books.45
covers of Futurist publications, and includes collages (one showing the face of Kruchenykh),
cut-outs from magazines, felt, linen, knittings, sandpaper, metal foil, etc. Likewise, Transpo-
nans Nos. 22 and 25, for example, are bound in a similar tissue. The literary supplement enti-
tled Kruchenykhiada (which contains poems about Kruchenykh by Feofan Buka, a pseudonym
of Nikolai Khardzhiev) contains collages of cut-out letters, with some of which Kruchenykh’s
zaum’-words are recreated.
41 See Hirt and Wonders: Präprintium: Moskauer Bücher aus dem Samizdat, pp. 8–40 and Koma-
romi: “The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat.”
42 Hänsgen: “SovKonkret: Vom Transfuturismus zur konzeptuellen Poesie / SovConcrete: From
Transfuturism to Conceptual Poetry”, p. 111.
43 “Книга-подушка, или книга-наволочка. […] Этот вариант, к юбилею Велимира
Хлебникова, будет выпущен ред. ж. ‘Транспонанс’” (“A book-cushion, or a book-pillow. [...]
This variant, for the anniversary of Velimir Khlebnikov, will be released by the editors of the
journal ‘Transponans’”). Transponans No. 2, p. 19.
44 Transponans No. 23, p. 233.
45 See Glanc: “Essbarkeit: Die Medialität der Kulin-Art und des Horror Vacui”, p. 347–354. The
kulin-art manifesto can be found in Transponans No. 18, pp. 29–34, with a food-related epigraph
from Game in Hell by Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov.
Fig. 1. Rea Nikonova: Artists’ Books Book-Hat and Book-Flute. Source: Transponans
Nos. 32–33.
Starting with Transponans No. 28 in 1985, the format of the journal changed to
Nikonova’s so-called ‘ry-structure’, a rectangular form with a triangular cut-out
on the right side, and inserted larger pages in a triangular shape. This form was
further developed by Nikonova in her mail art journal Double, forcing contrib-
utors to respect complicated cut-out patterns and culminating in a fragile dou-
ble-’ry-structure’ (Double No. 7), which consisted of large triangular forms with
406 Tim Klähn
several smaller triangular cut-outs and a large square cut-out in the middle (an
absent Black Square, so to speak).
In line with Kruchenykh’s attempts at having some copies of his books differ
from each other, the elaborate collage on the cover of Transponans No. 28, for
example, differs significantly from one copy to another.46 Similarly, the copies
of each issue of Nikonova’s journal Double (which appeared in an edition of 50
copies) differ one from another as well. The mail artists’ fascination for stamps
(see, for instance, the stamp of Nikonova’s name in Double No. 7) also seems to
perfectly tie in with the Russian Futurists’ use of rubber stamps in their pub-
lications; the Futurists, though, still wanted to convey a text with their rub-
ber-stamped letters, whereas the Transfurists applied stamps and stickers seem-
ingly at random.47
Publishing the avant-garde
Over the years, Transponans significantly expanded its range of contributors,

opening up its pages to writers and artists such as Genrikh Sapgir and Lev Kro-
pivnitsky from the Lianozovo group, Anna Al’chuk and Gleb Tsvel’ (the editors
of the samizdat journals Paradigma [Paradigm] and MDP [MD1]), which both
carried texts by Segay and Nikonova) or, most importantly, the conceptualists
Ilya Kabakov, Dmitry Prigov, Lev Rubinshtein, Andrey Monastyrsky and the
group Kollektivnye deistviia (Collective Actions), among others.
Another way in which the journal’s scope broadened was with the inclusion
of previously unpublished texts by members of the historical avant-garde, espe-
cially by the Futurists Aleksei Kruchenykh and Vasilisk Gnedov and the member
of the absurdist group OBERIU Igor’ Bakhterev, but also by Kazimir Malevich,
Olga Rozanova, Daniil Kharms, Nikolai Oleinikov, Konstantin Vaginov, as well
as by comparably obscure figures such as Aleksandr Tufanov, Yuri Marr and
Andrei Egunov. These publications were often accompanied by essays by Segay,
Nikonova, or Erl’, or by scholars such as Nikolai Khardzhiev and Tatiana Nikol-
skaya.
46 Compare, for example, the University of Bremen’s copy of Transponans No. 28 with the copy
from a “private collection” reproduced in Hirt and Wonders: Präprintium: Moskauer Bücher aus
dem Samizdat, p. 125.
47 For a description of Nikonova’s participation in the mail art network, see Greve: “Zaumland:
Serge Segay and Rea Nikonova in the International Mail Art Network.”
Some Moscow writers of the younger generation, such as Ian Satunovsky,

Gennady Aygi, Viktor Sosnora or Vladimir Kazakov, had found a ‘link’ to the inter-
rupted tradition of the avant-garde through encounters with the Russian Futur-
ist Aleksei Kruchenykh, who resided in Moscow until 1968. Nikonova and Segay,
however, lived quite a distance away from the cultural centres Moscow and Len-
ingrad and had to take an epistolary approach to reconnecting with the historical
avant-garde. Segay initiated correspondences with the Futurist Vasilisk Gnedov,
with the member of the absurdist group OBERIU, Igor’ Bakhterev, and with Nikolai
Khardzhiev, a writer, art critic and erudite collector and archivist of the Russian
avant-garde.48 The valorization of their own work through Gnedov and Bakhterev
was appreciated by Segay and Nikonova,49 and in return they printed many pre-
viously unpublished works by those two writers in Transponans.50 Khardzhiev,
though, with whom both Segay and Nikonova led a lively and long-lasting corre-
spondence about arcana and minutiae of the historical avant-garde,51 proved to
be a valuable and versatile source who enabled them to publish texts by Kazimir
Malevich,52 Olga Rozanova,53 Aleksei Kruchenykh, and many other members of
the historical Russian avant-garde.
Works by Kruchenykh published in Transponans included poems from his
correspondence, a considerable selection of poems from the 1930s to the 1950s,
the poem “Velimir Khlebnikov in the Year 1915”, Game in Hell: Second Poem, Ara-
besques from Gogol, and The Lay of Gogol’s Feats.54 Among those, A Game in Hell:
48 In an interview, Segay mentions that he had also written to Kruchenykh, who, unfortunately,
never wrote back. See Segay: “Nad ne” [“Over Not”]. Vladimir Erl’ (pseud. of Vladimir Gorbu-
nov), and A. Nik (pseud. of Nikolai Aksel’rod) managed to spend a couple of hours listening to
Kruchenykh, as recounted in Transponans No. 9, p. 65–68.
49 See, for example, Bakhterev’s comment about Transfurist performances in an interview pub-
lished in Transponans No. 24, p. 136: “Если бы […] обэриуты […] были на этих выступлениях,
то они все в полном составе выразили бы свое восхищение” (“If […] the Oberiutes […] would
have been to these performances, they would have expressed their admiration in full force”).
50 Works by Gnedov were published in Transponans Nos. 9, 11, 13, 16, 21, by Bakhterev in Tran-
sponans Nos. 5, 7, 11–13, 15–17, 19–27, 29, 30, 32–34.
51 A significant part of Khardzhiev’s collection is now housed in the Stedelijk Museum in Am-
sterdam, while parts of it remained in Russia and can be found in the RGALI and the Mayakovsky
Museum in Moscow. His extensive correspondence with Segay and Nikonova has been published
in Khardzhiev: Pis’ma v Sigeisk [Letters to Sigeisk].
52 Transponans No. 29 and 30.
53 Rozanova’s poems from her correspondence with Kruchenykh were published by Tat’iana
Nikol’skaia in Transponans No. 15.
54 The correspondence excerpts appeared in No. 15, pp. 76f.; the poems in No. 16, pp. 97–116,
“Velimir Khlebnikov v 1915 godu” in No. 21, pp 85f.; Igra v adu: Poema vtoraia in No. 22, pp. 98–
408 Tim Klähn
Second Poem was the second part to the well-known Futurist book of the same
title that Kruchenykh had co-authored with Khlebnikov, and in Transponans, it
was lavishly illustrated by Segay, Nikonova, Konstriktor and others.55 Segay’s
delight at inscribing himself into the tradition of the avant-garde is palpable
in a letter to Nikonova: “Thus, […] we will be on the same level as Rozanova,
Goncharova, Malevich and so on, who illustrated the first two version of this
poem.”56
Besides the publications of actual works by Kruchenykh, there were also
publications of works inspired by Kruchenykh, for instance, the rubric Sobstven-
nye rasskazy detei (Actual Children’s Stories, in No. 17), and the collective contin-
uation of Kruchenykh’s Malokholiia v kapote (Dullness in a House-Coat), which
the Transpoets spread across several issues (Nos. 9–13),57 as well as instalments
of Nikolai Khardzhiev’s Kruchenykhiada (under his pseudonym Feofan Buka). In
1984, a beautifully illustrated edition of Kruchenykhiada also appeared as a liter-
ary supplement to Transponans; a second edition was announced the following
year (see fig. 2).58
Substantial publications of materials by other Russian avant-gardists
included texts and drawings by the members of the absurdist group OBERIU, such
as Kharms (Nos. 20, 21, 27, 28, 30),59 Oleinikov (No. 21) and Zabolotsky (No. 21);
by Iliazd [Ilya Zdanevich] (No. 17), Tufanov (No. 23), Ender (No. 15), Marr (Nos. 14,
23, 28, 34, 35); and by Tyuvelev (No. 17), Egunov (No. 23) and Shalimov (No. 30).60
126; Arabeski iz Gogolia in No. 24, pp. 125–132; and Slovo o podvigakh Gogolia in No. 25, pp. 160–
180.
55 Nikonova’s illustration was a photomontage that included a paper spoon attached to it. See
Transponans No. 24, p. 122.
56 “Тем самым, […] мы с тобой становимся на одну доску с Розановой, Гончаровой,
Малевичем и пр., которые иллюстрировали первые два варианта сей поэмы.” Khardzhiev:
Pis’ma v Sigeisk [Letters to Sigeisk], p. 220.
57 See Kukui: “Slovo KAK takovoe: Transponirovanie Kruchenykh. Semnadtsat’ erundovykh
nabliudenii o sploshnom neprilichii” [The Word AS Such: Transposing Kruchenykh. Seventeen
Nonsense Observations on Sheer Indecencies].
58 The first ‘official’ edition of Kruchenykhiada was published in 1993.
59 Interestingly enough for a samizdat journal, the dossier with publications “Around Kharms”
(“Vokrug Kharmsa”), which was published by Vladimir Erl’, had a copyright note. Transponans
No. 21, p. 99: “© транспонанс и вл. эрль, 1984 / перепечатка запрещена категорически”
(“© transponans and vl. erl’, 1984 / reprint categorically forbidden”).
60 Among foreign sources were translations of texts by Tzara, Duchamp and Breton (No. 7),
Schwitters (No. 35) and Arp (Nos. 6, 21), Artaud (No. 31), Beckett (No. 11), Cage (Nos. 11, 34) and
Maciunas (No. 11), Haroldo de Campos (No. 31), Rühm (Nos. 21, 31), Mon (No. 21), Bayer (No. 35),
Ian Hamilton Finlay (No. 31), Crozier and Filiou (No. 34). Incidentally, only one of Marinetti’s
Fig. 2. Announcement “Marking Aleksei Kruchenykh’s Centenary” in Transponans No. 30.
Considering the wealth of publications of avant-garde materials in Transponans,

it does not come as a surprise that allusions to Futurism found their way into the
works of Nikonova and the Transfurists.
works was published in Transponans, a Russian translation of his sintesi radiofoniche “Un paes-
aggio udito” (No. 25, p. 218).
410 Tim Klähn
Futurist allusions
The Russian Futurists’ proclivity for writing manifestos was echoed in the Trans-
furist manifestos published in Transponans. The Transfur-manifest 1 (deklar-
ama) (Transfur-manifesto 1 [declarama], 1980), signed by Nikonova, Segay, and
Konstriktor, begins with the straight-forward ‘mission statement’: “To preserve
the thread of the poetic avant-garde”.61 The follow-up Transfur-manifest 2 (pro-
gramma) (Transfur-manifesto 2 [program], 1980) adds that “polystylistics (Khleb
nikov’s free meter, the sdvig62 of Gnedov and Kruchenykh) – are a beginning”,63
implying the Transfurists’ indebtedness to those Futurist poetic devices.64
The collective Vmesto manifesta (Instead of a Manifesto, 1983) resembles the
structure of the only manifesto published by the group OBERIU (Manifest OBERIU,
1928),65 in which each member is presented with a lengthy biographical outline.66
Again, one paragraph explicates the Transfurists’ “reliance on the poetic and
painterly traditions of the beginning of the century (the traditions of Futurism,
Constructivism), in connection with which the journal frequently publishes (often
– for the first time) works by Kruchenykh, Gnedov, Ender and so on”.67
For Nikonova, poetic devices of the historical avant-garde, such as the trans-
rational language zaum’, were undeniably and quite naturally part of her own
poetic repertoire. According to Tatiana Nikolskaya, nearly all types of zaum’ listed
in Kruchenykh’s Deklaratsiia zaumnogo iazyka (Declaration of the Zaum’-Lan-
61 “Сохранить нить поэтического авангарда”. Transponans No. 7, p. 10.

62 The poetic technique of ‘shift’, or dislocation of textual material.
63 Ibid., p. 10: “полистилистика (вольный размер Хлебникова, сдвиг Гнедова и Крученых
– начало).” Both manifestos were republished in Kukui: “Laboratoriia avangarda: Zhurnal Tran-
sponans” [Laboratory of the Avant-Garde: The Journal Transponans], pp. 236–237.
64 Nikonova stated: “Unsere Publikation [Transponans] konnte auf die frühe Avantgarde zu-
rückgeführt werden”. Nikonova: “Beim Versand beschädigt: Mail Art in der UdSSR”, p. 10.
65 The Manifest OBERIU first appeared in the periodical Afishi Doma pechati 2 (1928), pp. 11–13.
It has been reprinted, for example, in Dzhimbinov, ed.: Literaturnye manifesty ot simvolizma do
nashikh dnei [Literary manifestos from Symbolism to Our Days], pp. 474–480.
66 Transponans No. 16, pp. 15–28: “Vmesto manifesta.” Republished in Kukui: “Laboratoriia
avangarda: Zhurnal Transponans” [Laboratory of the Avant-Garde: The Journal Transponans],
pp. 238–243.
67 “Хочется особо подчеркнуть фундаментальность транс-авторов, их опору
на поэтические и живописные традиции начала века (традиции футуризма,
конструктивизма), в связи с чем журнал часто публикует (нередко – впервые)
произведения Крученых, Гнедова, Эндера и т. д.” Ibid., p. 20, republished in Kukui: “Lab-
oratoriia avangarda: Zhurnal Transponans” [Laboratory of the Avant-Garde: The Journal Trans
ponans], p. 240.
guage, 1921) can be found in the poems of Nikonova and the Transfurists.68 Every
appropriated poetic technique, though, served merely as a starting point for the
development of new and idiosyncratic techniques. Russian Futurism, thus, was
not the only inspiration for Nikonova’s poetics; also, she insisted on avoiding the
oversimplification of the historical avant-garde, stating that
Futurism was ONE OF MANY interesting trends (which very often had opposite character-
istics), and one cannot christen by its name EVERYTHING that has happened at the turn of
the century, and one cannot relate all of the tremendous work that has been done at that
time to the name of the unique and fairly mild Khlebnikov.69
Despite Nikonova’s downplaying of the influence of Russian Futurism on her

work, traces are visible throughout her work. Several of her poems were dedi-
cated to Russian Futurists, namely the Ego-Futurists Igor Severyanin70 and Vas-
ilisk Gnedov,71 the Cubo-Futurists Aleksei Kruchenykh72 and David Burliuk,73 or
Aleksandr Tufanov;74 epigraphs include quotations from a wide range of writers,
for instance by Ivan Ignatyev, David Burliuk and Velimir Khlebnikov, among
others.75
In the poem “Canon”, which is dedicated to Burliuk, Nikonova rather obvi-
ously imitates Ilya Zdanevich’s polyphonic writing and what she elsewhere calls
Zdanevich’s “ethnographic inflection”,76 which is a characteristic trait of his don-
key-themed absurdist dramas Asel naprokat (Donkey for Hire, 1919)77 and zgA
IAkaby (As if Zga, 1920), whose deliberately misspelled donkey reappears here:
68 Transponans No. 15, p. 122. For Kruchenykh’s Declaration of the Zaum’-Language, see Lawton
and Eagle, eds.: Russian Futurism Through its Manifestoes, 1912–1928, pp. 182–183.
69 Transponans No. 12, p. 59: “Футуризм – ОДНО ИЗ МНОГИХ интереснейших течений
(очень часто противоположных по характеристике), и нельзя окрещивать его именем
ВСЕ случившееся на рубеже веков, так же, как и связывать всю проделанную тогда
громадную работу с именем одного-единственного весьма умеренного Хлебникова.”
70 Nikonova: Stikhovoreniia netto [Net Poems], p. 41.
71 See Brooks: “On One Ancestor”, p. 217.
72 Transponans No. 9, p. 62. Reprinted in Buka [pseud. of Khardzhiev]: Kruchenykhiada, p. 10. A
German translation of a slightly different version of this poem can also be found in Nikonova and
Segay: TRANSPONANCE TRANSSFURISMUS [sic] oder kaaba der abstraktion, p. 4.
74 Transponans No. 31, s. p.
76 Nikonova: “Kaaba abstraktsii: Zaum’ i abstraktsiia – dva metoda iz 200 vozmozhnykh” [Kaaba
of Abstraction: Zaum’ and Abstraction – Two of 200 Possible Methods], p. 26: “этнографическим
оттенком (Зданевич Зга якабы)”.
77 The Russian word ‘osel’ (donkey) is mispelled as ‘asel’, imitating a fake foreign accent.
412 Tim Klähn
КАНОН
Давиду Бурлюку
Асел орал брикет

[…]
198478
CANON
for David Burliuk
The donkey bawled a briquette

[…]
1984
Further examples of rather apparent references to Futurist writers and works can
be found in the poem “Mir familii” (The World of Names), where the names of
several Futurists are being deformed, for example “Zdadaneneviviiaiachch /
Kruruchechenynykhynkhykhr / Khlekhlebliblibnibnikovovtsen / Kharardzhid-
zhidzhieverabukafeofafv […]”,79 or the poem “TTT / Three / in Three / 1968–
1970”,80 which seems to be an homage to the Futurist book Troe (Three, 1913)
by Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh and Elena Guro; Malevich’s illustration for the cover
of that book, incidentally, contained a large inverted comma, which Nikonova
imitated in the layout of one of her texts in the journal Transponans,81 echoes of
which can also be found in the visual poem that is printed on the back cover of
Nikonova’s book Phonetic Waves (1992).
78 Nikonova: Iu: Izbrannye linearnye polifonicheskie koordinal’nye vakuumnye stikhi i arkhitek-

stury [Iu: Selected Linear Polyphonic Coordinal Vacuum Poems and Architextures], p. 128. On
p. 129, there is Nikonova’s rearrangement of this poem as a ‘vector poem’. For an earlier version,
see Transponans No. 23, p. 78.
79 Transponans No. 34, s.p. Khardzhiev’s name here is interspersed with his pseudonym Feofan
Buka.
80 Nikonova: Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e (Kil’skaia baza): Izbrannye stikhi 1958–1970 g.g. plius pozdneishie
varianty [Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e (Kiel Basis): Selected Poems 1958–1970 Plus Latest Variants], p. 68:
“ТТТ / Трое / в Трое / 1968–1970”.
In one of Nikonova’s longer prose ‘pliugms’, she presents numerous vari-

ations on linguistic material taken from Pushkin’s “Ia pomniu chudnoe mgno-
ven’e” (“I remember a wonderful moment”) as well as two foundational Futurist
zaum’-texts “O zasmeites’ smekhachi” (“Oh, you laughing laugherers”) by Khleb-
nikov and “Dyr bul shchyl” (which is untranslatable) by Kruchenykh, seemingly
affirming that, for Nikonova, neither Pushkin nor the Futurists are to be thrown
overboard from the “Ship of Modernity”.82
Furthermore, an at first glance rather inconspicuous poem turns out to allude
to texts by the Acmeist Mandelstam and the Futurist Kruchenykh:
как бы цитату
как бы цикаду
как бы цикуту
1970–200283
sort of a quotation
sort of a cicada
sort of a hemlock
1970–2002
Here, the word ‘tsikuta’ (hemlock) evokes Kruchenykh’s Ballady o iade Kormo-
rane (Ballads of the Poison Cormoran, 1920),84 in which ‘tsikuta’ figures promi-
nently. In a sound recording, Kruchenykh indulges in the sonorities of this word,
and it also serves as an example in his essay Sdvigologiia russkogo stikha (Shift-
ology of the Russian Verse, 1923).85 In Nikonova’s poem, ‘tsikuta’ is also linked to
the allusion to Osip Mandelstam’s “Tsitata – tsikada.” (“A quotation is a cicada”,
from his essay, Razgovor o Dante (Conversation on Dante, 1933), which is liter-
ally bursting with alliteration and assonance. In context, Mandelstam writes: “A
quotation is not an excerpt. A quotation is a cicada. It is part of its nature never
to quiet down. Once having got hold of the air, it does not release it”.86 Nikonova,
thus, seems to underline the power and corrosive qualities of quotations which
82 From a letter by Nikonova to Khardzhiev, in Khardzhiev: Pis’ma v Sigeisk [Letters to Sigeisk],

p. 261. For a discussion of Nikonova’s “pliugms” see Janecek: Sight and Sound Entwined: Studies
of the New Russian Poetry, pp. 110–124.
83 Nikonova: Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e (Kil’skaia baza) [Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e (Kiel Basis)], p. 168.
84 Kruchenykh: Stikhotvoreniia, poemy, romany, opera [Poems, Narrative Poems, Novels, Opera],
p. 142–145.
85 Kruchenykh: Sdvigologiia russkogo stikha [Shiftology of the Russian Verse], p. 15.
86 Mandelstam: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam, p. 108.
414 Tim Klähn
“never quiet down”, but also the inherent danger (via Socrates and Mandelstam)
to the author of a forbidden discourse, such as Mandelstam’s, Kruchenykh’s, and
her own.
Veshchi (Things, 1970–2001)87 belongs to the conceptualist Table-Poems
that Nikonova was writing in the 1970s.88 It consists of a plate with the columns
“Things”, “Size”, and “Price in Roubles” and several rows listing everyday
objects, such as “shampoo”, “winter boots”, and “pants (2 pairs)”, together with
prices and sizes, if applicable. This early example of Russian conceptualist poetry
also harks back to Russian Futurism, namely to the laundry bill which Kruche-
nykh quotes in his Tainye poroki akademikov (Secret Vices of the Academicians,
1916 [recte 1915]), which claimed that its style was superior to that of Pushkin’s
Evgeny Onegin.89 Whilst Kruchenykh used his laundry bill merely as a one-time
insult, and never saw it as a starting point for a new kind of poetry, Nikonova
appropriated this poetic device and transformed it, thoroughly developing it
further in her many Table-Poems.
A major influence on Nikonova was the work of Vasilisk Gnedov. He inspired
several new poetic techniques; for example, his ‘word-lines’ (‘slovostroki’)
without any spaces between the letters seemed to have inspired Nikonova’s
‘hyperboloids’,90 and his book Smert’ iskusstvu (Death to Art, 1913) consolidated
the notion that poems could consist only of single lines, words, syllables or
letters. The second-to-last poem in Death to Art, for example, which consisted
only of the Russian letter Ю (Iu), was appropriated by Nikonova as the title of
one of her books,91 and one of her visual poems depicts a letter Ю (Iu) inside the
round segment of another, larger-size letter ‘Iu’.92 For Nikonova, though, Gnedov
is mostly linked to what she calls ‘platform’ and ‘vacuum poetry’:
87 Nikonova: Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e (Kil’skaia baza) [Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e (Kiel Basis)], p. 174.

88 On Nikonova’s conceptualist poems, see Janecek: “Conceptualism in the Work of Sergej Sigej
and Rea Nikonova”, pp. 477–481.
89 “Если сравнить эти строки с 8-ю строчками из “Онегина” […] то окажется: стиль их
выше Пушкинского!” (“If we compare those lines with the eight lines from ‘Onegin’ [...] it turns
out: their style is superior to Pushkin’s!”) Kruchenykh: Apokalipsis v russkoi literature. Chort i
rechetvortsy. Tainye poroki akademikov. Slovo, kak takovoe. Deklaratsii [The Apocalypse in Rus-
sian Literature. The Devil and the Wordmakers. Secret Vices of the Academicians. Word as Such.
Declarations], p. 32.
90 See Brooks: “On One Ancestor”, p. 216.
91 Nikonova: Iu: Izbrannye linearnye polifonicheskie koordinal’nye vakuumnye stikhi i arkhitek-
stury [Iu: Selected Linear Polyphonic Coordinal Vacuum Poems and Architextures].
92 Transponans No. 7, p. 35 (annotations on p. 18).
In Russian literature, Vasilisk Gnedov, who in 1913 wrote the vacuum ‘Poem of the End’,
first personified the platform and thereby electrified literature, lighting the white light of
emptiness in the blackness of its print. […] Thus Gnedov at the very start of the century
understood that literature is more closely than anything connected to its own absence.93
The unlimited possibilities of empty pages and absences of text were thoroughly
explored by Nikonova. One of her poems, for example, consists of an empty page
and the line “And this is an empty sheet” (1968);94 Transponans No. 13 is wholly
devoted to literatura i vacuum (literature and vacuum);95 the same theme was
also a key element of her all-encompassing compendium, Sistema (The System,
1980ff.);96 moreover, her first official publication was a collection of ‘vacuum
poetry’.97 The performative aspect of Gnedov’s ‘reading’ of the “Poem of the End”
was also a starting point for Nikonova’s development of gesture poems and per-
formances.
A direct equivalent to Gnedov’s Poem of the End is Malevich’s Black Square,
which resembles, according to Nikonova, the possibility of “all words of all
time”98 written over each other, an idea that she realized in her poem, “Tran-
sponirovanie kartiny K. Malevicha v chernyi bespauznyi stikh” (Transposition of
K. Malevich’s Painting into a Black Poem without Pauses, 1983), which consists of
a square of type-written words typed over one another.99
Appropriately enough, one of Nikonova’s contributions to her mail art journal
Double was a text about how to overcome Malevich’s influence (No. 3). The first
issue of this journal also had a reproduction of Kruchenykh’s zaum’-poem “Dyr
93 “В русской литературе Василиск Гнедов, в 1913 году написавший вакуумную ‘Поэму
конца’, первым персонифицировал платформу и этим как бы электрифицировал
литературу, зажег в ее шрифтовой черноте белый свет пустоты […] Таким образом Гнедов
еще на заре века понял, что теснее всего литература связана именно с собственным
отсутствием.” Nikonova: “Slovo – lishnee kak takovoe” [The Word – Superfluous as Such],
p. 83. Gnedov’s “Poem of the End” consisted, as mentioned before, of only its title and an empty
page. For more detailed discussions of vacuum poetry and Nikonova’s concept of the ‘platforma’,
see Greve: “Ry Nikonova: Poeziia mezhdu ‘pustoi’ stranitsei i voploshchiushchimsia tekstom”
[Rea Nikonova: Poetry Between ‘Empty’ Page and Incarnating Text] and Greve: “‘Stranitsa – eto
platforma’: Inter’viu s Ry Nikonovoi” [“The Page is a Platform”: Interview with Rea Nikonova].
94 “А это чистый лист”. Nikonova: Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e (Kil’skaia baza) [Glav-stikh-lek-syr’e
(Kiel Basis)], p. 72.
95 See Transponans No. 13, p. 5ff.
96 See Nikonova: “Ekologiia pauzy.” [Ecology of the Pause], p. 182.
97 Nikonova: Epigraf k pustote: Vakuumnaia poeziia [Epigraph to Emptiness: Vacuum Poetry].
98 Nikonova: “Slovo – lishnee kak takovoe” [The Word – Superfluous as Such], p. 82.
99 Reprinted in Greve: Writing and the ‘Subject’, p. 235. See also Nikonova: “Ekologiia pauzy”
[Ecology of the Pause], pp. 176–187.
416 Tim Klähn
bul shchyl” in his handwriting on its title page, which clearly indicated to the
international audience of this journal the importance of the Russian Futur-
ist legacy for its editor.100 Double also featured a collage by Nikonova with the
Cyrillic letters “АД” (“AD”, Russian for ‘Hell’) (No. 6), evoking Khlebnikov’s and
Kruchenykh’s Igra v adu (A Game in Hell).
Countering negative reception
Nikonova and the Transfurists explicated their understanding of the rôle of Futur-
ism in their works in a series of essays and manifestos that directly reacted to
attacks on Transfurism by fellow samizdat writers. In 1985, several publications
in samizdat journals accused Transfurism of being merely a cheap imitation of
Russian Futurism. One of those criticisms was voiced in Boris Ostanin and Alek-
sandr Kobak’s review, Arkhiv retro-futurizma (Archive of retro-Futurism),101 in
the journal Chasy [Clock]; another was Viktor Krivulin’s dismissal of Transfurism
in an interview in Mitin Zhurnal [Mitia’s Journal] as an “untimely” “intellectual
circus” and sheer “idiocy”; unconvincingly, Krivulin, a respected poet writing
in the Acmeist tradition, attempted to prove his point by vaguely referring to
“Western gallery owners” who, he said, regarded Transfurist works as ‘regional
art’ that was “outdated and now only interesting because it’s not well done.”102
The Transfurists reacted, tongue-in-cheek, with the manifesto, Tret’ia posh-
chechina obshchestvennomu vkusu (Third Slap in the Face of Public Taste, 1986),
signed by Nikonova, Konstriktor and Segay,103 which appropriates the title of the
well-known Futurist manifesto by Burliuk, Kruchenykh, Mayakovsky and Khleb
100 Segay’s contribution to this issue, incidentally, is a palimpsest overwriting a text by Janecek

about zaum’.
101 Fomin and Chudinovskaia: “Arkhiv retro-futurizma: Obzor zhurnala Transponans N 25)”
[Archive of Retro-Futurism: Review of the Journal Transponans No. 25] Chasy [Clock] 54 (1985),
reprinted as Ostanin, Boris, and Aleksandr Kobak: “Neonovyi archiv, ili Torzhestvo retro-futuriz-
ma: Obzor zhurnala ‘Transponans’ No 25” [Neo-New Archive, or The Triumph of Retro-Futurism:
Review of the Journal “Transponans” No. 25].
102 “Это устарело и сейчас интересно только потому, что плохо сделано (т.е. как
‘региональное искусство’).” Krivulin: “Interv’iu s Viktorym Krivulinym” [Interview with Viktor
Krivulin]. Throughout the interview, Krivulin emphasizes his dislike of any sort of “experiments”
in art and attacks everything from the Bauhaus to Transfurism. For a more detailed discussion of
the polemic exchange, see Kukui: “‘Mania Fest’: Ideologemy transfurizma” [“Mania Fest”: Ideol-
ogemes of Transfurism], pp. 472ff.
103 Transponans No. 34, s.p., republished in Kukui: “Laboratoriia avangarda: Zhurnal Transpo-
nans” [Laboratory of the Avant-Garde: The Journal Transponans], pp. 244–245.
nikov.104 The Transfurists cleverly appropriate several parts of the manifesto,

which was directed against “all those Maxim Gorkys, Kuprins, Bloks, Sologubs,
Remizovs […]”105 (i.e., the ‘old guard’), now, instead, attacking Krivulin et al.:
All those lisping and saussuring Stratanovskys / Ignatovs / Krivulins / Dragomoshchenkos /

Bartovs and Rubinshteins / are homunculi / feeding / on leftovers / that fell from the tables /
of acmeism-conceptualism […] they assert (what а terrible accusation) / that we are futurists
– the last of them / (retro-futurists) and that we haven’t said anything new.106
To prove this accusation wrong, the Transfurists repeated a central point of the
Futurist manifesto about “the poet’s rights”, verbatim – “To enlarge the scope of
the poet’s vocabulary with arbitrary and derivative words” – and added examples
of their new contributions to the poet’s vocabulary: “gestures / squeals / actions /
tableaux / slides / formulas / smells / collages and so on”.107 Another phrase that
is appropriated from the Futurist manifesto, the well-known “To stand on the
rock of the word ‘we’ amidst the sea of boos and outrage”,108 is just minimally
changed, deforming the Russian word ‘my’ (we) to make it a nonsensical zaum’-
word, ‘myr’, that itself, incidentally, is borrowed from a deliberately misspelled
text by Daniil Kharms, a central member of the ‘last’ Russian avant-garde group
OBERIU.109 While “Third Slap in the Face of Public Taste” is, first of all, a defiant
gesture against their critics, the Transfurists also demonstrate that repetition
and/or appropriation can modify the repeated or appropriated original.
In her comments on Ostanin and Kobak’s “Archive of Retro-Futurism”,
Nikonova verbalizes her understanding of the Transfurists’ interest in the avant-
garde:
104 The Futurist manifesto was published twice, once as a pamphlet, once as a book, in 1912
and 1913.
105 “Всем этим Максимам Горьким, Куприным, Блокам, Сологубам, Ремизовым […]”.
Burliuk et al.: Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu [A Slap in the Face of Public Taste], p. 4.
106 “Все эти сюсюкающие и соссюрюкающие Стратановские / Игнатовы / Седаковы /
Кривулины/ Драгомощенко / Бартовы и Рубинштейны / Гомункулусы / питающиеся /
объедками / падающими со столов / акмеизма-концептуализма / […] / утверждают /
(какое грозное обвинение) / что мы футуристы – последние из них / (ретро-футуристы) /
и что мы не сказали ничего нового.” Transponans No. 34, s.p.
107 Ibid.: “Разве были оправданы в русской литературе наши приказания чтить
права поэтов: / на увеличение поэтического словаря в его объеме произвольными / и
производными / словами / жестами / визгами / акциями / табло / слайдами / формулами /
запахами / коллажами и т.д.”
108 “Стоять на глыбе слова ‘мы’ среди моря свиста и негодования.” Burliuk et al.: Posh-
chechina obshchestvennomu vkusu [A Slap in the Face of Public Taste], p. 4.
109 Kharms: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Tom 2 [Complete Works. Vol. 2], pp. 307–309.
418 Tim Klähn
Why are traditionalists given credit for their knowledge of Pushkin’s work, and the ability
to write from left to right is not called a quotation, whereas the Transfurists’ knowledge of
the work of Vasilisk Gnedov is – a crime, the writing of a text not only from left to right – a
quote?110
Furthermore, Nikonova insists:
We are not only familiar with the work of the early Futurists, but we even dragged some
of them into the light, unearthed and lifted up authors who were not known to anyone,
thereby creating a situation where the Futurists did not impose their authority on us, but
we imposed ours on them as followers, students and propagators. Therefore, we are not
looking for ideas, but for the confirmation of our ideas – that’s two different things.111
In a polemical essay directed against the samizdat journal, Obvodnyi kanal

(Sewer), in which the Transfurists were accused of “secondariness”, Nikonova
argues: “yes, we are trying to continue the (artificially) interrupted [tradition],
and not the beaten track full of potholes”;112 but, according to Nikonova, the
trans-poets were striving to integrate “ALL”113 literary and artistic paths. Mention-
ing Zdanevich, Chicherin, Gnedov, Kruchenykh, Tufanov, Vaginov, and Teren-
tyev, Nikonova asserts that “those paths, although one has heard of them, have
not been used, so where is here any ‘secondariness’.”114
Consistently, Nikonova embarked on an ambitious project that she callеd
‘sistema’ (system), in which she attempted to catalogue, define, and exemplify
literally every possible literary and artistic device ever used or yet to be invented
– a project that inevitably remained unfinished. “That the undertaking is ridicu-
lous, I feel more than anyone else”,115 was Nikonova’s answer to Prigov’s doubts
110 “Почему знание традиционалистами творчества Пушкина ставится им в заслугу,

а умение писать слева направо не называется цитатностью, а знание трансфуристами
творчества Василиска Гнедова – криминал, запись текста не только слева направо –
цитата?” Transponans No. 32/33, s.p.
111 Ibid.: “Мы не только знакомы с творчеством ранних футуристов, но и некоторых
из них сами вытащили на белый свет, отрыли и вознесли никому известных авторов,
создавая тем самым ситуацию, когда не футуристы нас, а мы их прикрыли авторитетом
последователей, учеников и пропагандистов. Следовательно, мы ищем не идеи, а
подтверждение своим идеям – это разные вещи.”
112 Transponans No. 23, 158: “да, мы пытаемся продолжить прерванную (искусственно)
[традицию], а не изъеженную до дыр дорогу”.
113 Ibid.: “пропагируя интеграцию ВСЕХ путей”.
114 Ibid.: “Ведь эти пути, хоть и слышали о них, нехоженые, так какая уж тут
‘вторичность’.”
115 “Что затея смешна, я чувствую более, чем кто-нибудь другой.” Transponans No. 12,
p. 56.
about the feasibility of such a system; nonetheless, her work on the “system”
grew steadily, and parts of it were published in Transponans (e.g., in Nos. 10 and
11). Transponans also had recurring subsections devoted to Nikonova’s analyses
of texts by other contributors, culminating in a lengthy supplement to Transpon-
ans No. 19, in which she analysed all texts published in Transponans from issue
No. 1 to issue No. 19, dutifully listing every poetic device used in each text.116 She
explains in a letter to Prigov:
The essence of the System lies – and I beg you to understand me correctly – just in the fact
that it integrates (seeks to combine) all known (and often also unknown) artistic levels,
styles, methods, rationales, etc. on an equal basis, not giving preference to anything and
even calling for a pluralism of styles.117
This, too, can be said of Nikonova’s literary output. Despite the focus here on the
impact of Russian Futurism on Nikonova’s work, a multitude of different literary
movements and styles have influenced her work, and she sought to transform
literally everything into something new.
Nikonova’s understanding of the significance of Russian Futurism for her
own work is expressed in its most concise form in the Manifest nomer tri (Man-
ifesto Number Three, 1983), which was signed by Nikonova, Konstriktor, and
Segay and synthesizes all of the above, asserting that “the theory of zaum’, devel-
oped by Tiflis avant-gardists in 1916-[1]920, is the basis of the trans poets’ poetic
techniques”,118 and that, through “transposition”119 and further developing the
“achievements of all poetic schools and movements, whenever they existed and
wherever they exist”,120 “poetry is transformed by us decisively and merciless-
ly”,121 not limited to “everything created before”,122 but also including “that which
is not created yet.”123
116 Similarly, in her English-language publication Phonetic Waves, a chronologically ordered sec-

tion called “Devices Used in my Literary Production” substituted regular autobiographical notes.
117 Ibid., p. 43: “Суть Системы – и я очень прошу правильно меня понять – как раз в том,
что она объединяет (стремится объединить) все известные нам (а часто и неизвестные)
художественные уровни, стили, методы, обоснования и т. д. на равноправных началах,
не отдавая предпочтения ничему и даже призывая к плюрализму стилей”.
118 Transponans No. 18, p. 17: “основу поэтехники транс-поэтов составляет теория
заумной поэзии, разработанная тифлисскими авангардистами в 1916-[1]920 годах.”
119 Ibid.: “транспонирование”.
120 Ibid.: “достижений всех поэтических школ и направлений когда-либо
существовавших и где-либо существующих “.
121 Ibid.: “поэзия преображена нами решительно и беспощадно”.
122 Ibid.: “не просто […] все созданное до них”.
123 Ibid.: “и такое что еще не создано.”
420 Tim Klähn
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Avant-Garde: The Journal Transponans] Russian Literature 59:2–4 (15 February – 15 May
2006): 225–259.
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Nonsense Observations on Sheer Indecencies] Russian Literature 65:1–3 (1 January –
1 April 2009): 395–419.
422 Tim Klähn
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Russian Literature 67:3–4 (15 April – 15 May 2010): 469–476.
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Language of the Russian Avant-Garde] München: Gesellschaft zur Förderung slawistischer
Studien; Sagner, 2010. [Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Sonderband 77.]
Kukui, Il’ia [Kukuj, Ilja], ed.: “Zhurnal teorii i praktiki ‘Transponans’: Kommentirovannoe
elektronnoe izdanie. Work in Progress.” [Journal of Theory and Practice “Transponans”:
Annotated Electronic Edition. Work in Progress] Ann Komaromi, ed.: Project for the Study
of Dissidence and Samizdat. Toronto: University of Toronto Libraries, 2014–2015. http://
samizdatcollections.library.utoronto.ca/ (consulted 31/07/2014).
Lawton, Anna, and Herbert Eagle, eds.: Russian Futurism Through its Manifestoes, 1912–1928.
Ithaca/NY: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Lehmann, Gudrun: “Die Transpositionskunst von Ry Nikonova und Sergej Sigej.” Russian
Literature 59:2–4 (15 February–15 May 2006): 379–397.
Mandel’shtam, Osip [Mandelstam, Osip]: Selected Poems. Translated by Clarence Brown and W.
S. Merwin. New York: New York Review of Books, 2004.
Nazarenko, Tat’iana: “Writing Poetry without Words: Pictographic Poems by Rea Nikonova and
Sergej Sigej.” Russian Literature 59:2–4 (15 February–15 May 2006). 285–315.
Nikonova, Ry [Nikonova, Rea; pseud. of Tarshis, Anna A.]: Protsess nad shotlandtsem. [The Trial
of the Scotsman] Trento: Meotida, 1989.
—: “Arkhitekstura.” [Architexture] Labirint/Ekstsentr [Labyrinth/Eccentricity] 1 (1991): 25–26.
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Abstraction: Zaum’ and Abstraction – Two of 200 Possible Methods] Serge Segay, ed.:
Literatura posle zhivopisi. [Literature After Painting] Eisk: Eiskii istoriko-kraevedcheskii
muzei, 1990. 20–32.
—: Phonetic Waves. Orillia, Ont.: ASFi, 1992.
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symbioz/9/kostyliz.htm (consulted 31/07/2014).
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—: “Beim Versand beschädigt: Mail Art in der UdSSR.” Via Regia. Blätter für internationale
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Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi muzei V. Sidura, 1997.
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Tochka zreniia: Vizual’naia poeziia, 90-e gody. [Point of View: Visual Poetry in the 1990s]
Kaliningrad-Kenigsberg: Simplitsii, 1998. 79–83.
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Ediciones del Hebreo Errante, 2001.
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Argo-Risk; Tver’: Kolonna, 2001.
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—: Nach zwanzig Minuten: Winzige Gedichte. [Itzehoe]: Futura Black, 2004
—: Matters of Fact. Kiel: Russian Kieler Edition, 2005.
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Anthology] Moskva: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005. 392–404.
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269–282.
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Antologiia noveishei russkoi poezii u goluboi laguny. Tom 5B. / The Blue Lagoon Anthology
of Modern Russian Poetry. Volume 5B. Newtonville/MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1986.
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[Meotida], 1989.
Nikonova, Ry [Nikonova, Rea; pseud. of Tarshis, Anna A.], and Serge Segay [pseud. of Sergei
Sigov], eds.: Transponans. [s.l: s.n.], 1979–1987.
Ostanin, Boris, and Aleksandr Kobak: “Neonovyi archiv, ili Torzhestvo retro-futurizma: Obzor
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424 Tim Klähn
raduga: Literaturno-kriticheskie stat’i 1980-kh godov. [Lightening and Rainbow: Literary-

Critical Essays of the 1980s] Sankt-Peterburg: Novikov, 2003. 87–108.
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eS_2010-2011_(VIII).pdf (consulted 31/07/2014).
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arts/na_dne-34-art-16.html (consulted 31/07/2014).
Shteiner, Evgenii: “Kartiny iz pis’mennykh znakov: Zametki o vizual’noi poezii.” [Pictures
out of Written Signs: Notes on Visual Poetry] Mikhail Romm, ed.: Indeks: Al’manakh po
materialam rukopisnykh zhurnalov. Moskva: Efa, 1990. 295–321.
Zhumati, Tat’iana Pavlovna: “‘Uktusskaia shkola’ (1965–1974): K istorii ural’skogo
andegraunda.” [“The Uktus School” (1965–1974): Towards a History of the Ural
Underground] Izvestiia Ural’skogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, ser. 2. Gumanitarnye
nauki [Bulletin of the Ural State University. Series 2. Humanities] 13 (2005): 125–127.
Archival sources
Nikonova, Ry [Nikonova, Rea; pseud. of Tarshis, Anna A.], ed.: Double Nos. 1–3, 5–7,
1991–1999. The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami/FL, USA.
Nikonova, Ry [Nikonova, Rea; pseud. of Anna A. Tarshis], and Sergei Sigei [Segay, Serge; pseud.
of Sergei V. Sigov], eds.: Transponans, 1979–1987. Research Centre for East European
Studies (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa), University of Bremen, Germany. F.30.56 (Al’chuk), F.
37 (Erl’), F. 64 (Aleksandrov), F. 66 (MANI), F. 97 (Sigov and Tarshis).124
Nikonova, Ry [Nikonova, Rea; pseud. of Anna A. Tarshis], and Sergei Sigei [Segay, Serge; pseud.
of Sergei V. Sigov], eds.: Transponans Nos. 1–8, 10, 12–17, 19–27, and 29–36; Supplement
to No. 19; Literary Supplement: Feofan Buka: Kruchenykhiada, 1979–1987. The Sackner
Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami/FL, USA.
Sigei, Sergei [Segay, Serge; pseud. of Sergei V. Sigov]: Chitantologiia zaumi 1910 1972.
[Readology of Zaum 1910–1972] The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami/
FL, USA.
124 For an annotated electronic edition of the University of Bremen’s copies of Transponans,

prepared by Ann Komaromi and Il’ia Kukui, see Kukui, ed.: “Zhurnal teorii i praktiki ‘Transpon-
ans’: Kommentirovannoe elektronnoe izdanie. Work in Progress” [Journal of Theory and Practice
“Transponans”: Annotated Electronic Edition. Work in Progress].
Section 2: Caricatures and Satires of Futurism
in the Contemporary Press
Matteo D’Ambrosio
Matilde Serao’s Battle with the Futurists
in Naples
On 20 April 1910, a Futurist serata took place at the Teatro Mercadante in Naples.1
The painter Umberto Boccioni recalled the event in a letter to Gino Severini as
“the battle of Naples.”2 Also F.T. Marinetti remembered it as one of the first Futur-
ist “battles” in his Guerra sola igiene del mondo (War, the Sole Cleanser of the
World, 1915).3 Initially, the event was scheduled to take place elsewhere, but the
Chief of Police did not grant the necessary authorization, as he was worried about
possible unrest and “attacks on public morality”.
Subsequently, the journalist and author Matilde Serao intervened in a con-
tentious debate about the planned performance, approving of the superinten-
dent’s decision and saying that she was convinced that “the event would not be
providing any benefit to art or give luster to poetry.”4 She concluded: “Whatever
may come, we will not grant any space to Marinetti, his companions and the poets
of Futurism.” Nonetheless, Il giorno, the daily newspaper directed by Matilde
Serao, did in the end publish a report on the event, just like many others, who
generally adopted a tone of disapproval or derision. The most notable contribu-
tions denounced the “concubinage of the world of letters with politics”, deplored
the political views expressed in the manifesto launched on the occasion of the
general election in March 19095 and compared Marinetti’s Foundation and Man-
ifesto of Futurism (1909) to the Communist Manifesto (1848) by Marx and Engels.
As the poet Libero Altomare, one of the Futurist artists participating in the
serata, recalled in his memoirs, from the mezzanine floor, where Serao and some
of her friends were sitting, an orange appears to have been launched at Marinetti,
who hastened to lift it up from the stage floor, pealed it and savoured the flesh
at ease, causing general hilarity in the theatre.6 The leader of the Futurist move-
ment did not fail to recall the incident a few years later: “I managed to catch an
orange that had been thrown at me. I peeled it as calm as could be and proceeded
1 See the documentation in D’Ambrosio: Nuove verità crudeli, pp. 155–239.

2 Drudi Gambillo and Fiori: Archivi del futurismo. Vol.1. p. 232.
3 “Futurism’s First Battles”, Critical Writings, p. 154.
4 Serao: “Il futurismo in ritirata”, p. 3.
5 The first Futurist political manifesto, Elettori futuristi!, was distributed as a small flier and a
large poster during the General Elections of 7 and 14 March 1909. See Critical Writings, pp. 49–50.
6 Altomare: Incontri con Marinetti e il futurismo, p. 28.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0021
428 Matteo D’Ambrosio
to eat it slowly, segment by segment.”7 The launch of this “first bullet”, recalled
Altomare, was soon followed by many other “vegetarian compliments”.8
The local press concerned itself several times with the episode, including
Monsignor Perrelli, under the title “L’arancia del futurismo” (The Orange of Futur-
ism). One of the cartoons that appeared in the satirical periodical, signed “Senio”
(which was the pseudonym of the artist Giuseppe Sciti), portrays Serao in con-
versation with Boccioni. The caricature is headed by the following short phrase,
taken from a “famous manifesto”: “Sometimes we see a horse that is passing on
the cheek of the person with whom we are talking.” This is clearly a reference to
the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting, launched on 11 April 1910.9 Serao,
who flaunts a wide-brimmed hat topped by a cock, looks at Boccioni in bewilder-
ment and asks in the caption: “So, this is what you see in my face?” To which the
slender and elegantly dressed painter Boccioni, wearing a frock coat and holding
a walking stick, replies, with an unmistakable and rather impolite reference to
the interlocutor’s ample girth: “With you it’s a different matter: here one sees the
passing of … a cow!”
Serao, who was one of the most important people on the Neapolitan cultural
scene10 and wife of the equally influential journalist and writer Edward Scarfoglio,
was never loved by avant-garde artists in Naples.11 The Futurist Francesco Cangi-
ullo, in his pamphlet entitled Non c’è: Roberto Bracco e Matilde Serao (Not There:
Roberto Bracco and Matilde Serao, 1910), describes his repeated and unsuccess-
ful attempts to obtain from the director of Il giorno and the paper’s theatre critics
a letter of recommendation for a staging of a his already printed three-act farce,
Non c’è (Not There, 1909). Cangiullo took revenge for this lack of support in a free-
word poem of 1914, Piedigrotta (printed 1916), by adding Serao to the impromptu
performers of popular music and giving her as an instrument a cooking pot.
An article of 1914 in Eco della cultura, “Pillacchere napoletane: La spatan-
fiona Matilde Serao (Muckrakings from Naples: Podgy Missus Serao), Annunzio
7 Marinetti: “Futurism’s First Battles”, Critical Writings, p. 154.

8 “Da un palchetto di secondo ordine (sembra che fosse occupato da Matilde Serao e da alcuni
suoi amici) parti il primo proiettile, una arancia, che sfiorò appena il palcoscenico. E poiché
ogni esempio è contagioso, altri omaggi vegetali ci pervennero dalla balconata e da altri posti.”
Altomare: Incontri con Marinetti e il futurismo, p. 30.
9 The exact wording is “E, talvolta, sulla guancia della persona con cui parliamo nella via noi
vediamo il cavallo che passa lontano.”
10 In 1926, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature which, however, was assigned
to Grazia Deledda.
11 Gian Pietro Lucini wrote a letter to Felice Cameroni from Naples, calling the two “disgusting
creatures.” See Lucini: Prose e canzoni amare, p. 437.
Matilde Serao’s Battle with the Futurists in Naples 429
Cervi demolished Serao’s latest novel, published in instalments in La lettura,

saying that its plot was modelled on Balzac and its style a facile but ineffective
imitation of D’Annunzio. Worse even, and thus provoking Marinetti’s anger,12 was
the fact in the months preceding the First World War she assumed a position that
was clearly supporting the Germans.
Bibliography
Altomare, Libero [Remo Mannoni]: Incontri con Marinetti e il futurismo. Roma: Corso, 1954.
[Anon.]: “La serata futurista.” Il giorno (Napoli), 21–22 April 1910. 5.
Drudi Gambillo, Maria , and Teresa Fiori, eds.: Archivi del futurismo. Vol. 1. Roma: De Luca,
1958.
Cangiullo, Francesco: “Non c’è”: Roberto Bracco e Matilde Serao. Napoli: Vitale, 1910.
—: Piedigrotta: Poema parolibero. Con una prefazione di F. T. Marinetti e il manifesto futurista
della declamazione dinamica e sinottica. Milano: Edizioni futuriste di “Poesia”, 1916.
Cervi, Annunzio: “Pillacchere napoletane: La spatanfiona Matilde Serao.” Eco della cultura
13–14 (15–31 August 1914): 53–57.
D’Ambrosio, Matteo: “La serata futurista al Teatro Mercadante.” M. D’Ambrosio: Nuove verità
crudeli: Origini e primi sviluppi del futurismo a Napoli. Napoli: Guida, 1990. 155–239.
Lardini, C. O. [Edoardo Nicolardi]: “L’arancia del futurismo.” Monsignor Perrelli 49 (23 April
1910): 1.
Lucini, Gian Pietro: Prose e canzoni amare. Firenze: Vallecchi, 1971.
and Giroux, 2006.
—: Guerra sola igiene del mondo. Milano: Edizioni futuriste di “Poesia”, 1915.
—: Taccuini 1915–1921. A cura di Alberto Bertoni. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987.
Senio [Giuseppe Sciti]: [La signora Serao.] Monsignor Perrelli 48 (21 April 1910): 3.
Serao, Matilde: “Il futurismo in ritirata.” Il giorno (Napoli), 11–12 April 1919. 3.
12 Marinetti: Taccuini, pp. 60 and 281.

Andrey Rossomakhin
The Ego-Kubo-Rayo-Donkey-Tail-Futurists:
About a Russian Cartoon of 1913
In the autumn of 1913, the journal Budil’nik (Alarm) published a curious carica-
ture by A. Melnikov depicting a group of artists getting ready for a stroll. 1913 can
be considered a key year in the history of Russian Futurism. The art movement
experienced an exponential growth of activity and expanded into all areas of art
and literature. Consequently, it also attracted the attention of many journalists
and became a centre of attention in the press. Apart from journalistic reports,
the newspapers printed a large number of cartoons. However, the vast majority
of critics, as well as the general public, were unable to make any clear distinc-
tion between the various groups and currents that acted under the label ‘Futur-
ists’, nor did they understand the differences between their aesthetic platforms.
A typical example of this incomprehension was a cultural report by Ilia Nakatov,
published on 2 August 1913 in the newspaper Stolichnaia molva (Capital Rumor):
Almost hoarse are the voices that advertise the Ego-Futurists, Neo-Futurists, Scientists,
Adamist-Acmeists etc.; they somersault in every possible way and strip naked for a “respect-
able audience”, excel in the invention of nonsense – one more grandiose than the other –
that makes the reader indifferent like a wall, ending up with not enticing anybody to enter
their colourful and exuberant futuristic show-booth.1
As one can see, the critic dismissively lumped together not only various innovative
poetic schools, but also the “Neo-Futurists” – that is a fictitious group invented
by a group of journalists, who issued a volume in Kazan that parodied Futurist
poetry and art, Neo-futurizm: Vyzov obshchestvennym vkusam (Neo-Futurism: A
Challenge to Public Tastes, 1913). Furthermore, Nakatov puts the Acmeists and
Futurists on the same level.2 It is not surprising then that a caricaturist did exactly
the same: connecting the unconnected, designing a homunculus called “ego-ku-
bo-rayo-donkey-tail-futurist” – that is, creating one person out of the represent-
atives of at least four movements: the “Intuitive School of Ego-futurism”, Cubism
or Cubo-Futurism, Rayism and the “Donkey’s Tail” group.
But whom exactly does the cartoon depict? We can see a suspicious-looking
gang of eight people, seven men and one woman. Five of these are quite easy to
1 Nakatov: “Balaganchik.”
2 The Acmeists tried to overcome Symbolism through precise and concrete imagery and absolute
clarity of expression in their verses.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0022
432 Andrei Rossomakhin
identify. The main character is, without a doubt, Mikhail Larionov – he is prepar-
ing the group for their walk by having their clothes, faces, arms and legs painted.
Despite the fact that Larionov is covering his face with a mirror, the cartoonist
manages to convey his characteristically tousled blonde hair. Behind Larionov
stands a person with a cigarette in his mouth, wearing a hat and a big scarf around
his neck. He is no other than Vladimir Mayakovsky. Although in his caricatured
profile there is no portrait likeness, the draughtsman provides enough recogniza-
ble features to make a link with a dozen photographs of Mayakovsky from 1912–14
that show him with a hat, a neckerchief and a cigarette clamped in his mouth.3
Below, on a stool, sits a woman artist with a palette in her lap. With her brush
she writes on Larionov’s trousers infantile scribbles and markings. The face of
this painter is hidden, but there can be no doubt that she is Natalia Goncharova,
recognizable by her long black dress and her feathered hat, known to us not only
from photographs of those years, but also from an anonymous cartoon published
in Moskovskaia gazeta (Moscow Gazette) on 7 October 1913. Next to her stands a
corpulent man wearing a large coat – it is David Burliuk, whose name became a
household name in the press and in numerous spoofs. The fifth character, stand-
ing in the background to the left, holds in his hand some brochures. This gaunt
character is Korney Chukovsky (Kornei Ivanovich Chukovskii), who attempted an
early serious reflection on Futurism when, on 5 October 1913, he gave a lecture
on Iskusstvo griadushchego dnia: Russkiie poety-futuristy (The Art of the Coming
Days: Russian Futurist Poets) in the assembly hall of Tenishev School in Saint-Pe-
tersburg. This talk, which was repeated in several cities, always attracted large
audiences. It was subsequently published in the 22nd anthology of the Shipovnik
publishing house, as well as in a separate pamphlet.4
We have identified in this caricature Mikhail Larionov, Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Natalia Goncharova, David Burliuk and Korney Chukovsky. The remaining three
persons are, apparently, nameless extras. The reason for the appearance of this
cartoon was the scandal connected with the group walk undertaken by Larionov
and his Rayist friends on Kuznetsk Bridge in Moscow on 14 September 1913. This
publicity stunt of the Rayists brought Larionov and Goncharova many deroga-
tory reports in the newspapers.5 The particular value of this caricature lies in the
fact that it is the first, probably, that depicts Mayakovsky. In subsequent years,
the poet became a favourite subject for cartoonists. According to my calculation,
3 Note also the portrait of Mayakovsky with the same hat by Lev Shekhtel, which became the
frontispiece to the first book of the poet, Ia. Moskva: Kuzmin and Dolinskii, 1913.
4 See Chukovskii: Ego-futuristy i kubo-futuristy.
5 See, for example, [Anon.]: Raskrashennye moskvichi.
The Ego-Kubo-Rayo-Donkey-Tail-Futurists: About a Russian Cartoon of 1913 433
more than a hundred cartoons were published about him during his lifetime (the
majority of them in the second half of the 1920s).
This caricature is also significant because it presents Natalia Goncharova as
the only woman in this company of artists. During the years 1913 to 1914, she was
one of the ‘Amazons of the Avant-garde’6 and became a centre of media attention.
She was not only actively involved in group exhibitions and Futurist debates and
public actions, but was also one of the founders of a new tradition of Russian
avant-garde book design, especially for works by Alexei Kruchenykh and Velimir
Khlebnikov that are now considered ‘classics’ in the history of Russian Futurism.
She also illustrated poems by Sergei Bobrov and Konstantin Bolshakov and con-
tributed to the almanac Sadok sudei 2 (Zadok the Judges, vol. 2, 1913). With Lari-
onov she published the theoretical volume Luchizm (Rayism, 1913) and an album
of 16 drawings (1913). She also issued a catalogue of her solo exhibition at the
Dobychina Art Bureau in Saint-Petersburg (1914), and was the subject of a book
by Ilya Zdanevich: Nataliia Goncharova i Mikhail Larionov (1913).
Soon after the cartoon reproduced above was published, the magazine Argus
printed a manifesto written by Larionov and Zdanevich, Pochemu my raskrashi-
vaemsia (Why We Paint Ourselves). It contained a photograph of Goncharova that
carried the caption: “N. Goncharova – head of the Futurists”.
Bibliography
[Anon.]: “Nashi sharzhi: Natal’ia Goncharova.” [Our Charges: Natalia Goncharova] Moskovskaia
gazeta [Moscow Gazette], 7 October 1913.
—: “Raskrashennye moskvichi.” [Painted Muscovites] Moskovskaia gazeta [Moscow Gazette],
15 September 1913.
—: Neo-futurizm: Vyzov obshchestvennym vkusam. Sbornik [Neo-Futurism: A Challenge to
Public Tastes. Collection of Articles]. Kazan’: Izdatel’stvo “Futurum”, 1913. 2nd edn Kazan’:
Za chto nas b’yut, 1913.
Chukovskii, Kornei Ivanovich (pseud. of Nikolai Vasil’evich Korneichuk): “Ego-futuristy i
kubo-futuristy.” [Ego-Futurist and Cubo-Futurists] Literaturno-khudozhestvennyi
al’manakh izd-va “Shipovnik” [Literary Almanac of the Publishing House “Shipovnik”] 22
(1914): 95–154.
Larionov, Mikhail Fedorovich, and Il’ia Zdanevich: “Pochemu my raskrashivaemsia: Manifest
futuristov.” [Why We Paint Ourselves: Futurist Manifesto] Argus 12 (December 1913): 114–118.
Kovalenko, Georgii Federovich, ed.: Amazonki avangarda [Amazons of the Avant-garde].
Moskva: Nauka, 2001.
Nakatov, Il’ia [pseud. of Il’ia Vasilevskii]: “Balaganchik.” [Puppet Show] Stolichnaia molva [The
Capital’s Rumours], 7 August 1913. 2.
6 See Kovalenko: Amazonki avangarda.

Rosa Sarabia
Gecé’s Angelic Depiction of Norah Borges
“…a trans-oceanic perfume throws its arms around me”
(Guillermo de Torre)1
Ernesto Giménez Caballero (1899–1988), one of the protagonists of the Spanish

avant-garde, was an essayist, filmmaker, founder and director of La gaceta lit-
eraria (1927–32). In the years 1925–27 he created more than 60 literary posters
(“carteles literarios”) which he signed with the pseudonym Gecé. Some of these
were exhibited in Madrid and Barcelona between 1927 and 1928. Combining
collage, painted or drawn images and writing, the literary poster became a genre
sui generis, “a new means for the dissemination of cultural knowledge.”2 Its Futur-
ist influence, notably the Words-in-Freedom by Carlo Carrà, Angelo Rognoni and
Pino Masnata, is evident.
The poster dedicated to the Madrid poet Guillermo de Torre (1900–1971) is
a bio-critical portrait of the most important Spanish Ultraist. His collection of
poems Hélices (Propellers, 1923) and his critical essay Literaturas europeas de
vanguardia (The European Literatures of the Avant-garde, 1925) are invoked in
the poster. It concerns a map in which text and image form part of a narrative
syntax and where the visual holds the place of the word and vice versa. Across the
European continent parades a line of militants in the sporting and festive spirit
championed by F. T. Marinetti and José Ortega y Gasset, two figures to whom Gecé
had also dedicated posters. Three of the militants wear jerseys in the colours of
national flags and are labelled in red letters with their avant-garde affiliations:
Futurism (Italy), Dadaism (France) and Ultraism (Spain), an oblique reference to
Torre’s 1925 essay. This parade becomes trans-Atlantic and proposes a simulta-
neous and metaphoric reading in which, accompanied by whirling propellers, a
steaming boat starts from Spain (in red) towards South America (in yellow), where
a reclining woman-angel awaits its arrival. The red and the yellow correspond to
the Spanish national flag and would be an implicit reference to another Torre
text: the editorial in La gaceta literaria in number 8 of April 1927, in which Madrid
was proclaimed the intellectual meridian of Spanish America. This neo-colonial-
1 “Un perfume trasoceánico me echan al cuello sus brazos.” Torre: “Autorretrato.” Hélices,
pp. 87–88.
2 Dennis: “De la palabra a la imagen: La crítica literaria de Ernesto Giménez Caballero, cartelis-
ta”, p. 374.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0023
436 Rosa Sarabia
ist editorial triggered an aggressive response from young Argentine intellectuals,

including Jorge Luis Borges, the brother of Norah.3
Both the ‘woman-angel’ and the propellers metonymically represent the
Argentine artist Norah Borges and Guillermo de Torre. Artistic collaboration
between the two was intimate and in 1928 they got married. A complementary
reading of this pairing between art and poetry, or artist and poet, would be that
of an avant-garde tying the knot between the two shores of the Atlantic, starting
with Jorge Luis Borges’ return to Buenos Aires in 1921, bringing with him Ultraism
as an offshoot from Madrid.
The ‘woman-angel’ recreated by Gecé imitates the angels that Norah Borges
had depicted in many lithographs, paintings and drawings, such as, for example,
Arcángel San Gabriel (Archangel Saint Gabriel, 1924), Tobías y el ángel (Tobias and
the Angel) or El arcángel (The Archangel, both 1925).4 Gecé eschewed the original
and groundbreaking aesthetic that Borges had developed under the influence of
Expressionism and Cubism between 1918 and 1922. Instead, Gecé made recourse to
a more rounded form and to realistic details – in contrast with the schematic avant-
garde militants – in order to synthesize the religious, sentimental and child-like
themes which, around 1924, he and other critics identified with Norah Borges (as
did she with herself).5 Moreover, Gecé’s aesthetic also differs from that of the wood-
cuts Borges made for Hélices,6 one of whose poems, “Autorretrato” (Self-Portrait),
contains the verses reproduced in the poster: “un perfume trasoceánico / me echa
al cuello sus brazos” (a trans-oceanic perfume throws its arms around me).
Norah Borges, together with the artists Rafael Barradas and Daniel Vázquez-
Díaz, contributed three woodcuts, among them an ex libris that closes the collec-
tion. The geometric lines and forms of these engravings echo Torre’s Cubist and
Futurist poetic metaphors of a cosmopolitan, highly industrialized world of new
technologies. The faith in industry and in the splendour of technology of many of
Torre’s verses coincide with the dedication that Giménez Caballero made for his
Carteles (Posters) of 1927: “A la era industrial del mundo. Nada menos.” (To the
the industrial age. Nothing less).
3 On this Argentine reception, see the journal Martín Fierro, nos. 42 and 44/45 (1927).
4 Reproductions can be found in Artundo: Norah Borges: Obra gráfica, 1920–1930, pp. 74, 76 and 78.
5 Artundo notes this change in Borges faced with the “return to order” of Cubism. Norah Borges:
Obra gráfica, 1920–1930, p. 65. According to Roberta Quance, this return entailed a neo-roman-
ticism and a fascination for feminine aesthetic that idealized love and sublimated sexuality.
Quance: “The Practice of Book Illustration: Three Examples by Norah Borges”, p. 85.
6 See the essay by Eamon McCarthy in this volume, “Flirting with Futurism: Norah Borges and
the Avant-Garde.”
Gecé’s Angelic Depiction of Norah Borges 437
Even more interesting is a unique copy of Hélices with a hand-painted

binding by Norah Borges.7 Both the chromatic values and the superimposed, cir-
cular rainbow forms of the image make a direct reference to the poem “Arco-iris”
(Rainbow), included in Hélices and dedicated to Sonia Delaunay. 8 In addition, it
takes part in a dialogue with the Ukrainian artist who, in the context of Orphism,
led by her French husband Robert Delaunay, produced numerous book covers for
poets.
In June 1926, Norah Borges held her first exhibition in Argentina. Together
with Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti, she participated in the Exposición de pintores
modernos mounted at the Asociación “Amigos del Arte” that coincided with the
events organized around the first visit of F. T. Marinetti to Buenos Aires in 1926.
Under the title, Exposición futurista, a brief and anonymous critical notice stigma-
tized the works of Norah Borges as “primitivist”.9
English translation by Colman Hogan
Bibliography
Artundo, Patricia: Norah Borges: Obra gráfica, 1920–1930. Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las
Artes, 1994.
Corsi, Daniele: “Futurist Influences in the Work of Guillermo de Torre.” International Yearbook
of Futurism Studies 4 (2014): 389–420.
Dennis, Nigel: “De la palabra a la imagen: La crítica literaria de Ernesto Giménez Caballero,
cartelista.” Cristóbal Cuevas, and Enrique Baena, eds.: El universo creador del 27:
Literatura, pintura, música y cine. Málaga: Publicaciones del Congreso de Literatura
Española Contemporánea, 1997. 363–377.
Giménez Caballero, Ernesto: Carteles. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1927.
Madrid-Barcelona: “Carteles literarios” de Gecé. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 15 de
juny – 16 de juliol de 1994. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 26 de
juliol – 14 de octubre de 1994. Barcelona: Balmes 21, 1994.
Martín Fierro. Facsimile reprint. Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 1995.
Quance, Roberta: “The Practice of Book Illustration: Three Examples by Norah Borges.”
Romance Studies 27:1 (January 2009): 72–87.
Quance, Roberta, and Fiona J. Mackintosh, eds.: Norah Borges. Leeds: Maney, 2009. Special
issue of Romance Studies 27:1 (January 2009).
Torre, Guillermo de: “Autorretrato.” Hélices. Madrid: Mundo Latino, 1923. 87–88.
7 Reproduced in Artundo: Norah Borges: Obra gráfica, 1920–1930, p. 51.

8 See Corsi: “Futurist Influences in the Work of Guillermo de Torre.”
9 Artundo: Norah Borges: Obra gráfica, 1920–1930, p. 162.
Marta Sironi
Art and Anarchy: Futurists and Suffragettes
in London, 1910–1915
On 18 November 1910, hundreds of suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, pro-
tested in Parliament Square against the dropping of the Conciliation Bill after
its second reading in the House of Commons.1 The women’s protest happened
to coincide with the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionist at the Grafton
Galleries. Furthermore, that same year, Frank Rutter published Revolution in Art
and dedicated it “To the rebels of either sex all the world over who in any way are
fighting for freedom of any kind, I dedicate this study of their painter comrades.”2
In the following years, London newspapers and magazines, through headlines,
cartoons and illustrations, frequently associated Italian Futurism with art and
social revolt.3
Curiously enough, the first article about Italian Futurism, on the occasion
of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s visit to the Lyceum Club for Women, was titled
“Futurism and Women” and published in The Vote, the official magazine of the
Women’s Freedom League (WFL). Written by Margaret Wynne Nevinson, mother
of painter Christopher Nevinson who would later sign with Marinetti the mani-
festo, Vital English Art, the article highlighted Marinetti’s admiration for the suf-
fragettes, “although it was not the Suffragette’s desire for liberty that aroused the
Signor’s admiration, but merely her method of enforcing her demands.”4
Popular periodicals stressed the connection between aesthetic and social
revolution when two Futurist exhibitions were held in London, at the Sackville
Gallery (March 1912) and Doré Galleries (13–30 April 1914). Newspapers associ-
ated the Futurist exhibitions with a certain national madness, as can be seen in
Charles Sykes’s cartoon, The Hysteria Wave Spreads to Art, which criticized the
Futurists’ harmful influence on the public.5 The Daily Chronicle gave its review the
1 In 1910, 1911 and 1912, so-called Conciliation Bills were discussed in Parliament, but did not
become law. The first bill, which would have given women with property the right to vote, was
given a first parliamentary reading on 14 June 1910, but was not passed. This led to ‘Black Friday’
(18 November 1910).
2 Rutter: Revolution in Art, p. 1.
3 See Sironi: “Arte e anarchia: Futuristi e suffragette a Londra”, on which this short commentary
is based. The English translation was kindly provided by Sara Sullam, Università degli Studi di
Milano.
4 Nevinson: “Futurism and Woman”, p. 112.
5 See The Bystander, 13 March 1912, p. 529.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0024
440 Marta Sironi
headline, “Picture on Strike: Art and Anarchy in Sackville Street”, and described
the exhibition as a synthesis of a national crisis: “The passion that prevails for
breaking rules, windows, agreements, conventions, and anything else that may
happen to be lying about has seized very furiously a small band of Italian art-
ists.”6 The Vorticist magazine Blast showed support for the suffragettes’ actions
against the national museums,7 but also voiced the fear: “Only leave works of art
alone. You might someday destroy a good picture by accident [...]. We admire your
energy. You and artists are the only things (you don’t mind being called things?)
left in England with a little life in them.”8
The violence unleashed in museums during the spring of 1914 came to be
related to the Futurist works at the Doré Gallery, where “the walls were screeching
in wild conflicts of crude colour, beyond which one could hear the death-agonies
of ancient art.”9 An article in The Graphic suggested: “The Suffragette lady who
slashed to pieces the portrait of Mr. Henry James by Sargent10 is a Futurist artist
in life. All those women who are breaking their marriage vows, or the windows of
politicians, abandoning the old code of womanhood for the new emancipation,
are inspired by the spirit of Futurism.”
At the time of her arrest for damaging Velásquez’s Rokeby Venus at the
National Gallery (10 March 1914), Mary Richardson declared: “I have tried to
destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a
protest against the Government destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beau-
tiful character in modern history”.11 This action enhanced the euphoria that had
taken hold of British society in those days. So much so that Marinetti defined
London “the most futurist city in Europe.”12
A note on the illustration by Charles Sykes in The Bystander of 1 January 1913
declared: “Futurism will cease to confine itself to expression on canvas, and will
invade the realm of fashion”. The models of “Futurist fashion” for the following
season were worn by a suffragette, and the colours coincided with those of the
Italian flag. Such a blend of art and real life made a visit to a Futurist exhibi-
tion quite unbearable to some conservatives and caused Edward Gordon Craig to
exclaim:
6 Maas: “Picture on Strike”, p. 6.

7 [anon]: “More Suffragist Crime”, p. 8; see also Gamboni: The Destruction of Art, pp. 93–99 and
Katy Deepwell’s essay, “Narratives of Women Artists in/out of Vorticism” in this volume.
8 [anon]: “To Suffragettes”, pp. 151–152.
9 [anon]: “Futurist Art and Life”, p. 950.
10 By Mary Wood, on 4 May 1914, at the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House.
11 Richardson: “Retribution”, p. 491.
12 [anon]: “A Futurist Grumble”, p. 5.
Art and Anarchy: Futurists and Suffragettes in London, 1910–1915 441
The name Futurist is a mask under which the most up to date reformers approach their
prelude of destructions. He who criticises them must first criticise modern civilization: in
short if the Futurists are damnable – and they are – then modern life is damnable […]. At
sight of the first picture you burst out laughing; at the second you almost run terrified away,
and at the third you nearly lose your reason. The Futurists have shown you the external
world you live in, and you hate them for it. Naturally.13
The connection between art and life was continually reaffirmed in the British
press: “What is the matter with a world in which such things must be? Answer
– Peace and Prosperity. Give us a really good war or revolution and Vorticists,
Futurists, Militants, and all the rest of the charlatans and furies will vanish into
thin air.”14
Bibliography
[anon]: “A Futurist Grumble.” The Daily Mirror, 6 May 1914. 5.
—: “Futurist Art and Life: The Revolt from Tradition and Convention.” The Graphic, 23 May
1914. 950.
—: “More Suffragist Crime: The Tale of Destruction.” The Times, 4 June 1914. 8
—: “To Suffragettes.” Blast 1 (June 1914): 151–152.
Craig, Edward Gordon: “The Futurists.” The Mask 4:4 (April 1912): 277–280.
Downwriter: After-Blast.” The Bystander, 29 July 1914. 265.
Gamboni, Dario: The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution.
New Haven/CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
Maas, William: “Picture on Strike: Art and Anarchy in Sackville Street.” The Daily Chronicle, 9
March 1912. 6.
Nevinson, Margaret Wynne Jones: “Futurism and Women.” The Vote, 31 December 1910. 112.
Reprinted in Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Whitman, eds.: Futurism:
An Anthology. New Haven/CT: Yale University Press, 2009: 74–75.
Richardson, Mary: “Retribution! Mary Richardson’s Reply.” The Suffragette, 13 March 1914. 491.
Rutter, Frank: Revolution in Art: An Introduction to the Study of Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh,
and Other Modern Painters. London: The Art News Press, 1910.
Sironi, Marta: “Arte e anarchia: Futuristi e suffragette a Londra.” L’uomo nero: Materiali per una
storia delle arti della modernità 1:2 (June 2004): 39–65.
Charles Sykes: “Futurism Spreads to Fashion.” The Bystander, 1 January 1913.
13 Craig: “The Futurists”, pp. 279–280.

14 Downwriter: “After-Blast.”.
Section 3: Reports
Denis Beznosov
The International Academy of Zaum
The International Academy of Zaum was founded in the city of Tambov in 1990
by the poet, philologist and cultural studies scholar, Sergei Biryukov. From his
youth in the 1960s, this avant-gardist was influenced by Russian Futurism. The
works of Velimir Khlebnikov gave him the basis of his poetry and stimulated his
investigations.
The International Academy of Zaum has several objectives. First of all, it
fosters research into the historical avant-gardes and into different contempo-
rary practices influenced by them. With this purpose in mind, the Academy of
Zaum coordinates the efforts of researchers and authors by means of symposia
and publications. Many distinguished contemporary avant-garde authors entered
the Academy of Zaum, for example Gennady Aygi, Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, Ry
Nikonova, Sergei Sigei, Vilen Barsky, Valeri Scherstjanoi, Alexandr Gornon,
Vladimir Erl, Boris Konstriktor, Anna Alchuk, Elena Katsuba, Konstantin Kedrov,
Alexandr Fedulov and others. The idea of forming the Academy of Zaum was
determined by:
–– The unfinished character of the Russian (and not only Russian) avant-garde
project, which has been interrupted by different historical circumstances.
–– The emergence of a Neo-avant-garde based, albeit intuitively rather than sci-
entifically, on the experiences of the historical avant-garde earlier-on in the
twentieth century.
–– Research into avant-garde art in the widest sense of the word.
–– Cooperation with authors who work with practices inspired by the histori-
cal avant-garde, and who elaborate and extend theoretical concepts from the
early twentieth century.
–– Uniting all forces in order to promote knowledge of the historical avant-garde
and to offer support to the contemporary avant-garde.
–– Offer encouragement to poets producing sound and visual poetry, all over
the world.
Biryukov collaborated with neo-avant-garde authors – young and old – and

developed with them the idea of a ‘time hypertext’ that links poetic works of the
twentieth with those of the twenty-first century. Results of these investigations
were included in books such as Zevgma: Russkaia poeziia ot man’erizma do post-
modernizma (Zeugma: Russian Poetry from Mannerism to Postmodernism, 1994),
Poeziia russkogo avangarda (Russian Avant-garde Poetry, 2001) and Roku ukor:
Poeticheskie nachala (Roku Reproach: Poetic Start, 2003). Examples of experi-
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0025
446 Denis Beznosov
mental poetry were published in the bilingual collection Diapazon: Antologiia

sovremennoi nemetskoi i russkoi poezii = Diapason: Anthologie deutscher und
russischer Gegenwartslyrik (The Range: Anthology of Contemporary German and
Russian Poetry, 2005) and in the Al’manakh Akademii Zaumi (Almanac of the
Academy of Zaum, 2007).
The first book mentioned above, Zevgma, combined poetry with theoretical
essays, dialogues, a glossary, bibliographical tools and a learning guide. The
second book, Russian Avant-garde Poetry, was constructed in the form of a drama
to show the peculiarities of the experimental approach in the sphere of literary
studies and, at the same time, to avoid rigorous philological methods. The third
book, Roku ukor, expanded on Zevgma, with some corrections and further com-
plementary material. The Russian and German anthology Diapason showed cut-
ting-edge contemporary creativity in the context of Russian and German tradi-
tions, and the Almanac of the Academy of Zaum summarized the achievements
of the Russian poets and expanded into the international context by including
works from Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Moldavia, Ukraine, etc.
Research undertaken at the Academy of Zaum focusses on the major direc-
tions within the older generation of neo-avangardists and seeks to broaden the
field of contemporary artistic practices by including visual and sound poetry,
asemic writing, lettrist compositions, transrational poetry, hand-writing books,
and public poetry recitations in which the body of the poet is represented as
Fig. 1. A performance in memory of Tristan Tzara (Bucharest, 2013). Denis Beznosov (left) und
Sergei Biryukov (right). Foto: Leo Butnaru.
a poetic object. In addition, some members of the Academy work with archive
materials of the twentieth-century avant-garde, publish books and reprint works
of the historical avant-garde, write scholarly papers, and so on.
The International Academy of Zaum links academism with actionism inspired
by Futurism and Dada. In the 1990s, its members ran, together with the Russian
Department of Tambov Derzhavin State University, a series of scholarly confer-
ences. Members of the Academy performed their texts and published them in a
volume of conference proceedings, as well as in journals such as Kredo, Volga,
Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. They also took part in international symposia
and festivals in Poland, Finland, Canada and Russia. Avant-garde authors from
Tambov collaborated with like-minded poets from Saint-Petersburg and organ-
ized performances with them in a number of cities.
In 2003, several members of the Academy of Zaum (Anna Alchuk, Natalia
Fateeva and Sergei Biryukov) organized a conference-festival at the Institut Russ-
kogo Iazyka, Rossiiskaia Akademiia Nauk (Russian Language Institute at the
Russian Academy of Science) in Moscow, in which many leading avant-garde
poets from the contemporary and the historical avant-garde participated. It was
an outstanding event that culminated in the publication of a volume of essays
and creative texts. In 2004, the Academy of Zaum participated in a poetry festi-
val in Berlin, in which Eugen Gomringer, the father of concrete poetry, collabo-
rated with experimental poets from Russia. This event was named after Biryuk-
ov’s book, Jaja, Dada oder Die Abschaffung des Artikels (YesYes, DaDa, or: The
Abolition of the Article, 2004; 2nd edn 2012), and had Gomringer and Biryukov,
Hartmut Andryczuk, Friedrich Block, Valeri Scherstjanoi and Dmitry Bulatov
recite their latest works.
In 2005, the journal Russian Literature printed a special issue dedicated to
the contemporary Russian avant-garde, with sixteen essays dedicated to Biryu-
kov and his circle. Biryukov expanded the borders of international collaboration
by organizing a sound-poetry collective, DAstrugistenDA, at a poetry festival in
Macedonia, in 2005. Members include Peter Waugh (England / Austria), Philip
Meersman (Belgium). Jaan Malin (Estonia) and Fjorton (Norway). This group takes
part in many festivals (e.g. the first European Poetry Slam Festival in Berlin in
2009) and presents their performances on the Internet. Since 2008, the Academy
of Zaum initiates and organizes art actions to honour a hundred years of avant-
garde movements around the world. Presentations and performances have taken
place in several European cities and also in Japan. Moreover, there were festivals
of aleatoric avant-garde and sound poetry in Moscow, curated by the Academy of
Zaum member, Evgeny Kharitonov.
All these activities have offered a considerable boost to contemporary avant-
garde poetry. The Academy of Zaum and the poet Evgeny Kharitonov have also
448 Denis Beznosov
been involved in the publication of an online periodical, Drugoe polusharie

(Another Hemisphere: Magazine of Literary and Art Avant-Guard), in which the
most radical verbal, visual and sound poetry in the international sphere are
represented. In the last years, experimental poetry made a successful entry into
radio, television, internet etc., and Futurism has become a staple ingredient of
media coverage. In a paradoxical manner, this has narrowed the field for new
avant-garde explorations, which nonetheless operate in the Futurist tradition
and extend it into the twenty-first century.
Bibliography
Biriukov, Sergei: Avangard: Moduli i vektori. Moskva: Vest-Konsalting, 2006.
—: Jaja, Dada,oder Die Abschaffung des Artikels: Lautgedichte, russisch – deutsch. Aus dem
Russischen von Henrike Schmidt. Leipzig: Erata, 2004. 2nd edn Leipzig: Leipziger Litera-
turverlag, 2012.
—: Muza zaumi. Tambov: Biriukov, 1991.
—: Teoriia i praktika russkogo poeticheskogo avangarda. Tambov: Izdatel’stvo Tambovskogo
gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni G.R. Derzhavina, 1998.
Biriukov, Sergei, ed.: Poesia russkogo avangarda. Moskva: Elinina, 2001.
—: Roku ukor: Poeticheskie nachala. Moskva: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi
universitet, 2003.
—: Zevgma: Russkaia poeziia ot man’erizma do postmodernizma. Moskva: Nauka, 1994.
Biriukov, Sergei, Elena Pahomova, et al., eds.: Diapazon: Antologiia sovremennoi nemetskoi i
russkoi poezii = Diapason: Anthologie deutscher und russischer Gegenwartslyrik. Moskva:
Universitet Natal’i Nesterovoi, 2005.
Biriukov, Sergei, and Willem Gerardus Weststeijn, eds.: Contemporary Russian Avant-Garde.
Special issue of Russian Literature 57:3–4 (April–May 2005). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005.
Boroda, Elena Vladimirova: “Tambov, Akademiia Zaumi: Den’ segodniashnii.” Irina I.
Ivaniushina, ed.: Literaturno-khudozhestvennyi avangard v sotsiokul’turnom prostranstve
rossiiskoi provintsii: Istoriia i sovremennost’. Saratov: Nauka, 2008. 401–406.
Bulatov, Dmitrii: Tochka zreniia: Vizual’naia poeziia, 90-e godi. Kaliningrad: Simplitsii, 1998.
Bulatov, Dmitrii, ed.: Homo sonorous: Mezhdunarodnaia antologiia sound-poezii. Kaliningrad:
Posudarstvennyi Tsentr Sovremennogo Iskusstva, 2001.
Fateeva, Natal’ia Aleksandrovna, ed.: Poetika iskani, ili, Poisk poetiki. Materiali mezhdun-
arodnoi konferentsii-festivalia “Poeticheskii iazyk rubezha XX–XXI vekov i sovremennie
literaturnie strategii”. Moskva: Institut russkogo iazyka, Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk,
2004.
Sames, Bernhard: “Akademiia Zaumi: Tri etiuda.” Russian Literature 57:3–4 (April–May 2005):
405–422.
Sames, Bernhard: Linie der Avantgarde in Russland: Transrationale Dichtkunst in der
“Akademija Zaumi”. Hamburg: Kovac, 2004.
Schmidt, Henrike: “Poetische Grundlagenforschung: Die Poesie des russischen Dichters Sergei
Biryukov.” Sergei Biriukov: Jaja, Dada, oder Die Abschaffung des Artikels. Leipzig: Erata,
2004. 114–129.
Shmidt, Enrika: “Avangard est’ avangard? K voprosu o sovremennom literaturnom avangarde.”

Canadian-American Slavic Studies 36:4 (2002): 377–390.
Tsukanov, Andrei: “Smysl i zaum’: Poeticheskoe tvorchestvo Sergeia Biriukova.” Arion: Zhurnal
poezii 2 (1997): 104–109.
Barbara Meazzi
Women Futurists in Italy: A Research Report
Introduction
Overlooking the scholarly literature dedicated to female Futurists,1 it is appar-

ent that, on an international scale, only little has been written about them. Even
though the centennial of Futurism in 2009 occasioned anthologies like those by
Valentina Mosco and Sandro Rogari, or Giancarlo Carpi,2 the exploration of this
area in the past has been far more limited than its potential would have promised.
In this brief report, I shall highlight some of the studies that have been dedicated
to the literary production of women Futurists in Italy, published in France and in
Italy. It is important to emphasize this restriction, as Günter Berghaus, in a biblio-
graphic sketch sent to me in Spring 2014, pointed out that more than 350 studies
have recently been published in Eastern Europe about artists such as Elena Guro,
Olga Rozanova, Natalia Goncharova, Aleksandra Ekster, Nadezhda Udaltsova,
Růžena Zátková and others.
As with Futurism Studies as a whole, scholarship on female Futurists is
dogged by a certain ‘bibliographic impermeability’ between national traditions.
Thus, Italian scholars often ignore the research published in French or English
(not to mention those written in Spanish, German or Russian); consequently,
scholarship is duplicated without the researchers knowing of each other or taking
note of the others’ investigations. Books on Futurism written in one language
contain bibliographies that are essentially self-referential, ignoring even major
books and essays written in another language. I do not want to sound obsequious
here, but scholars would benefit from taking note of the International Yearbook of
Futurism Studies, given that it has undertaken major strides to remedy this defi-
ciency by facilitating contacts across national borders and academic disciplines,
and by establishing a global network of academics working in the field of Futur-
ism Studies. With this volume it also extends these achievements to the field of
research into women Futurists.
1 The redaction of this essay, translated into English by Giorgia Gazzuola, would not have been
possible without the support of Günter Berghaus, Cathy Margaillan and Elisa Borghino. My
heartfelt thanks go to all of them.
2 See Mosco and Rogari: Le amazzoni del futurismo: Femmine, massaie, pecore o donne? and
Carpi: Futuriste: Letteratura, arte, vita..
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0026
The anthologies
Between 2007 and 2009, three anthologies appeared in Italy and brought to light
a literary production of women Futurists which has almost sunk into oblivion
after the first and unique publication by Claudia Salaris, Le futuriste (The Woman
Futurists, 1982). Salaris opened an original and important chapter in the histo-
riography of Futurism, but it was in some ways following in the steps of other
previously published collections by Glauco Viazzi and Luciano De Maria.3 The
curators of the three new anthologies, like Salaris, decided to adopt a chronolog-
ical order. Carpi, however, decided to go beyond a simple temporal organization
and to assemble – rather boldly, one might say – the texts around clusters deter-
mined by subject matter. Thus, in the chapter dedicated to “Femminilità e creazi-
one” (Femininity and Creativity), one can find Valentine de Saint-Point grouped
together with Benedetta, a combination that may appear incongruous and which
Benedetta certainly would not have appreciated.4 Given the subjective nature
of such juxtaposition, it would have been equally possible to insert in the same
chapter writers such as Enif Robert or Rosa Rosà. It is also questionable whether
it was wise for Carpi to include in his selection texts written by men; not because
this presence is out of place in a book about women Futurists (after all, the vivid
debates on women’s issues in the columns of L’Italia futurista and Roma futur-
ista also included some male writers), but because it also includes Apollinaire’s
L’antitradizione futurista: Manifesto-sintesi (Futurist Anti-Tradition: Manifes-
to-Synthesis, 1913). Of course, the poet exalted in this text – maybe prompted by
Marinetti – a “militant feminism or innumerable differentiations of the sexes.”5
However, we should not overlook that some eminent names such as Sonia Delau-
nay or Hélène d’Œttingen are missing from the list of praiseworthy artists which
3 Viazzi: I poeti del futurismo, 1909–1944; Viazzi and Scheiwiller: Poeti del secondo futurismo
italiano; De Maria: Marinetti e il futurismo; idem: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti e il futurismo; idem:
Teoria e invenzione futurista; De Maria and Dondi: Per conoscere Marinetti e il futurismo; idem:
Marinetti e i futuristi.
4 The two women represented antithetical models of Futuristic creativity: Saint-Point the ener-
getic and liberated originality, Benedetta the reconciliation of progress and tradition; moreover,
Benedetta was also known to have been extremely jealous of Marinetti’s one-time companion.
When at a reception in Egypt in 1930 they were brought together by Nelson Morpurgo, “lo scam-
bio di salute fra le due donne fu freddo e distacco”. See the interview with Morpurgo in Lambiase
and Nazzaro: Marinetti e i futuristi, pp. 112–114 (which misdates the encounter to 1938).
5 Apollinaire: “Futurist Anti-Tradition: Manifesto-Synthesis”, p. 153. In Italian it reads: “Femmi
nismo integrale o differenziazione innumerevole dei sessi” and in the French original “Fémi
nisme intégral ou différenciation innombrable des sexes”.
452 Barbara Meazzi
Apollinaire compiled. The author of Calligrammes (1918), as has been amply

revealed in recent studies, cannot be considered a passionate promoter of female
artists, in contrast to, for example, Ardengo Soffici. That Apollinaire’s manifesto,
for all intents and purposes, has to be considered a Futurist text is another matter.
Another reserve I harbour about Carpi’s anthology results from the inter-
nal organization of the material in seven main chapters, two of which are titled
“Femminilità e creazione”, three “Il corpo e lo spirito” (Body and Spirit) and two
again “Pluralità delle arti e Futurismo di massa (Plurality of the Arts and Futur-
ism of the Masses). Each of the seven chapters is furnished with a useful introduc-
tion that contextualizes and justifies the choice of pieces included, but then the
subsections “Antologia”, “Critica” and “Testimonianze” are only used in some
but not all chapters. Such a lack of consistency may not be important in itself,
but it affects the overall balance, particularly in the last chapter that would have
benefited from three subchapters (only one – Anthology – is included). Also,
the selection of the pieces included in the seventh and last chapter, dedicated
to dance, cinema, radio, cuisine and photography, is highly questionable. The
chronological order distances artists who, on a thematical basis, should have
been placed close together, for example Valentine de Saint-Point and Giannina
Censi. Despite their discrepancies in personality and style, they both contributed
to a theoretical debate about dance aesthetics.
Irrespective of such objections, Giancarlo Carpi compiled a useful volume
that is rich in bio-bibliographical data and is far more exhaustive than – and thus
rounds off – the volume published by Cecilia Bello Minciacchi in 2007. If it were
not for the absence of a name index – so useful for scholars and so simple to
compile – this volume would be exemplary, both in terms of selection of artists
and choice of text passages. Spirale di dolcezza + serpe di fascino (Spiral of Sweet-
ness + Snake Charm, 2008), is an admirable work based on solid research.6
Although the texts assembled here possess a certain qualitative heterogeneity – a
characteristic shared by the production of male Futurist, starting from the nar-
rative texts by Marinetti – this volume brings to light lost texts by Maria Goretti,
Fanny Dini and Nené Centonze and thus offers a major contribution to the task of
substantiating the history of Futurist literary production by women.
Cecilia Bello Minciacchi chose to arrange her texts in a chronological order
and to jettison any artificially contrived thematic clusters. The women Futurists
– she observes – never formed a cohesive group, not even during the times when
6 The unusual title is derived from Benedetta’s novel, Le forze umane: Romanzo astratto con
sintesi grafiche (Human Forces: Abstract Novel with Graphic Syntheses, 1924), which contrasts
“Forze femminili: Spirale di dolcezza + serpe di fascino” with “Forze maschili: Armi e piume”.
the debates on women’s issues were raging most intensely amongst the members
of the “pattuglia azzurra” – Maria Ginanni, Rosa Rosà and Irma Valeria. However,
it seems that the development of any intellectual friendships amongst each other
was only sporadic, and they never formed a “pattuglia rosa”.7 Future research
might benefit from more in-depth investigation into the relations among women
Futurists, who made such important contributions to the diverse fields of Futurist
experimentation and enriched the artistic life of the movement as a whole.
Le amazzoni del futurismo (The Amazons of Futurism, 2009), the anthology
compiled by Valentina Mosco and Sandro Rogari, also follows a chronological
order to show the evolution within the female literary production in the Futurist
movement. The focus, compared to the two anthologies examined above, is more
strongly abiding to a gender perspective and reveals that there was not only a fem-
inist presence within Futurism, but also that these artists were in direct contact
with the women’s liberation movement in Italy. Thus, the volume is organized
around the main Futurist concern with women: Futurism and misogyny, Futurism
and lust, Futurism and seduction, women and war, women and politics, Marinetti
and Benedetta. The most original section, in my opinion, is the one dedicated to
women in the Fiume adventure of 1919/20: it is rare to find a name like Fiammetta
(pseud. of Margherita Keller Besozzi) in a book on Futurism. Unfortunately, the
volume lacks an academic apparatus, biographies and bibliographic references
that characterize the works of Giancarlo Carpi and Cecilia Bello Minciacchi, but
this appears to have been precisely the intention of the authors, who seek to
address a non-specialist audience with this collection.
Finally, I should like to signal a fourth anthology, published by myself in
2011, L’arte futurista di piacere: Sintesi di tecniche di seduzione (The Futurist Art
of Pleasure: A Synthesis of the Techniques of Seduction).8 It is a collection that
brings to light forgotten texts positioned halfway between the serious and the
humorous, such as two novellas by Flora Bonheur, and Come si seducono gli
uomini (How to Seduce Men, 1918) by a mysterious ‘Mari Annetta’, who mocks the
exploits of the founder of Futurism in his ‘manual’, Come si seducono le donne
(How to Seduce Women, 1917).
7 On the terms “pattuglia azzurra” and “pattuglia rosa” see p. XVIII, n. 19.
8 Meazzi: L’arte futurista di piacere: Sintesi di tecniche di seduzione.
454 Barbara Meazzi
Fig. 1. A selection of books on Italian Women Futurists.
Futurism and Gender Studies
As I have mentioned above, Valentina Mosco and Sandro Rogari wanted to place
their anthology within the genre of Gender Studies and provided some biblio-
graphic suggestions relating to this context. Italian literary studies have only
recently taken this field of scholarship on board. Marina Zancan reminded her
readers that before embracing gender studies, it would be appropriate in Italy –
the debate is set out in France in other terms – to rewrite the history of literature
so that the female contributions, largely hidden until now, can be fully taken into
account.9 Seen from this perspective, the anthologies by Cecilia Bello Minciacci
and Giancarlo Carpi – and even the older one by Claudia Salaris – have brought
to light names and texts that had indeed fallen into oblivion. Now, however, that
9 Cox and Ferrari: Verso una storia di genere della letteratura italiana.
these female writers and their works are more easily available, it should be pos-
sible in Italy to open up new perspectives and to study the production of female
Futurists in ways that take into account the advances in the methodology of lit-
erary studies.
It is not true that feminism had no impact in Italian literary studies or, more
specifically, Futurism Studies. Anna Nozzoli, for example, as far back as 1978,
investigated women Futurists from a feminist perspective, in a volume that still
remains an important starting point for anyone approaching this subject today.
Similarly, Mirella Bentivoglio and Franca Zoccoli produced in 1997 / 2009 an
important overview written from a feminist viewpoint.10 In Anglo-Saxon schol-
arship, Barbara Spackman, Lucia Re and Cinzia Sartini Blum undertook research
on women and Futurism within the context of Gender Studies.11 In France, Silvia
Contarini wrote a volume La Femme futuriste (The Futurist Woman, 2006) that
was situated somewhere in-between a historical reconstruction and a recon-
sideration of these works from a gender perspective. She retraced the debate in
the columns of L’Italia futurista about the rôle of woman in Italian society, and
also offered an original interpretation of some of the manifestos written by Val-
entine de Saint-Point and F. T. Marinetti. However, she did not propose any new
reading of the fictional works, such as Mafarka il futurista / Mafarka le futuriste:
Roman africain (Mafarka the Futurist: African Novel, 1910) or Un ventre di donna:
Romanzo chirurgico (A Women’s Womb: A Surgical Novel, 1919). In her contri-
bution to a collective volume dedicated to Genres et avant-gardes (Gender and
Avant-gardes, 2012),12 Contarini argued that Rosa Rosà and Enif Robert re-con-
figured Futurist aesthetic concepts by giving them a gender specificity.13 Similar
to what Francesca Brezzi did with regard to Barbara (pseud. of Olga Biglieri Scur-
to),14 Silvia Contarini investigated the correlations between Futurist theories and
creative practices with respect to the double specificity of being a Futurist and a
woman. The scholar came to the conclusion that, even if Enif Robert and Rosa
Rosà were the only Futurists who tried to reconcile their theoretical and artis-
10 Bentivoglio and Zoccoli: Women Artists of Italian Futurism: Almost Lost to History. Italian
edition Le futuriste e le arti visive.
11 Spackman: Fascist Virilities; Sartini Blum: The Other Modernism; Re: “Futurism and Femi-
nism.”
12 The title of the volume plays on the double meaning of ‘genre’: “genres littéraires et artis-
tiques et des questionnements liés au genre sexué (ce que l’anglais désigne par le terme de ‘gen-
der’.”, Bridet and Tomiche: Genres et avant-gardes, p. 8.
13 Contarini: “Comment conjuguer un nouveau gender et de nouveaux genres”.
14 Brezzi: Quando il futurismo è donna: Barbara dei colori. French edn Quand le futurisme est
femme: Barbara des couleurs.
456 Barbara Meazzi
tic approaches, their attempts must be considered a failure because they did not
develop a positive female model. In fact, both destroyed the concept of the ‘fem-
inine’ but fell short of disassociating ‘womanhood’ from ‘femininity’; above all,
they did not dismantle the concept of the ‘male’ and did not call into question
men’s prerogatives and privileges.15
The conclusions reached by Silvia Contarini, who was ostensibly revisiting
a path previously traced by Lucia Re,16 are more than credible, even though they
hardly show due and full appreciation of Rosa Rosà and Enif Robert’s contribu-
tion to L’Italia futurista as texts based on a sophisticated theoretical system. Pos-
sibly, if Contarini had included in her analysis other texts written by Enif Robert
and Rosa Rosà not published in L’Italia futurista, and if she had taken into con-
sideration their position within the Futurist movement, she would have arrived
at different conclusions, also in terms of a conscious adherence to a gender and
a genre. Contarini’s shortcoming in both her essays and the fundamental book
on the debate of women’s issues within Futurism is that she restricts herself to a
narrow selection from a wide bibliographical base: she does not consider what
these authors wrote elsewhere, i.e. outside the Futurist press, and ignores almost
completely the numerous studies dedicated to them from the 1930s onwards.
Mention should also be made of a rather poor volume that Luigi Maria Personé
dedicated to Enif Robert many years ago.17 It contains some important texts by the
woman who for a while was Marinetti’s lover and who, until her death, wanted to
consider herself a Futurist, despite the great gap that, objectively speaking, sepa-
rated her from the movement. Personé has studied the work of Enif Robert in isola-
tion as if the writer was living alone in the world. The importance of social context
was lately demonstrated in a volume by Anna Boschetti on Ismes.18 Using some
of Bourdieu’s theories, she demonstrates that without considering the context in
which a writer is working, one can never arrive at a profound understanding of
his or her work. I would suggest that for the women Futurists, ‘context’ also needs
to include a whole ‘network’ of ideas and works. The examination of other texts,
of manuscripts, correspondence, etc19 would allow us to analyse more compre-
15 See also Silvia Contarini’s essay in this volume, “Valentine de Saint-Point: A Futurist Wom-
an?”
16 Re: “Futurism and Feminism.”
17 Personé: Fedelissima alla Duse: Scritti di Enif Angiolini Robert.
18 Boschetti: Ismes: Du réalisme au postmodernisme. This volume it is essentially a retake of her
position in the more important volume, La poésie partout: Apollinaire, homme époque.
19 As suggested, for example, in the interesting special issue of Melusine, edited by Georgiana
Colvile and Annie Richard and dedicated to Autoreprésentation feminine. Interesting in this con-
text are also the suggestions made by Bonnet in Les Femmes artistes dans les avant-gardes.
hensively the way the feminine was constructed in the works of Enif Robert and
Rosa Rosà who, seen from a feminist point of view, were surely less courageous
than other contemporary writers who never joined Futurism. Enif Robert wanted
to consider herself a Futurist, but how are we to consider Maria Ginanni’s adhe-
sion to the movement?20 We shall return to this point at the end of the essay.
Interpretations of Futurist literature produced by women
Apart from the anthologies and books that centred on a feminist approach to the
subject, some monographic studies dedicated to women artists and writers with a
more or less important rôle in Futurism have been published recently. In particu-
lar, I should like to signal here some works that focus on artists from the second
phase of Futurism: Barbara, Regina, Adriana Bisi Fabbri, Leandra Angelucci
Cominazzini, Marisa Mori, Maria Ferrero Gussago and Wanda Wulz. Anna Maria
Ruta has honoured these women artists with several monographic exhibitions
and has published many important studies on their production in the applied
arts. Similar merits should go to the complementary publication by Anty Pansera
and Tiziana Occleppo, Dal merletto alla motocicletta: Artigiane/artiste e designer
nell’Italia del Novecento (From Lace to Motorcycle: Artisan / Artists and Designers
in Italy in the Twentieth Century, 2002).
Of particular significance are the studies dedicated to Benedetta, who due to
her personal relationship with Marinetti, occupies a place apart. As a writer, poet
and painter, Benedetta challenged the poetic and then visual essence of Futur-
ism, in fact so much so that Marinetti, when confronted with the multifaceted
production of his partner, was obliged to ask himself what kind of relationship
she had with Futurism: “I admire the genius of Benedetta, who is my equal and
not a disciple. In her original cosmic novel […] critics will search in vain for my
mark.”21 Maybe he also tried in vain to discover the Futurist mark. Mario Verdone
stressed the pre-Surrealistic character of Benedetta’s writing22 and was supported
in this by Simona Cigliana in her introduction to the reprint of Benedetta’s three
novels.23 The term, however, is not without problems. I have suggested several
20 See Re: “Maria Ginanni vs. F.T. Marinetti: Women, Speed, and War in Futurist Italy.”
21 “Ammiro il genio di Benedetta, mia eguale, non discepola. In questo suo originalissimo ro-
manzo cosmico […] i critici cercheranno invano la mia impronta.” Marinetti: “Prefazione”, in
Benedetta: Le forze umane, p. 124.
22 Verdone: “La ‘poliespressività’ di Benedetta.”.
23 Benedetta: Le forze umane, Viaggio di Gararà, Astra e il sottomarino.
458 Barbara Meazzi
times that instead of talking about the proto- or pre-Surrealism of authors such
as Bruno Corra, Arnaldo Ginna, Maria Ginanni, Rosa Rosà, Mario Carli and, later,
Benedetta, we should simply recognize that certain Futurist creations are char-
acterized by an irrationalism with an anthroposophical or theosophical matrix
that has nothing in common with André Breton’s Surrealist movement. It would
surely be possible to establish some parallels with the production of artists such
as Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini or also Claude Cahun and
Giovanna (pseud. of Anna Voggi); in this case, a contrasting study could produce
interesting results, not so much about Surrealism, but about the surreal compo-
nent in some Futurist works and therefore on the nature of their visual poetics.
Wheras Simona Cigliana’s investigations were centred on Benedetta as a
writer, Franca Zoccoli’s work on Benedetta had a more biographical orientation
and was focussed on her activity as a painter.24 An in-depth analysis on Benedet-
ta’s literary production was produced by Cathy Margaillan in her Ph.D. thesis, Les
Romancières futuristes italiennes (The Italian Futurist Women Novelists), mainly
concerned with Benedetta and Rosa Rosà and about to be complemented by a
volume she is issuing, together with Franca Bruera, on the topic of ‘third sex’.25
Margaillan contrasts Valentine de Saint-Point’s strongly Symbolist orientation
and the originality of her Métachorie (metachoric dances) with Benedetta’s push
towards the limits of abstraction, and shows that both women overstepped the
limits imposed by the Futurist aesthetics. Benedetta’s ‘plurilingualism’, based
on Giuseppe Steiner’s theory of synthesis, enabled her to create her own interior
cosmogony and to move Futurism forward, not towards Surrealism but on a path
towards Spiritualism.26
Together with Benedetta, Valentine de Saint-Point is surely the most studied
Futurist artist. Recent publications include a biographical monograph by
Véronique Richard de la Fuente, a catalogue by Adrien Sina, which contains a
number of essays by Sina and various Saint-Point scholars as well as an extraor-
dinary rich selection of illustrative material,27 and a rather superficial biography
by Barbara Ballardin that did not present any new insights.
24 Zoccoli: Benedetta Cappa Marinetti: L’incantesimo della luce.

25 Bruera and Margaillan: Le Troisième Sexe des avant-gardes.
26 Margaillan: “La révolution du langage chez deux futuristes” and “Les femmes futuristes ou
une reconnaissance occultée”.
27 Sina: Feminine Futures.
Suggestions for further studies
What is currently missing in the critical panorama dedicated to women Futurist

writers and poets is an in-depth analysis of Enif Robert’s life and œuvre. The fic-
tional accounts by Barbara Ballardin and Adrien Sina28 – comparable to the one
made by Birolli for Boccioni29 – basically resumes Personé’s work, even with sim-
ilarities in the title, and does not add anything new in terms of biography, analy-
sis or bibliography. Of course, Enif Robert did not have the same standing as Boc-
cioni, and most of her personal papers are now scattered or have been destroyed.
Following Personé’s advice, Enif Robert sold Marinetti’s letters in order to cover
her living expenses, and the other manuscripts appear to be lost forever. To arrive
at an understanding of Enif Robert beyond the studies and analyses that have
already been dedicated to Un ventre di donna, mentioned above, it would be
necessary to have access to the manuscripts, letters and other writings not, or
only partially, published by Personé. Other desiderata are full length studies on
women Futurists so far only approached in short essays, such as Rosa Rosa,30
Maria Ginanni,31 Flora Bonheur,32 and Irma Valeria.33
What remains to be done in the context of the literary production of women
Futurists is an investigation of the relations that united them within the European
avant-garde. Elisa Borghino, for example, underlined in her Ph.D. thesis, Des voix
en voie: Les femmes, c(h)oeur et marges des avant-gardes (Voices on the March:
Women, Chants and Hearts in Unison, and the Margins of the Avant-Gardes,
2012), the dense network of contacts that existed between avant-garde artists, for
example, Sonia Delaunay, Claire Goll, Marie Laurencin, Hélène d’Œttingen, Val-
entine de Saint-Point and Elsa Triolet. These prolific female artists, all endowed
with multicultural and multilingual abilities, were amongst the most active in the
literary-artistic landscape of the early twentieth century. Traces of their coopera-
tive interaction can be found in their correspondence, memoirs and other docu-
ments, both published and unpublished.
Elisa Borghino’s theoretical assumptions certainly deserve to be extended
and applied to the women Futurists and their estates. It is obvious that personal
28 Richard de la Fuente: Valentine de Saint Point, une poétesse dans l’avant-garde futuriste et
méditerranéiste; Ballardin: Valentine de Saint-Point; Ballardin and Sina: Enif Angiolini Robert.
29 See Birolli: Umberto Boccioni: Racconto critico.
30 Re: “Scrittura della metamorfosi e metamorfosi della scrittura: Rosa Rosà e il futurismo.”
31 Ambrosi: “Una protagonista del secondo futurismo fiorentino: Maria Ginanni. La trasparenza
e la veggenza come cifre di stile” and Sica: “Maria Ginanni: Futurist Woman and Visual Writer.”
32 Meazzi: “Flora Bonheur et l’amour futuriste.”
33 Castronuovo: “Irma Valeria: La sibilla occultista.”
460 Barbara Meazzi
archives are of vital importance for understanding the genesis of a writer’s works,
but it is also true that an analysis of certain texts – for example, the enigmatic
ending of Un ventre di donna – is simply impossible unless one has access to
papers that illuminate the circumstances surrounding the drafting of a certain
work.34
Another major field of future research is a comparison of the rôles of women
within Italian and Russian Futurism. It has frequently been observed that the
Russian women Futurists were more independent35 and, most of all, received
more recognition than their Italian colleagues. A first step in that direction has
been made by Renato Miracco.36 It would certainly be worthwhile pursuing that
track and expanding it to include also the women writers.
There exists also an urgent need to explore and fully reconstruct the career
paths of Rosa Rosà, Maria Gianni and Irma Valeria, who, together, with Valentine
de Saint-Point, Benedetta and Enif Robert, were surely personalities of great
importance in the Futurist movement. Thanks to them and thanks to the interpre-
tive readings of their works, one can arrive at a different perception of the literary
production of Futurism. One might also investigate the writers’ production after
and outside the Futurist movement. As far as their work in the 1920s is concerned,
their participation in the rappel à l’ordre could take entirely different forms, as
Cathy Margaillan has convincingly shown. 37
Finally, in order to improve the textual base that scholars can utilize and
the general public become acquainted with, we need to have more reprints and
editions of the complete works of women writers before, during and after their
engagement with Futurism (an engagement that, as in the case of Benedetta and
Enif Robert, never abated). In this respect, Simona Cigliana’s edition of Bene
detta’s three novels is exemplary and should serve as a model for a reprint of the
early novels of Valentine de Saint Point, of which only a handful of copies survive
34 A more attentive reading of Marinetti’s notebooks allows insights into the creative coopera-
tion between Marinetti and Robert and offers different conclusions concerning their joint novel.
See Meazzi: “‘C’est la gueguerre!’: Apollinaire et Marinetti à la guerre comme à l’amour”, “Enif
Robert & Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: Un ventre di donna e l’autobiografia futurista”, and “Enif
Robert e Marinetti: L’autobiografia a due voci.”
35 See Natalia Budanova similar observations in her essay in this volume, p. 172.
36 Miracco: Avanguardie femminili in Italia e Russia, 1910–1940, which includes works by
Alexandra Exter, Alma Fidora, Barbara (Olga Biglieri), Benedetta Cappa Marinetti, Brunas, Fides
Stagni Testi Pensabene, Leandra Cominazzini Angelucci, Marisa Mori, Nadezhda Udaltsova,
Natalia Goncharova, Olga Biglieri, Olga Rozanova, Regina (Prassede Cassiolo Bracchi), Rougena
Zatkova, Varvara Stepanova.
37 See Margaillan: Les Romancières futuristes italiennes, pp. 209–243 and 247–347.
in European public libraries. Once made available again, our understanding of

this writer’s evolution would be much improved and the achievements of this
extraordinary and multi-faceted artist could be much better assessed. Enif Robert
continued to write short stories; Rosa Rosà sustained her career as a painter and
graphic artist after 1919,38 but currently we unable to understand when and how
her involvement with Futurism came to an end. And then, of course, there are the
countless ‘minor’ Futurists, who gave so much to the movement, in particular
in the field of Words-in-Freedom and about whom we often know hardly much
more than their names. Considering or re-considering the works of these eclectic
and versatile artists would allow us to arrive at a different picture of Futurism,
which was not only a movement engaged in an intense production of manifestos
and other theoretical statements, but which sustained a wide-ranging and highly
diverse production of creative works in the fields of poetry and painting, music
and theatre, graphic arts and interior design.
Alongside this publishing and interpretative effort, I consider it an urgent
requirement to use the facilities of the Internet to facilitate a pooling of resources
concerned with women Futurists. The number of scholars who stubbornly con-
tinue to take an interest in Futurism beyond the anniversaries and other cele-
bratory occasions is relatively small and they are separated by country and lan-
guage. This, of course, is true for all disciplines and many fields of studies, but
it is particularly harmful for the study of Futurism. Marinetti’s movement had a
world-wide influence, but notwithstanding the International Yearbook of Futur-
ism Studies, research into these national variations of Futurism circulates only
insufficiently beyond the confines of a given country.
An insurmountable language barrier seems to separate France from Italy,
where few people read French, and yet, for those involved in the study of the
avant-garde, a good command of the French language is of prime importance.
What is written and published in Europe often does not reach the United States
of America, and vice-versa. If Günter Berghaus had written his fundamental
study, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction,
1909–1944, in Italian, Emilio Gentile would not have published, in turn, a volume
that pretty much goes over the same ground again,39 while other aspects worth
exploring are left under-investigated.
38 See Lisa Hanstein’s essay, “Edyth von Haynau: A Viennese Aristocrat in the Futurist Circles
of the 1910s”, in this volume.
39 Berghaus: Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, and Gen-
tile: La nostra sfida alle stelle: Futuristi in politica. In fact, Gentile’s book forms part of a series of
462 Barbara Meazzi
I should like to conclude this report with an appeal for an online bibliographic
inventory of the publications that investigate women Futurists on an international
basis. This would mean extracting all pertinent data from the twice-announced
yet still unprinted bibliographic handbook, International Futurism, 1945–2015,
which Günter Berghaus has been compiling for the last 15 years, and to sup-
plement it with new information beyond the census date 2015.40 If the women
Futurists did create an international cooperative network, perhaps the men and
women engaged in scholarly research into Futurism could likewise try to create
an association focussed on the production of its female members, following the
example of Dada and Surrealism studies. The result could be surprising indeed.
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Section 4: Obituary
Willem G. Weststeijn
Serge Segay (1947–2014): An Obituary
This year, on 21 September, died Serge Segay, the most prominent of the poets/
artists who, in the second half of the twentieth century, carried on the tradition of
the historical avant-garde in Russia. Segay did not only continue this tradition in
an inventive, highly original way, but was also, judging by his many penetrating
articles on the Russian avant-garde, an expert in this rich field of Russian culture.
Segay (who also called himself Sergei Sigei; his real name was Sergei Vsevo-
lodovich Sigov) was born in 1947 in Murmansk. His father was the principal of
an educational institute and moved with his family to Vologda, where Segay,
barely fifteen years old, started to write experimental poetry. “Born as a Futur-
ist”, according to his fellow avant-gardist poet Boris Konstriktor, Segay assem-
bled a group of young anarchistic poets (under the name of ‘Budushchel’, a pun
on будущее, future), who were far removed from official Soviet literature and,
accordingly, could not publish anything. In 1966, he arrived in Sverdlovsk (pres-
ent-day Ekaterinburg), where he met Ry (or Rea) Nikonova (pseudonym of Anna
Aleksandrovna Tarshis), an avant-garde artist and poet like himself. Nikonova,
Segay’s senior by five years, had created the so-called ‘Uktus School’, named
after a ski jump in the neighbourhood of Sverdlovsk, where the members of the
school, poets and painters who were averse to the obligatory Socialist Realism,
sometimes came together. The core of the school was formed by, apart from
Nikonova herself, artists such as Valery Dyachenko, Evgeny Arbenev and, soon
after his arrival, Segay.
Segay’s meeting with Nikonova was decisive for both their artistic careers.
They married and, since that time, formed a unique artistic couple, collaborat-
ing in a lifelong relationship, greatly influencing each other, or, rather, comple-
menting each other. Both of them kept up their personal interests and styles,
which meant that Nikonova benefited from Segay’s excellent knowledge of the
Russian historical avant-garde – in the 1970s she became acquainted with the
latter’s ‘hero’, the Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, and other representatives of
the avant-garde – and Segay, in his turn, profited from Nikonova’s remarkable
creativity in discovering, developing and practicing of all kinds of new artistic
devices.
The first project in which Segay closely collaborated with Nikonova was the
hand-made journal Nomer (Number) that his wife had started in 1965. It was a
typical samizdat (underground) publication and appeared in one copy only per
issue, but became well-known in the artistic underground world of Sverdlovsk.
Much of what has been published in Nomer has been lost, as the entire archive
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0027
468 Willem Weststeijn
Fig. 1. Serge Segay (1947–2014) and Ry (Rea) Nikonova (1942–2014), c. 2006.
of the journal, including all its thirty-five issues, was confiscated by the KGB and
very likely destroyed. However, Nomer, which existed from 1965 to 1974, played a
significant rôle in both Segay’s and Nikonova’s development as artists and theo-
reticians. It gradually strengthened their position as neo-avant-gardists (‘transfu-
rists’ as they called themselves1), who on the one hand went back to the experi-
ments of the Russian historical avant-garde, but on the other, on the basis of their
experiments, consciously and successfully broke new ground.
During the Nomer years, Segay developed his own style. One of his favourite
devices was to change and to transpose an existing text into another one, textual
or visual. Interesting are the many drawings he made from Khlebnikov’s neolo-
gisms and some of the Futurist’s short poems in which he replaced the words by
1 The neologism ‘furizm’ seems to evoke ‘Futurism’, but also ‘furia’ (fury’). See Tim Klähn’s ex-
planation in this volume in his essay, “Rea Nikonova and the Legacy of Russian Futurism”.
a kind of hieroglyphs. By erasing or blackening words on a page, or changing the

illustrations he produced a new text, through which the old one still shines, but
is hardly recognizable. It might be called a palimpsest, although the new text is
difficult to read and is more attractive as a visual rather than literary work of art.
In a number of poems he mutilated words to such a degree that the result was
zaum’, the ‘transrational’ language that was devised and applied by the Russian
Futurists, in particular Kruchenykh. Sometimes he changed letters and in this
way created a new alphabet. Another of Segays’s techniques was to cut up a text
and build from its fragments a new one. A good example is his poem, “Izuchenie
mozga Lenina: Manifest” (A Study of Lenin’s Brain: A Manifesto, 1969–1973; see
Fig. 2). The poem has the same title as an article that appeared in the newspaper
Izvestia in 1927 and is made up from letters cut out of the paper. The repetition
of the letter k at the beginning of the poem, which results in the ‘unprintable’
Russian word kaka (crap, shit), bitterly mocks the senile decay of the Soviet
leader during his last years.
Fig. 2. Left: Serge Segay: Springtime for Kruchenykh (1979); Right: A Study of Lenin’s Brain:
A Manifesto (1969)
With his pictographic and transposed poems and texts, Segay was often not far
away from pure visual poetry. Making poetry was for him a blending of various
forms of art, of combining all kinds of materials, of expressing poetic ideas not
only by words and sentences, but by composing images with multiple compo-
nents. The meaning of a poetic text, he assumed, arises from the blending of all
those elements into a verbal-visual work of art. Sometimes, such a text literally
becomes a thing, an object: a collage, or a handmade book, or an artistically man-
ufactured file or box that bears a title and a date and contains a number of poems
and drawings. In view of this experimental approach to poetry-art it is astounding
how rational and concise Segay was in his scholarly and theoretical articles.
Even more important than Nomer was the second journal, Transponans,
launched by Segay and Nikonova in 1979 in the town of Eysk where, after a series
of removals to various Russian cities, they found a place to live. In this house that
belonged to Nikonova’s great-grandmother they continued their artistic practice
established during their Nomer years, but this time the journal appeared in five
hand-made copies. Apart from works produced by Segay and Nikonova them-
selves, it published much long forgotten and also new material of representatives
of the Russian historical avant-garde, such as the Futurist Aleksei Kruchenykh
and the members of the OBERIU group, 2 such as Alexander Vvedensky and Igor
Bakhterev. The magazine also developed into one of the very few media in which
the contemporary experimental poets and artists, such as Vladimir Erl, Dmitry
Aleksandrovich Prigov, Andrey Monastyrsky and Ilya Kabakov could publish
their work. It also published articles (and some poetry) by Nikolay Khardzhiev,
the great expert on the Russian historical avant-garde. Segay knew him quite
well, visited him when he was in Moscow and even served him as a secretary for
a while. Contrary to Nomer, the influence of which was restricted to Sverdlovsk,
Transponans became, although materially unavailable for both contributors
and readers, widely known in the unofficial and artistic world of the 1980s. The
journal, which conveyed such a rich view of Russian neo-avant-gardism in this
period, has still not been reprinted, nor become available on the Internet. A com-
plete set of its thirty-six issues – the journal was published until 1987, when the
perestroika put an end to samizdat publications – can be found in the archives of
Bremen University.
The transformation of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Empire made it much
easier for Segay and Nikonova to participate in the international mail art net-
work.3 Segay and Nikonova immediately felt at home in this environment, not
2 ОБэРИу – Объединение реального искусства (The Union of Real Art) was a short-lived
avant-garde collective, founded in 1928 by Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. It also in-
cluded some Futurist writers and was notorious for its provocative activities, which in many ways
foreshadowed the Theatre of the Absurd.
3 Mail Art had a forerunner in Futurist arte postale and consisted of sending small-scale works
of art through the postal service. It became popular in the Fluxus movement, and in the 1960s
developed into a global network of mail artists. It shunned the official channels and institutions
only because it perfectly suited the kind of art and poetry they had produced
for a long time, but also because mail art was anti-establishment and formed a
counter-culture to the market economy of institutionalized art. Active as always,
Nikonova and Segay initiated in 1991 a new journal, Double, again hand-made,
but now in as many copies as there were artists in the network, who all received
their personal copy with contributions of other member of the network.
At the end of the past century, Segay and Nikonova became fed up with the
difficult situation they had to face in Eysk. In 1998, they decided to emigrate to
Germany and took up residence in the city of Kiel. Ever since, they continued
to live there, hardly recognized by or even known to the Western artistic world,
just as they are still not being appreciated in their own country. They continued
to publish small books in limited editions, and remained active as mail artists.
Segay edited a number of books for a one-man publishing house in Madrid, Edi-
ciones del Hebreo Errante, and issued works by poets of the Russian historical
avant-garde: Kruchenykh, Bakhterev, Alexander Tufanov and others. Moreo-
ver, he wrote a number of articles about the avant-garde and published them in
Russian and Western journals. In 2006, the Amsterdam-based journal, Russian
Literature, devoted a triple issue to him and his wife. Together with essays on
their work it also contained a selection of their poetry and prose.
When his wife Ry Nikonova became ill, Segay looked after her until she died
in March 2014. Serge Segay followed her in September, his life having become
rather meaningless without his lifelong partner.
Selected Bibliography
a) Writings by Sergei Sigei
Sigei, Sergei: Armeisko-arameiskie stikhi. Madrid: Ediciones del Hebreo Errante, 2001.
—: Chitantologiia zaumi 1910–1972. S.l: [samizdat], s.d.
—: My Range. West Lima/WI: Xexoxial Editions, 2008.
—: New Cannibalism Wave. Itzehoe: Hacker, 2004.
—: Shedevrez : 44 stikhatvari. Madrid: Ediciones del Hebreo Errante, 2003.
—: Sobukvy. Moscow: Gileia, 1996.
Sigei, Sergei, and Rea Nikonova: “From Zaum-Archive with Love: Modern Talking.” Da! Russkii
zhurnal dlia dizainerov-grafikov 2–3 (1995): 25–31.
—: Formel vor: Gedichte auf Russisch. Itzehoe: Footura Black Edition, 2005.
of art distribution and possessed an egalitarian ethos that promoted sharing rather than selling
works of art.
—: Mezhdunarodnaia vystavka vizual’noi poezii. Eisk: Otdel zhivopisi i grafiki Eiskogo

istoriko-kraevedcheskogo muzeia, 1990.
—: Scripturale Gesten. Berlin: Neue Freiheit Huckauf, 1989.
—: Transponance Transsfurismus oder kaaba der abstraktion. Siegen: Universität –
Gesamthochschule, 1989.
—: Zaum. Wien: Das fröhliche Wohnzimmer, 1990.
Sigei, Sergei, and John M. Bennett: Zaum: Russian Visual Poetry. Kiel: Russian Kieler Edition,
2006.
Sigei, Sergei, and Robin Crozier: Visual Noise. Kiel: Russian Kieler Edition, 1999.
—: Zaum. Orillia, Ont.: ASFi Editions, [1991].
Sigei, Sergei, et al.: 19 Rubber Stamped Concepts. Genève: Out-Press, 1999.
Sigei, Sergei, Rea Nikonova, Pierre Garnier: We Are Living Now in Zaumland. Madrid: Ediciones
del Hebreo Errante, 2003.
Sigei, Sergei, Rea Nikonova, Boris Konstriktor, A. Nik: Transpoety. Trento: Centro Arti Visivi,
1989.
Sigei, Sergei, Robin Crozier, and Luce Fierens: After zaum. Hombeek: Passion Creates Art
Collection, 1991.
b) Secondary literature
Bennett, John M.: “The Translinguistic Collaborative Poetry of Serge Segay, Rea Nikonova, and
John M. Bennett.” Russian Literature 59:2–4 (February-May 2006): 361–374.
Biriukov, Sergei Evgen’evich: “Gipoteza o smysle: Literaturno-kriticheskaia lektsia.” Russian
Literature 59:2–4 (February-May 2006): 317–326.
Brooks, Crispin: ‘’On One Ancestor: Vasilisk Gnedov in the Work of Sergej Sigej and Ry
Nikonova.’’ Russian Literature 59:2–4 (February-May 2006): 177–223.
Evzlin, Mikhail: “Zaum’ i prostranstvo v poezii Sergeia Sigeia.” Russian Literature 57:3–4
(April–May 2005): 245–257.
Garnier, Pierre, Serge Segay [Sergei Segei], and Rea Nikonova [Anna-Ry Nikonova-Tarshis]: We
Are Living Now in Zaumland. Madrid: Ediciones del Hebreo Errante, 2003.
Greve, Charlotte: “Zaumland: Serge Segay and Rea Nikonova in the International Mail Art
Network.” Russian Literature 59:2–4 (February–May 2006): 445–467.
Janecek, Gerald James: “A Report on Transfurism.” Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 19 (1987):
123–142.
Janecek, Gerald James: “Conceptualism in the Work of Sergej Sigej and Rea Nikonova.” Russian
Literature 59:2–4 (February-May 2006): 469–485.
Konstriktor, Boris [Aksel’rod, Boris Mikhailovich]: “Zametki o Ry Nikonovoi i Sergee Sigee.”
Russian Literature 59:2–4 (February–May 2006): 165–175.
Kukui, Il’ia: ‘’Laboratoria avangarda: Zhurnal Transponans.’’ Russian Literature 59:2–4
(February–May): 225–259.
—: “‘Manya Fest’: Ideologemy transfurizma.” Russian Literature 67:3–4 (April–May 2010):
469–476
Lehmann, Gudrun: “Die Transpositionskunst von Ry Nikonova und Sergej Sigej.” Russian
Literature 59:2–4 (February–May 2006): 379–397.
Nazarenko, Tat’iana: “Writing Poetry without Words: Pictographic Poems by Rea Nikonova and
Sergei Sigei.” Russian Literature 59:2–4 (February–May 2006): 285–315.
Nikonova, Rea: Serge Segay. Oysterville/WA: Anabasis xtant, 2003.
Röder, Kornelia: ‘’Internationale Kooperationen von Rea Nikonova und Serge Segay mit Robin
Crozier.’’ Russian Literature 59:2–4 (February–May): 429–444.
Tigountsova, Inna: “Handmade Books and Visual Poems of Sergei Sigei, a Russian Transfurist.”
Canadian-American Slavic Studies 364 (Winter 2002): 471–483.
Vitacchio, Alberto, and Carla Bertola: “Rea Nikonova and Serge Segay: Notes on a Journey
Through Art.” Russian Literature 59:2–4 (February–May 2006): 487–505.
Zvenigorodskaia, Natalia Georgievna: “Rukopisnye knigi i kollazhi Sergeia Sigeia kak sposob
issledovania poezii russkogo futurizma.” Georgii F. Kovalenko, ed.: Russkii kubofuturizm.
Sankt-Peterburg: Bulanin, 2002. 198–200.
Section 5: Reviews
Ekaterina Lazareva
Futurism and War: A Conference in Zagreb
(28–29 June 2014)
Introduction
The First World War and Avant-Garde Art was an international conference that
opened symbolically on 28 June 2014, on the centenary of the murder of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. It was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in
Zagreb (Croatia), together with an exhibition of the same name showing material
from the Marinko Sudac collection. Both events were organized by the Institute of
Avant-garde Studies, a privately-funded organization that seeks to foster research
into the entire spectrum of the Eastern European avant-garde through interna-
tional co-operation.
The conference involved Slavists and art historians from Britain, Croatia,
Germany, Hungary, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Switzerland and the USA. They
traced, in 21 papers, the global transformations brought about in the political,
public and cultural life in Europe during the years 1914 to 1918. The military events
not only caused millions of deaths, but also led to the falling of four empires, to
the formation of new states and the establishment of several totalitarian régimes
of different political orientations. The First World War affected the personal life of
many protagonists of the avant-garde. It cut Europe into front lines and blocked
the free cultural exchange of ideas that had been a precondition for the birth of
Modernism; yet, it also lumped together artists of diverse origin in places such as
the Cabaret Voltaire, where they created new art movements. In other cities, the
Great War triggered a transformation and radical reorganization of existing avant-
garde circles (e.g. German Expressionism), or a politicization of aesthetics (as in
Italian and Russian Futurism).
The focus of the Zagreb conference was on avant-garde art; many papers
concerned themselves with Expressionism, Futurism and Dada, as well as other
Modernist movements in the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and
Yugoslavia. Consideration was also given to the Balkan neo-avant-gardes after
the Second World War and to Russian art of the post-Soviet period, but in this
report, I shall only highlight the contributions that focussed upon Italian and
Russian Futurism.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0028
478 Ekaterina Lazareva
Italian Futurism and war
Günter Berghaus (Bristol) painted a broad picture of the Italian Futurists’ atti-
tude towards war. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was a lawyer by education and
therefore perfectly familiar with traditional and modern theories of state and rev-
olution. In his early years, he was strongly influenced by Mikhail Bakunin and
Georges Sorel. His political engagement veered between Anarchist proclamations
of violent insurrection and militaristic Irredentism. In the Libyan War and First
Balkan War he found inspiration for his concept of war as the ultimate cleanser
for the world. Many Futurists joined the Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists
and Automobilists in the First World War and had to face many scenes of grue-
some devastation, yet they continued to believe that destruction was a neces-
sary first stage before a new world could be erected. After the war, they sought to
realize their Utopian ideas by founding the Futurist Political Party and to allign
themselves with the Arditi stormtroopers and the Fasci di combattimento. In the
‘Red Biennium’ of 1918–20, the cleansing function of war was replaced with that
of an ‘Italian revolution’. Marinetti saw the ‘New Italy’ governed by a ‘proletariat
of geniuses’, but this was not exactly what the Fascist leadership, least of all Mus-
solini, wanted to establish. Consequently, Marinetti quit the Fasci in 1920.
The concept of a ‘new sensibility’ in Futurist aesthetics and its relation to war
was the focus of a paper by Hans Günther (Bielefeld). Starting off with Umberto
Boccioni’s Pittura scultura futuriste: Dinamismo plastico (Futurist Painting and
Sculpture: Dynamism in Space, 1914), he showed that the artist was profoundly
influenced by Impressionism and its Italian derivative, Divisionism. Sensation
and intuition became key aspects of his notion of a sensibilità pittorica moderna,
which had more in common with a ‘synthesized Impressionism’ than with an
all-too ‘rational’ French Cubism. Marinetti, following Boccioni, wanted a renewed
concept of sensibilità, but as his Bombardamento di Adrianopoli (The Bombard-
ment of Adrianople, 1912) showed, it was a rather sensualist form, for which he
also used the term lirismo. He overcame his Symbolist heritage only in 1912, date
of the Manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista (Technical Manifesto of Futur-
ist Literature), and the first parole in libertà (Words-in-Freedom). In the lirismo
rapidissimo, brutale e immediato (swift, brutal, and immediate lyricism)1 of Zang
Tumb Tuuum, he renewed the concept of reportage that attempted to capture
multiple sensations, i.e. visual, acoustic, olfactory impressions of battle, in an
1 Marinetti: “Distruzione della sintassi – Immaginazione senza fili – Parole in libertà.” F. T.

Marinetti: Teoria e invenzione futurista, p.76. English translation “Destruction of Syntax – Un-
trammeled Imagination – Words-in-Freedom.” Critical Writings, p. 127.
Futurism and War Conference, Zagreb (28–29 June 2014) 479
Fig. 1. Fedja Vukić speaking on The First World War and Visual Communication
inter-media work poised between the visual arts and literature. While Boccioni
associated the modern sensibility with Big-City life, Marinetti saw it realized in
war as a total environmental event which, according to Günter, “demands to be
treated in the form of a total work of art, a gesamtkunstwerk.”
The interrelations between avant-garde art practice, ideological manipu-
lation and commercial communication was the topic of a paper by Fedja Vukić
(Zagreb). Drawing on material of the Wolfsonian-Florida International Univer-
sity in Miami Beach, he demonstated the influence of military propaganda on
the Futurist avant-garde, especially in the field of advertising. Examples from
the second Futurist phase of the 1920s and 30s served to show how the Futur-
ists transformed the publicity methods of the Belle Époque and introduced new
values and aesthetics that were linked to Mussolini’s corporate society. Vukić’s
material spanned a broad spectrum from the architettura pubblicitaria in the
‘bolted book’, Depero Futurista Dinamo Azari (1927) to the magazine, Stile futur-
ista (1934–1935), from Enrico Prampolini via Marcello Nizzoli to Bruno Munari.
Russian Futurism and the Great War
Olga Burenina (Zurich) showed that the Russian Futurists, like Marinetti, used war
as a metaphor for distinguishing avant-garde art from the traditionalist world, a
conflict represented, for example, in the opera Pobeda nad solntsem (Victory over
the Sun, 1913) by Alexei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov and Mikhail Matyushin.
According to Burenina, the Russian Futurists were also influenced by Anarchism,
in particular by Bakunin’s idea that “Die Lust der Zerstörung ist eine schaffende
Lust” (the passion for destruction is a creative passion).2 Anarchist war against
State authority together with a nihilistic pathos made the Russian Futurists want
to “throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. overboard from the Ship of the
Modernity”.3 Eliminating the aesthetic object with its deforming character was
thought to be a creative act. Burenina suggested an echo here of Herbert George
Wells’ futurological novel, War of the Worlds (1897) and pointed to Velimir Khleb-
nikov’s Anarchist skepticism and his formulation of “words of new holy war” in
the manifesto, Truba marsian (The Trumpet of the Martians, 1916).4
The above mentioned opera, Victory over the Sun, was performed in 1913 in
a stage design by Kazimir Malevich, in which he used for the first time the motif
of a black square, thus offering a prototype for the famous Cherny kvadrat (Black
Square, 1915). Leonid Katsis (Moscow) suggested in his paper that the military
vocabulary of the opera was inspired by the Balkan Wars. He also interpreted Ilya
Zdanevich’s five plays as a response to Victory over the Sun and explored further
echoes of the drama in Soviet art, including non-official artists such as Mikhail
Grobman and Ilya Kabakov.
Nina Gurianova (Chicago) noticed that, in the context of the Russian avant-
garde, it was Wassily Kandinsky, who for the first time portrayed the artist as a
warrior and compared him to St. George. Much of her paper was dedicated to the
aesthetics of anarchy, by which she meant an anesthetization of military action
and a violent deconstruction of the old aesthetics. For the Russian avant-garde,
‘war’ became a metaphor for a whole range of issues. She discussed the responses
to the Great War amongst Futurists and found that, on the whole, they did not
engage in war propaganda, in contrast to Vasilii Vasil’evich Rozanov’s Voina
1914 goda i russkoe vozrozhdenie (The War of 1914 and the Russian Revival, 1915)
or the popular lubok prints. As examples of the spiritual, even religious feeling
2 Bakunin: “Die Reaction in Deutschland”, p. 1002; “The Reaction in Germany”, p. 58

3 Burliuk, et al.: “Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu”, p. 65; “A Slap in the Face of Public
Taste”, p. 51.
4 Khlebnikov, et al.: Truba marsian; “The Trumpet of the Martians”, p. 104.
towards war she cited Natalia Goncharova’s series Misticheskie obrazi voini (Mys-
tical Images of War, 1914), published in Moscow in the first months of the First
World War. Olga Rozanova in her fifteen linocuts called Voina (War, 1916) used
fragments from real newspaper to interpret the events of the time, and Aleksei
Kruchenykh made an artists’ book, Vselenskaia voina (Universal War, 1916), in
which a series of collages echoed the chaos and destruction of the Great War. To
demonstrate how diametrically opposed these artists were to the Italian Futur-
ists, she cited Viktor Romanovich Khovin’s essay, “Futurizm i voina” (Futurism
and War, 1915), in which Marinetti’s slogan of war as a necessary cleanser was
rejected as an unacceptable ideology.
In her presentation on the iconography of the war, Natalya Zlydneva
(Moscow) analysed the allegorical and symbolical motif of explosion that
conveys a disturbing feeling of conflict in Russian Cubo-Futurist paintings. In
her interpretation, she drew on Iuri Lotman’s Kul’tura i vzryv (Culture and Explo-
sion, 1992), which demonstrates that these explosions could have a wide range
of meanings. For the Futurists, a letter was an explosion and a word a barrage of
explosions. Therefore, their poetry was by nature ‘explosive’.
Tatiana Jovović (Podgorica) in her detailed study of Mayakovsky’s treatment
of war demonstrated a development of physiological images and defiant, hyper-
bolic metaphors, which force the reader to corporally feel the horrors of war. Her
analysis, based on Leonid Lipavsky’s article, “Horror Research” (1930),5 showed
how the poet created an anatomic theatre, in which pathological manifestations
of smoldering human flesh and blood were accompanied by the roaring and
howling cacophony of battle. The First World War was perceived very negatively
by the Russian Futurists. Mayakovsky’s patriotic enthusiasm quickly changed
into a condemnation of war in “Bez belykh flagov” (No White Flags) and “Voina
i iazyk” (War and Language), both published in Nov newspaper in 1914. Maya
kovsky claimed that the “verbal clothes were torn for war expression and should
be changed”, that “the military tasks for poets are revision of the arsenal of old
words and creation of new words”.6 This concept – subsequently called ostrane-
niie (defamiliarization) by Viktor Shklovsky7 – was further developed in Maya
kovsky’s poem, Voina i mir (War and the World, 1916).8
5 Lipavskii: Issledovanie uzhasa.

6 Maiakovskii: “Voina i iazyk”, p. 328.
7 Shklovski: “Iskusstvo kak priyem.” English translation: “Art as Technique.”
8 In the Russian language, the words мир (world) and мiръ (peace) are transliterated as mir.
The different spellings were abolished in 1918, thus obliterating the distinction between the titles
of Leo Tolstoy’s Война и мир (War and Peace) and Mayakovsky’s Война и Мiръ (War and the
World), a fact that must strike a chord with H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1897).
Sonja Briski Uzelac (Zagreb) analysed the transition from the concept of New
Art in pre-war Russian Futurism (“The Academy and Pushkin are less intelligible
than hieroglyphs”9) to the attempt to build new artistic institutions after the Feb-
ruary Revolution. While the Imperial Academy of Arts was abolished, different
views on what should replace it circulated in the new government. The leftist
block, supported by the Futurists, sought to overcome the separation of art and
life and to create new training institutions intimately connected to the new life.
The destruction of ‘art mausoleums’ went hand in hand with the establishment
of Free State Workshops for the Arts (Svobodnye gosudarstvennye khudozhestven-
nye masterskie) in Petrograd and Moscow, with elected professors, self-govern-
ment by pupils, etc. The productionist ethos of those years can also be seen in
the VKhUTEMAS and VKhUTEIN, which Uzelac linked to the experience of the
Bauhaus. In her view, they did not represent any longer the liberating and crea-
tive spirit that characterized the first institutional initiatives in post-revolutionary
Russia because, after 1923, the Left (i.e. the Futurists, Anarchists and Construc-
tivists) were successively disempowered and the old academy system was rein-
troduced.
The use of military metaphors in twentieth-century avant-garde art was traced
by Ekaterina Lazareva (Moscow). Starting from the concept of the ‘advance-guard’
in medieval and early modern warfare10 and ending with Clement Greenberg’s
Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939), she showed how the early avant-garde idea of art
as advancement and anticipation was replaced during the war by the idea of art
itself as a weapon and how the successive developments of military science and
new methods of warfare, such as guerrilla, terrorism and digital hacking, enriched
the artistic vocabulary of modern and contemporary art (including Underground
art of the 1970s, the Guerrilla Girls in the 1980s and recent Pussy Riot actionism).
The transition of Russian Futurism from Anarchist rebellion against conservative
tastes to an organized struggle for productivism and factography can be read as
a symbolical change conditioned by the experience of the First World War. The
militant rhetoric used by the LEF group was later picked up by their opponents
and entered the official language of Stalinist culture in the 1930s, but also became
a subversive strategy in the 1990s for conceptualists such as Andrey Monastyrsky
and radical artists such as Dmitrii Pimenov.
9 Burliuk, et al.: “Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu”, p. 65; “A Slap in the Face of Public
Taste”, p. 51.
10 See Calinescu: “‘Avant-garde’: Some Terminological Considerations.”
Fig. 2. Futurist manifestos and newspapers at the Exhibition of the Sudac Collection.
It is expected that all papers of this conference will soon be made available in a
book to be published by the Institute of Avant-garde Studies in Zagreb.
Futurism in the Sudac Collection
On 28 June, on the occasion of the conference on The First World War and Avant-
Garde Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb opened an exhibition of
material stemming from the Marinko Sudac collection. It included a wall of Futur-
ist manifestos, most of them also translated in a folder displayed in the hall,11
Futurist magazines and newspapers, and a large secection of arists’ books from
the Central-European avant-garde.
11 Margetić and Miličić: Sažetci futurističkih manifesta i prijevod na engleski.

The exhibition included a graphic timeline accompanied by many original

photographs, which provided a historical and cultural context for the artworks
and documents displayed in the hall. Although most of the items from the col-
lection belong to the period after the First World War, the exhibition marked the
very beginning of the European avant-garde with eighteen manifestos of Italian
Futurism, ranging from the early Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (Manifesto of the
Futurist Painters) and La pittura futurista: Manifesto tecnico (Technical Manifesto
of Futurist Painting, both 1910) and manifestos from the second phase (secondo
futurismo), such as I diritti artistici propugnati dai futuristi italiani (Artistic Rights
Defended by the Italian Futurists, 1923), or L’impero italiano (The Italian Empire,
1923). Late Russian Futurism was presented by Aleksei Kruchenykh’s book, Lef
agitki Maiakovskogo, Aseeva, Tret’iakova (Lef Agitation by Mayakovsky, Aseev
and Tretyakov, 1925).
Some of the most interesting exhibits came from Hungary, for example the
activist journals edited by writer and artist Lajos Kassák: MA (Budapest 1916–19;
Vienna, 1920–26), Dokumentum (Budapest, 1926–1927) and Munka (Budapest,
1928–39), or Iván Hevesy’s pathbreaking study, A futurista, expresszionista és
kubista festészet (Futurist, Expressionist and Cubist Painting, 1919). The his-
torical avantgarde from the Balkans was represented by Zenit, an international
journal for art and culture published in Zagreb and Belgrade from 1921 to 1926
by Ljubomir Micić, and Tank: Revue internationale active / Tank!: Revue inter-
nationale de l’art vivant (Ljubljana, 1927–28). The impressive section of post-war
magazines and books that connected Zagreb to the main developments of art in
Europe was supplemented with Dadaist publications such as Dada-Jok, edited
and designed by Branko Ve Poljanski, and Dada-Tank, edited and designed by
Dragan Aleksić in 1922. From the works of art displayed, mention should be made
of a group of photographs and designs related to the avant-garde group Traveleri,
which staged Marinetti’s Tamburo di fuoco (The Drum of Fire, 1922) in the gymna-
sium of Zagreb’s First Grammar School.
Taken as a whole, the Marinko Sudac Collection with over 10,000 works of art
and documents can be considered a major resource for avant-garde studies. It has
assembled a wide-ranging selection of historical material, mainly from Central
and Eastern Europe, but also with substantial holdings from adjacent countries,
such as Italy. Much of it is accessible in an online Virtual Museum of Avant-Garde
Art: www.avantgarde-museum.com.
Bibliography
Burliuk, David, Aleksandr [Aleksei] Kruchenykh, Vladimir Maiakovskii, and Viktor [Velimir]
Khlebnikov: “Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu.” Vera N. Terekhina, and Aleksei
P. Zimenkov, eds.: Russkii futurizm: Teoriia, praktika, kritika, vospominaniia. Moskva:
Nasledie, 1999. 2nd edn St.-Petersburg: Poligraph, 2009. 65–66. English translation: “A
Slap in the Face of Public Taste.” Anna Lawton, and Herbert Eagle, eds.: Russian Futurism
through its Manifestoes, 1912–1928. Ithaca/NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. 51–52.
Calinescu, Matei: “‘Avant-garde’: Some Terminological Considerations.” Yearbook of
Comparative and General Literature 23 (1974): 67–78.
Elysard, Jules [Mikhail Bakunin]: “Die Reaction in Deutschland: Ein Fragment von einem
Franzosen.” Deutsche Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst 5:247–251 (October 1842):
985–1002. English translation “The Reaction in Germany.” Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected
Works by the Activist Founder of World Anarchism. Translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff.
New York: Knopf, 1972. 55–57.
Khlebnikov, Velimir, Mariia Siniakova, Bozhidar [Bogdan Gordeev], Grigorii Petnikov, Nikolai
Aseev: Truba marsian. Khar’kov: “Liren”, 1916. English translation “The Trumpet of
the Martians.” Anna Lawton, and Herbert Eagle, eds.: Russian Futurism through its
Manifestoes, 1912–1928. Ithaca/NY: Cornell University Press, 1988. 103–106.
Lipavskii, Leonid: Issledovanie uzhasa. Moskva: Ad Marginem, 2005.
Maiakovskii, Vladimir Vladimirovich: “Bez belykh flagov.” V. V. Maiakovskii: Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii. Vol. 1. Moskva: Goslitizdat, 1955. 321–324.
—: “Voina i iazyk.” V. V. Maiakovskii: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Vol. 1. Moskva: Goslitizdat,
1955. 325–328.
Margetić, Mirta, and Anna-Maria Miličić, eds.: Sažetci futurističkih manifesta i prijevod na
engleski. Zagreb: Kolekcija Marinko Sudac, 2014.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso: “Distruzione della sintassi – Immaginazione senza fili – Parole in
libertà.” F. T. Marinetti: Teoria e invenzione futurista. A cura di Luciano de Maria. 2nd edn
Milano: Mondadori, 1983. 65–80.
—: “Destruction of Syntax – Untrammeled Imagination – Words-in-Freedom.” F.T. Marinetti:
Critical Writings. Ed. by Günter Berghaus. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
120–131.
Shklovskii, Viktor Borisovich: “Iskusstvo kak priem.” V.B. Shklovski.: O teorii prozy. Moskva:
Krug, 1925. 7–20. English translation: “Art as Technique.” V. Shklovsky: Literary Theory: An
Anthology. Ed. by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden/MA: Blackwell, 1998. 15–21.
Wells, Herbert George: “War of the Worlds.” Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine
22 (April 1897): 615–627; 23 (May–October 1897): 2–9, 215–224, 251–262, 391–400,
541–550, 601–610; 24 (November–December 1897): 79–88, 162–171.
Günter Berghaus
Futurist Utopias
In 2008, the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM)
was founded with the aim of investigating the multifaceted strands of modern
art and literature within a global setting. The network promotes interdisciplinary
and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics, and aims to
encourage an interest in the cultural dimensions and contexts of the modern
age. The fourth bi-annual conference took place from 29–31 August 2014 at the
University of Helsinki. Its theme was “Utopia”, and some 350 papers focussed
on the many dreams and chimeras within European literature and arts. In over
100 themed sections, delegates from all over the world covered a wide spectrum
of artistic media from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries and
investigated how Modernist and avant-garde artists sought to offer alternatives to
existing realities.
Although it can be frustrating when delegates find themselves confronted
with the fact that several papers they are interested in are presented in parallel
sessions, it is also a great pleasure to be able to pick and choose from a brimful
cornucopia of scholarly offerings. The organizers, David Ayers and Marja Härmän-
maa, had not only selected an abundance of excellent papers but also persuaded
the university authorities and the city council’s committee for cultural affairs to
lay on two receptions as well as an official dinner on the beautiful Seurosaari
island out in the archipelago.
As far as the historical avant-garde was concerned, Futurism, Dada and Surre-
alism found a very ample representation in the conference programme, whereas
Expressionism and Constructivism appears to rank much lower on the current
scale of research priorities. Even less interest was shown in Modernist and avant-
garde tendencies in non-Western art and literature. Not a single paper in Helsinki
concerned itself with African artists. African art only featured in the ‘Primitiv-
ist’ corner, thus pointing to an urgent task for future conferences: the organizing
committee ought to include at least one expert in African art, and maybe a second
one for Asia.
As far as Futurism was concerned, it was discussed in one double session,
two keynote speeches and fifteen individual papers. The topic of Sessions 108
and 119 was “Futurism in Northern Countries” and began with Torben Jelsbak
(Roskilde University) addressing the public discourses on the Italian movement
in the Danish popular and cultural press. He discussed the impact of the 1912
Futurist touring exhibition in Copenhagen. He then examined Futurist literature
in Denmark, especially by Emil Bønnelycke, Rudolf Broby-Johansen and Harald
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0029
Fig. 1. Marja Härmänmaa and David Ayers at the opening of the EAM Congress
Landt Momberg. Vibeke Petersen Gether (Royal Library, København) concerned

herself with the relations between Futurism and Art Déco in Denmark. Her main
focus was Jais Nielsen, whose five-feet-tall stoneware figurine, Pottemageren
(The Potter), won the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts
Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes of 1925. She emphasized that Art Déco was
not a homogeneous style and could easily incoporate Futurist elements, not least
because the Italian movement had lost much of its radical drive by the mid-1920s.
Benedikt Hjartarson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik) opened his presentation
with the provocative statement that an art movement that had as one of its princi-
pal aims the destruction of museums could not have much success in Iceland, as
the island did not possess any museum that could be destroyed. Nonetheless, in
the discussion about an Icelandic art of the future the Italian movement played a
certain rôle because it was generally considered as a representative of all avant-
garde movements of the time. To some degree, the discussion on Futurism in
Denmark made itself felt in Reykjavik and featured regularly in the debates on
cultural renewal and on an Icelandic modernity (albeit often as a caricature or
travesty of modernity). Þórbergur Þórðarson, author of a poem called “Futurist
Evening Moods” (1917), even called himself a Futurist, but he never adopted Mari-
netti’s aesthetics.
Giedrė Jankevičiūtė (Lithuanian Institute for Culture Research) spoke about
Futurism in Lithuanian art of the 1920s. As Vilnius and Kaunas had few intel-
lectuals in the early twentieth century, Marinetti’s manifesto in Le Figaro did
not find much repercussion in the country. But during the First World War, an
exodus took place to Russia, where several artists became acquainted with Futur-
488 Günter Berghaus
Fig. 2. Left. Kazys Šimonis: Vėjas (The Wind, 1926). Right. Parole in libertà in the periodical
Keturi vėjai (Four Winds), no. 4 (1928).
ism. Consequently, Futurist features entered the artistic vocabulary of Vladas

Didžiokas, Adomas Galdikas, Vytautas Bičiūnas and the couple Vladimiras Dube-
neckis and Olga Švede Dubeneckienė. The periodical Švietimo darbas announced
in 1922 a Futurist exhibition in Lithuania, and Marinetti’s aesthetic programme
featured in the almanach Keturių vėjų pranašas (A Herald of Four Winds,
1922) and the periodical Keturi vėjai (Four Winds, 1924–28). This caused Mari-
netti to send “ai futuristi Lituani la mia fervida simpatia”, a greeting that was
published in the periodical MUBA: Revue International in 1928. Apart from
some excellent graphic works and stage designs in Futurist style, the painting
Vėjas (The Wind, 1926) by Kazys Šimonis was discussed in this paper. Ramutė
Rachlevičiūtė (Vilnius Academy of Arts) presented further examples that demon-
strate the Futurist influence in Lithuania, among others some high-quality book
illustrations by Juozas Petrėnas (in arte Petras Tarulis), poetry by Salys Šemerys
and Kazys Binkis that was clearly influenced by Mayakovsky, and the poem “Le
Football”, written in French by Juozas Tysliava.
Tiit Hennoste (University of Tartu) reported on experiments with language
and book design in Estonia. In a pithy historical overview he discussed the first
Futurist group that was founded in the small town of Pärnu in 1910 and Johannes
Semper’s lectures on Futurism after his return from Moscow in 1914. The young
poet Johannes Barbarus introduced Russian Cubo-futurism to the Estonian
public and, in March 1914, Henrik Visnapuu and Richard Roht published a Futur-
ist manifesto in a collection printed on green paper and called Roheline moment
(The Green Moment, 1914). After a discussion of several Estonian visual poems
and sound poems in Futurist style, the speaker analysed some performances by
Erni Hiir and a book of poetry, Lendavad sead (Flying Pigs, 1919), printed on beer
labels by Albert Kivikas. Finally, he showed that the inspiration to some of these
works came not only from Russia and Italy, but also from the French para-Futurist
movement of Paroxysm, launched by Nicolas Beauduin in 1911.
Overall, the double session on Futurism was highly informative and, in fact,
livelier than many others during the congress. The audience with a largely Scan-
dinavian and Slavic background packed out the hall and greatly appreciated the
stimulating papers, as they contained much unknown or little known material
and provoked genuinely new insights into Futurism in a number of northern
countries that have never featured prominently in Futurism Studies.
Other papers on Futurism in the course of the three days concerned them-
selves mainly with Italy, Russia and music. Rossella Riccobono (University of St.
Andrews) had organized a panel on myths, dystopias and cityscapes in Italian
Modernism, which included a paper by Luca Somigli (University of Toronto)
on “Marinetti between Modernism and Avant-garde”. The well-known Futurism
scholar offered an interpretation of the novel Gli indomabili (The Untameables,
1922) as an exemplary text that engaged in a renewed dialogue with the artistic
institutions the author had reviled and fiercely opposed during the early years
of the Futurist movement. Welge Jobst (University of Konstanz) spoke about
Massimo Bontempelli’s revision of Futurist poetics in his realismo mágico aes-
thetics and the Novecento movement. He focussed on Bontempelli’s early poetry
and prose works, in which the Futurist aesthetics was expanded as well as parodi-
cally subverted. He demonstrated how Bontempelli transformed an earlier Futur-
ist Utopia into a more guarded, ambivalent stance regarding technical and urban
modernity. Jun Tanaka (University of Tokyo) offered a presentation on the Swiss
writer and artist Gilbert Clavel, a collaborator of Fortunato Depero in the puppet
theatre production, I balli plastici (1916). The paper focussed on Clavel’s Ein Insti-
tut für Selbstmord (An Institute for Suicide, 1918), a dystopian vision translated
into Italian by Italo Tavolato and illustrated by Depero.
Przemysław Strożek (Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences) had
organized a panel that engaged with the Italian cultural initiatives in Ethiopia,
1936–42. He introduced the session with a paper on “Marinetti and the African
War”, in which he interpreted Ethiopia as having formed part of the Futurisme
mondial concept first presented in 1924. The Futurist leader was not only one
of the first volunteers to participate in the African War, he also wrote a number
of essays in which Ethiopia was presented as a kind of virgin territory, where a
Futurist State could be brought to realization. The II mostra nazionale di plastica
murale per l’edilizia fascista, held at the Mercati Traianei in Rome (October-No-
vember 1936), offered the Futurists a showcase for a new colonial architecture
inspired by Antonio Sant’ Elia and for public decorations in the latest Futurist
style (e.g. Prampolini’s Sintesi dell’Africa, a polymaterial relief that juxtaposed

a map of Africa with stylized images of roads and planes). One of the few works
actually realized in Africa was Giuseppe Pettazzi’s Fiat Tagliero Building in
Asmara, Eritrea (1938), shaped like an aeroplane with completely unsupported
concrete wings spanning some 15 meters. Another architect engaged in Musso-
lini’s città dell’africa orientale projects was Gherardo Bosio, whose masterplan
for Gondar, Dessié and Jimma (1937) was presented by David Rifkind in his
paper, “The Elusive Utopias of Italian Urban Planning in Ethiopia”. He showed
that the projection of architectural fantasies onto an African tabula rasa was not
just a characteristic of Futurist architects. Nor in fact of Fascist architects, as Rixt
Wonstra demonstrated in her presentation, “A City for Modern Times: Le Corbus-
ier’s Sketch for Addis Ababa”. Like many Futurists and Rationalists, Le Corbus-
ier was sketching out plans for the città di fondazione, and at the first National
Congress of Urbanism, held in Rome in April 1937, he presented ideas in which
Ethiopia became a testing ground for new urban environments (later, these plans
became integrated into the projects developed by the Consulta centrale per l’edil-
izia e l’urbanistica in the Ministery of African Italy).
Ester Coen (University of Aquila) was the first keynote speaker and addressed
the topic, “Utopia, City and the Italian Avant-gardes”, in which she contrasted
two apparently opposing responses to the challenges of modernity: the dynamic
fury of the Futurists and the apparent calm visions of the Metaphysical Paint-
ers. Boccioni’s city as the starting point for the Futurists’ project of renewal was
compared with De Chirico’s spatial arrangement of architectonic, or archaeo-
logical, elements. The last keynote speaker was Nina Gurianova (Northwestern
University, Chicago) who investigated the aesthetics of anarchy in the Russian
avant-garde, in which ‘war’ became a metaphor for a wide range of issues. She
addressed various Futurist responses to the Great War, ranging from the popular
lubok prints to Goncharova’s series Misticheskie obrazi voini (Mystical Images of
War, 1914). A detailed discussion of Olga Rozanova and Aleksei Kruchenykh’s
book, Vselenskaia voina (Universal War, 1916) showed that the Russians largely
rejected Marinetti’s slogan of war as the ultimate cleanser of the world.
Anther paper discussing Khlebnikov’s Utopian visions of a world of peace was
presented by Gabriella Imposti (University of Bologna). She investigated Khleb
nikov’s early attraction towards the Slavic warrior or hunter and his evolution
towards the anti-militarist manifesto, Proclamation of the Chairmen of the Terres-
trial Globe (April 1917). Khlebnikov fought for the cause of Russian budetlianstvo
in opposition to Italian Futurism, yet like Marinetti he represented war as a crucial
phase in the movement of mankind towards a Utopian future. In Ladomir (World of
Harmony, 1920), however, the future was presented as a return to a primeval past,
and other experiments like his play Zangezi (1922) showed his vision that war could
Fig. 3. Keynote speech by Nina Gurianova on “Utopias and Wars of the Russian Avant-garde”
be defeated thanks to a universal ‘star language’ (zvezdnyi iazyk). Willem West-

steijn (University of Amsterdam) brought Futurism up to date with a paper on the
neo-avant-garde in Russia. He presented Ry Nikonova and Sergei Sigei, who made
a unique contribution to Russian culture during the Soviet period. Largely oper-
ating in the Underground and circulating their work in the Samizdat community,
both poets were establishing links between Futurism and present-day avant-garde
movements. In the 1970s, they created in the town of Eysk a handmade journal,
Transponans, which became the centre of the neo-avant-garde, publishing work of
Futurists and of unofficial poets and artists from all over the country.
Marijan Dović (Institute of Slovenian Literature, Slovenian Academy of
Sciences and Arts) spoke about Futurism and other avant-garde movements in
Slovenia and Croatia. The paper paid special attention to their relationship with
contemporary networks in West-Europe. In a very condensed manner, Dović
presented the early Futurist circle of Zvrk in Zadar, Dalmatia and its Slovenian
counterpart, the Podbevšek-Kogoj group, which he then contrasted with Zenit,
a periodical run by the brothers Ljubomir and Branko Micić in Zagreb and sub-
sequently in Belgrade, and its Slovenian successor Tank. He also discussed one
of the most provocative Utopias, namely the idea of a Slavic-Barbarian, a prim-
itive genius, who would invade the decadent West and eventually overcome its
rotten culture. Emiliano Ranocchi (University of Udine) spoke about “The Polish
Cyborg: A Reflection on Modernity in Polish Modernism”, which addressed the
ambivalence of Polish Futurists towards modernity and the machine, as can be
seen in the works of Bruno Jasienski and Tytus Czyżewski. The category of the
cyborg proved particular useful in his discussion of Jerzy Sosnkowski, author of
the novel, Auto, Ty i Ja (miłość maszyn) (A Car, You and Me: Love of Machines,
1925). Irina Genova (New Bulgarian University, Sophia) analysed the traffic of
images in avant-garde magazines from East and West Europe, their Futurist-in-
spired typography and the editorial activities of the Bulgarian editor, poet and
translator Geo Milev. His magazines Vezni (Scales, 1919–1922), the ephemeral Cre-
scendo (1922) and Plamak (Flame, 1924–25) had a distinctly Futurist character and
were praised by Marinetti for their innovative contributions and inventive graphic
style. Natia Ebanoidze (George Chubinashvili National Research Centre for Geor-
gian Art, History and Heritage, Tbilisi) discussed the arrival of Modernism and
Futurism in Georgia and the work of the avant-garde during the short period of
cultural renewal in the 1910s and early 1920s. She presented the magazine Fenixi
(The Phoenix, 1918–19) and some Futurist books and stage design, amongst
others by the Zdanevich brothers, David Kakabadze and Lado Gudiashvili, and
described the subsequent decline due to Soviet censorship and the imposed dom-
inance of Socialist Realism.
Futurist influences in Western Europe were addressed in a variety of papers.
Sarah Lee (Goldsmiths College, University of London) spoke about “Vorticism’s
Dual-Vision of Technology”. She discussed the ambivalence, inconsistencies and
even paradoxes in the Vorticists’s dual concern with machinery and primitivism
and compared this with similar trends in Italian Futurism and German Expres-
sionism. Patricia Silva McNeill (Queen Mary College, University of London) pre-
sented some of the Futurist tendencies in Portuguese Modernism, in particular in
Orpheu (1915). She emphasized the journal’s aesthetic syncretism, especially in
Fernando Pessoa’s writings labelled ‘Sensacionismo’. One of the few scholars in
Helsinki who concerned himself with Asia was Pierantonio Zanotti (Ca’ Foscari
University, Venice). His paper on the Japanese reception of Max Weber’s Cubist
Poems (1914) addressed the Futurist painter’s first volume of poetry, which was
translated into Japanese in 1923 and 1924, influencing the Futurist painter Tai
Kanbara and Renkichi Hirato, author of the manifesto Nihon miraiha sengen undō
– Mouvement Futuriste Japonais (1921). Zanotti showed how the first avant-garde
poets in Japan developed trans-national discourses and practices of ‘modern art’,
in which Futurism, Cubism and Dadaism played a major rôle.
Futurist Music was the topic of a paper by Janne Vanhanen (University of
Helsinki), who investigated the antagonistic relation between artist and audi-
ence in Futurist and contemporary noise music. Comparing Luigi Russolo’s Art
of Noises manifesto of 1913 with more recent cases in music and performance
art, where the artist actively seeks to overwhelm or oppress the audience by the
use of sensory overload and even physical violence, the speaker reflected on the
Futurist legacy in contemporary musical aesthetics and on its repercussion vis-à-
vis the modernist ‘aesthetics of silence’. Konstantin Dudakov-Kashuro (Lomon-
osov State University, Moscow) also spoke about noise music, but his focus was
Arseny Avraamov’s Symphony of Sirens, performed three times in Baku (1922) and
Moscow (1923). The speaker placed this revolutionary work in a wider context of
amateur music on self-made instruments, practiced in Proletkult organizations
and as part of Bolshevik street festivals, and the tradition of noise bands that was
quite common in Russian circus performances. Eisenstein made use of this genre
in his theatrical ‘montage of attractions’, Mudrets (Wise Man, 1923) and again in
the film Protivogazy (Gas Masks, 1924). Other fascinating material presented, also
by means of sound documents and film extracts, concerned itself with metallur-
gical orchestras, productivist noise music and phono-chronicles.
Conclusion
All in all, the Helsinki congress was a great occasion to become acquainted with
current research into the historical avant-garde, including Futurism in its mul-
ti-faceted guises. As has often been stated in essays published in this yearbook,
the term ‘Futurism’ could be rather ‘liquid’ at the time. On the one hand, it was
a catch-all label for a plethora of Modernist tendencies; on the other hand, there
existed a great deal of Futurist-inspired art for which the creators themselves and
the critics avoided the designation ‘Futurist’. Given this terminological confu-
sion, it is not astonishing that some of the speakers in Helsinki presented Futurist
art under the headings ‘Expressionism’, ‘Cubism’ or ‘Constructivism’.
It is my view that an organization concerned with Modernism and the avant-
garde ought to address and critically challenge some of the fixtures in our termi-
nological pigeonholes. It also seems to me that it is long overdue that the scien-
tific committee of EAM begins to confront long-entrenched assumptions about
Modernism and the avant-garde as a preserve of the Western world. From the
early twentieth century onwards, there exited a global network of Modernist and
avant-garde art that truly extended into every corner of the world and influenced
cultural and artistic developments on four continents. I am glad to say that in
the past decade a younger generation of scholars has begun to take on board
the study of Modernism as a global phenomenon and has been investigating the
links between modernity and postcoloniality. Unfortunately, none of them were
present in Helsinki. The same can be said about colleagues in Africa, Asia and
Latin America, who have investigated alternative Modernisms that mixed indig-
enous traditions with coeval Western narratives of the avant-garde. They have
shown in their publications that the interpretative models of Poggioli, Bürger,
Calinescu et al. were far too narrow to explain the rhizome-like structure of global
Modernism or to cover the complex interactions between centre and periphery
(the historical avant-garde, for example, in Mexico or Japan not only reacted
against European imports but also to their colonialist heritage, thus integrating
and rejecting both imported and autochthonous traditions).
So far, EAM has failed to acknowledge this transcontinental1 circulation of
Modernist ideas and aesthetic strategies. It has not engaged with the colonialist
heritage in European Modernism (borne out of a process of modernization that
would not have existed without colonial exploitation) and its Janus face (here,
looking at the ‘primitive’ other, there celebrating technological progress). In
short, it must address the geopolitics of Modernism and Avant-garde Studies. It is
time that the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies directs
the focus of attention on a variety of global nodes of intercultural exchange and
encourages speakers to investigate Modernism as a transcontinental phenome-
non. It is time to dismantle the hegemonic powers of interpretation, acknowledge
multiple Modernisms and the global circulation of avant-garde ideas. In the very
few papers in Helsinki in which Africa, Asia and Latin America found a mention,
the art on those continents was discussed nearly exclusively in a colonialist and
orientialist context. For a congress of the size of EAM 2014 this is an unsatisfac-
tory state of affairs. The network has to engage with different spatial and tempo-
ral configurations of modernity; it needs to reconceptualize Modernism and the
avant-garde in the light of a non-hierarchical rather than Eurocentric paradigm.
The next occasion will be in 2016, when the Centre d’Études des Littératures et
Langues Anciennes et Modernes at the University of Rennes II will act as organiz-
ers of the fifth EAM congress.
1 It needs to be stated that the ‘periphery’ was not necessarily located on other continents. The
old European Empires had their hinterland and entertained colonial relations with them on an
economic, political and cultural level. The circulation of Modernist ideas and the artistic inter-
relations between, let’s say, Saint-Petersburg and Kiev, Belgrade or Minsk should not be disso-
ciated from other issues of dominance and control. Centre / periphery is not just a geographical
figure of speech but also a metaphor of power and authority.
Natalia Budanova and Helen Higgins
The Jack of Diamonds Disputes at the
Courtauld Institute, London (24 October
and 7 November 2014)
On 24 October and 7 November 2014, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London
hosted a remarkable two-part event called Jack of Diamonds: Disputes. Con-
ceived to complement an exhibition of paintings by major Russian avant-garde
artists in the Courtauld Gallery, the Disputes aimed at recreating the emotionally
charged atmosphere of the public debates organized by the Jack of Diamonds
Artists’ Association in the early 1910s. The association, founded in Moscow in
1910 as an avant-garde art group and exhibition society, remained active until
1917. Its controversial, facetious and anti-establishment nature was reflected in
the group’s name, evoking associations with the French term valet de carreau,
meaning scoundrel, an untrustworthy and unreliable person.1 The group quickly
achieved a considerable degree of popularity with a hint of scandal by organiz-
ing large-scale exhibitions in which the latest trends of Modernist art in Western
Europe were displayed alongside innovative creations by Russian artists.
No less topical and passionate were the public debates set up to coincide with
these shows. They addressed a range of thorny subjects, including the latest artis-
tic innovations in Russia and abroad as well as the rôle of West and East in the
development of Russian visual arts. Tactics of deliberate buffoonery and provo-
cation were the debates’ trademarks and, unsurprisingly, the heated discussions
often degenerated into open confrontation between artists and the public. The
legendary tales of those happenings inspired Prof. John Milner and Dr Natalia
Murray, the curators of the Jack of Diamonds exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery,
to stage analogous performances, acted out in character, in an attempt to tran-
scend the academic format of presentation commonly employed for avant-garde
art and to solicit more direct and emotional participation from the audience.
1 In the old French playing cards, the knave of diamonds was called ‘valet de chasse’, hunting
servant. Because of its low status it was considered an insult to call somebody by that name.
In the nineteenth century, the term came to be related to criminals because a diamond-shaped
patch was sewn onto the uniforms of prisoners. A more erotic variation of the character can be
found in Pierre-Alexis Ponson du Terrail’s novel, La Jeunesse du roi Henri (1864) and his earlier
Le Club des valets de cœur (1858), which was translated into Russian as Klub chervonnykh vale-
tov (1877). For a more detailed discussion of the name see Pospelov: “O ‘valetakh’ bubnovykh i
valetakh chervonnykh.”
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0030
496 Natalia Budanova and Helen Higgins
In order to reconstruct the special atmosphere of the original Jack of Dia-

monds events, the organizers of the two Courtauld Disputes devised a clever
ploy: both events commenced an hour before the announced time in the Cour-
tauld Institute of Art’s student café, where a number of intrepid members of the
public had their faces painted (see Fig. 1), in homage to the fashion pioneered by
Russian avant-garde iconoclasts, who paraded Moscow’s main streets decorated
in a wildly unorthodox manner.2
Fig. 1. Face painting at the Courtauld Institute of Art Café, 24 October 2014.
The first Dispute consisted of three impersonations of David Burliuk, a major

Russian Futurist, Aristarkh Lentulov, a dynamic and colourful painter of the Jack
of Diamonds group, and Natalia Goncharova, an avant-garde painter, illustrator
and stage designer. They were introduced by Prof Milner, who not only provided a
historical context for the Jack of Diamonds Debates, but also set the right tone for
the evening by conjuring up a top hat out of a flat round object.
Konstantin Akinsha, a curator and journalist, took to the stage with a bright red
waistcoat and a top hat and offered a brief but convincing impersonation of David
Burliuk (see Fig. 2). He then slipped out of character and proceeded by giving a
detailed overview of Burliuk’s activities as a performer and inexhaustible propaga-
tor of Futurist art. Akinsha’s talk was full of curious little anecdotes about Burliuk
and his circle and drew a convincing portrait of an individual, whose main gift was
not so much artistic aptitude but a rare skill to recognize, appropriate and popular-
ize novel trends in the visual arts, often without possessing any serious or thorough
knowledge of them (as was the case, for example, with Futurism).
2 See Andrey Rossomakhin’s contribution to this volume: “The Ego-Kubo-Rayo-Donkey-Tail-Fu-

turists: About a Russian Cartoon of 1913.”
The Jack of Diamonds Disputes at the Courtauld Institute, London 497
Fig. 2. Konstantin Akinsha as the Russian Futurist David Burliuk.
James Butterwick, a collector and dealer in Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde

art, was, without doubt, the first Dispute’s greatest hit. Impersonating Aristarkh
Lentulov, he captivated his audience with a lively portrait of this narcissistic
artist. He satirized Lentulov as an individual propelled by a constant rivalry
(real or imaginary) with his fellow painters Ilya Mashkov, Robert Falk and Petr
Konchalovsky. The presentation was particularly engaging due to some hilari-
ous allusions to recent events in West-European culture and Russian post-Soviet
history. With his burlesque presentation, not devoid of deliberately provocative
assertions, Butterwick successfully managed to recreate the electric atmosphere
of the historical Jack of Diamonds disputes.
The event concluded with a contribution from Jordan Tobin, a Ph.D. can-
didate at the Courtauld Institute of Art (see Fig. 3a), as Natalia Goncharova, a
rising star of the early Russian avant-garde in 1913. Tobin portrayed Goncharova
as a fervent promoter of face painting, immortalized in a famous photographic
portrait (see Fig. 3b). Tobin recited the manifesto Pochemy mi raskrashivaemsia
(Why We Paint Ourselves), written by Mikhail Larionov and Ilya Zdanevich in
1913. This publication conceptualized the Futurists’ legendary promenades that
so outraged the Moscovite public. The recreation of this event was contextualized
by Prof. John Milner by showing photographs of Russian avant-garde artists and
poets with their faces painted.
Fig. 3. Left: Prof John Milner and Jordan Tobin. The Courtauld Institute Café, 24 October 2014.
Right: Photograph of Natalia Goncharova with her face painted. From Teatr v karikaturakh,
21 September 1913, p. 9.
Given the nature of the event, the traditional Question and Answer session was
an important part of what, at the end of the day, was meant to be a dispute. Fortu-
nately, the audience was willing to enter into the atmosphere of prankish games
and addressed their questions (often provocative) not to the speakers, but to
the characters whom they had impersonated. It certainly put the actors’ wit and
sense of humour to a test, which they passed with flying colours.
The second Dispute took place on 7 November 2014 and opened with Dr Maria
Mileeva’s introductory remarks, which promised the audience an evening of great
fun. This was succeeded by four performances by Prof. John Milner as the Russian
avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov, Chris Knight (aka ‘Mr Mayhem’) as the
Russian Futurist poet and playwright Velimir Khlebnikov, Jack Hartnell as Velim-
ir’s second incarnation, and Elena Sudakova as Larionov’s life-long partner, the
prolific Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova.
Prof. John Milner, with his face painted in the manner of Goncharova in the
previous Dispute, made a lively start to the highly spirited debate, confronting the
audience with the all-important rhetorical question, ‘Why do we have to paint in
French?’ Milner sported a bald headpiece furnished with the words, ‘Not just any
old pony tail’, as he informed the intrigued audience, because ‘it’s got iconogra-
phy!’ (It was actually an imitation of Larionov’s Cossack headgear.) Remaining
in character throughout, Prof. Milner, who is a distinguished specialist in twen-
tieth-century art in Russia, carefully and persuasively imparted Larionov’s inter-
est in and knowledge of West European art, and his subsequent break with the
Jack of Diamonds group. With many witty asides, Milner presented Larionov’s
love for the Russian lubok (popular print), primitive shop signs, children’s draw-
ings and soldiers’ graffiti. By means of an extended and enjoyable romp through
Larionov’s Futurist, Rayonist and Primitivist works (face-painting included), all
with reference to his West-European counterparts, Milner successfully articulated
Larionov’s struggle with his love/hate relationship with French art. The perfor-
mance was occasionally interrupted by members of the public, some protesting,
in French, against his assertions, but others also expressing support for the artist.
The performance given by Chris Knight, a writer and veteran of street theatre,
offered a perfect contrast to Milner’s portrayal of Larionov. Without any doubt,
Knight won the prize for best costume. He arrived on stage with a brightly painted
face, a hand-painted, striped suit, and a sign around his neck announcing that
he was Velimir Khlebnikov, the ‘King of Time’ – an appellation given to Khleb-
nikov by his avant-garde friends. Knight established a strong stage presence and
embodied his character by dragging a sackload of crumpled poems behind him.
He fished out one of these and began the first of three short, engaging readings,
offering an insight into the impressive range of Khlebnikov’s writings. A long-
term admirer and scholar of Khlebnikov’s poetry, linguistic theories and philos-
ophy, Knight delivered a well-timed and articulate reading of zaum’ poetry, with
such precision and verve that he won big applause and infectious laughter.
Fig. 4. From left to right: Jack Hartnell as Velimir, King of Time, Prof. John Milner as Mickhail
Larionov and Chris Knight as Velimir’s second incarnation.
The handover from Velimir, the King of Time, to his second incarnation poign-
antly occurred in front of an image that showed Khlebnikov’s grave and solic-
ited an exclamation from the audience, ‘The King of Time multiplied, ha ha!’
Jack Hartnell, a visiting lecturer in medieval art, appeared on stage with his face
painted in the same sickly green lines as Khlebnikov’s previous incarnation, plus
several numbers drawn on his head – a reference to the poet’s later fascination
with Pythagorean numerology (see Fig. 4, left). Hartnell symbolically wielded a
loaf of bread (‘khleb’ meaning ‘bread’ in Russian) and delivered five readings, the
first of which was Truba Marsian (The Trumpet of the Martians, 1916), written at
a time when Russia was involved in the Great War. It was powerfully delivered,
with tongue-in-cheek asides and convincing outbursts of anger, which kept the
audience both alert and involved. Hartnell’s performance was occasionally inter-
rupted by sharp-witted exclamations, causing uproarious laughter or howls of
disapproval. The more lengthy reading of Khlebnikov’s Mi i doma (We and Our
Buildings, 1918) conveyed a vision of a Utopian architectural future, and was met
with much heckling and cheerful shouts of ‘Get on with it!’ In contrast, a stark
and compassionate excerpt entitled Zharennaia mish (Roasted Mouse), from the
poem Golod (Hunger, 1920–21), described the consumption of delicate morsels of
filleted mice as an answer to the Volga famine of 1921. It was not surprising that
Hartnell’s performance was met with great applause and equally amusing inter-
jections from the audience throughout.
The concluding contribution by Elena Sudakova, Director of GRAD Gallery,
was dedicated to the avant-garde artist and activist Natalia Goncharova. Suda-
kova, brightly dressed in the manner of Goncharova’s paintings, but without
face-paint, fought off initial, jovial boos from the audience and embarked upon
establishing the artist’s position in Russia as the ‘Picasso of the East’. Sudakova
convincingly argued that Goncharova broke with the Jack of Diamonds group
because its artists were, according to Goncharova, “hopeless academics, whose
fat bourgeois faces peep out from behind the terrifying mask of innovators.”3
While members of the audience engaged in a tussle, threw Khlebnikov’s bread
around and pulled each other’s hair, Sudakova’s Goncharova sought to assert the
importance of the East, of the lubok and the shop sign, and propagated the need
for a profound involvement with national traditions rather than theoretical pet-
tifogging. Although Sudakova’s performance was rather sober in style – proving
that Hartnell was indeed a hard act to follow – her arguments were persuasive
and well-founded. It was suggested that the concluding Question and Answer
session should continue over a glass of wine, and therefore, after a group pho-
tograph had been taken, the performers and audience members marched down-
stairs to continue their arguments in the café.
All in all, the Jack of Diamond Disputes at in the Courtauld Institute of Art
turned out to be a considerable success, with all contributors delivering remarka-
ble performances that were both illuminating and entertaining. Not only did they
engage the audience but they also helped to dispel the reverence that is custom-
arily bestowed on distinguished artists of the past. Thus, the masters associated
3 Letter of 13 February 1912, quoted in Durfee: “Goncharova: Two Letters”, p. 162.

with the Jack of Diamonds – a group little known in the West – momentarily came
to life as real human beings who, even though affected by all sorts of trifling and
self-centred concerns, managed to radically renew Russian visual art. Anybody
who did not know their lives and works will have been propelled by these Dis-
putes to devote more attention to them.
Bibliography
Durfee, Thea: “Goncharova: Two Letters.” Experiment = Eksperiment: A Journal of Russian
Culture 1 (1995): 159–168.
Pospelov, Gleb: “O ‘valetakh’ bubnovykh i valetakh chervonnykh.” Panorama iskusstv 77
(1978): 127–142.
Adriana Baranello
(Re)Constructing the Futurist Universe:
Toward a More Careful and Complete
Historiography
Little could be both more and less Futurist than the realization of the compre-
hensive, thoughtful exhibition, Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the
Universe, held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City from 21 February to 1
September 2014. It is the first exhibition of its kind on Futurism held in the United
States, and it matches its ambitions with the strength of its presentation. As
others have already remarked, the Guggenheim’s central gallery, with its architec-
tural vortex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is the physically and ideologically
perfect space for an exhibition focussed on this Italian avant-garde movement. At
the same time, the very idea of a major commemorative retrospective is an ironic
one for a group that made its name with the outrageous and attention-grabbing
slogan “We wish to destroy museums, libraries, academies of any sort” and that
compared museums to dosshouses, sepulchres and slaughterhouses to be relin-
quished in their quest for unrelenting progress.1 And yet, the Futurists staged
retrospectives and exhibitions of their own, and in doing so established early on
what would become one of the enduring core qualities of the movement: con-
tradiction. Contradiction and irreducible complexity are the heart and soul of
Futurism, and in Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, Vivien
Greene, the Guggenheim’s senior curator of nineteenth and twentieth century
European art, with the assistance of an advisory panel composed of international
experts, has admirably succeeded in capturing the movement, its fundamental
values, and its innumerable paradoxes.
1 “Museums, graveyards! They’re the same thing, really, because of their grim profusion of
corpses that no one remembers. Museums. They’re just public flophouses, where things sleep
on forever, alongside other loathsome or nameless things! Museums: ridiculous abattoirs for
painters and sculptors, who are furiously stabbing one another to death with colors and lines,
all along the walls where they vie for space.” Marinetti: “The Foundation and Manifesto of Fu-
turism”, pp. 14–15.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0031
(Re)Constructing the Futurist Universe 503
Fig. 1. Entrance hall of the Futurism exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014.
An ambitious exhibition for ambitious exploits
The size and breadth of the exhibition are impressive, featuring 360 works by
80 artists and authors. The exhibition offers Futurism its first US retrospective
in grand style, according it the museum’s entire central ramp and a number of
side galleries. The clear and straightforward organizational logic leads the viewer
through a coherent narrative. The farther one progresses up the spiral, the more
varied the media become, which is both a testament to the diversity of Futurism
itself, and a visual metaphor that demonstrates how, as the years wore on, both
the media and styles of expression utilized by the Futurists became more varied.
The exhibition incorporates the varied aspects of Futurism in a manner that has,
to my knowledge, rarely been attempted before in a single show.2 During the cen-
2 While there have been a variety of specialized exhibitions in the past, few have brought togeth-
er literature, art and music with interior design, fashion and the ceramic arts, to name only some
of the media on display. Enrico Crispolti mounted two very comprehensive shows: Ricostruzione
futurista dell’universo. Torino: Musei Civici Mole Antonelliana, June-October 1980, and Futurismo
504 Adriana Baranello
tenary year 2009, there were exhibitions targeted on specific media,3 but nothing
comprehensive. Vivien Greene’s attention to the expansiveness of the movement
discursively echoes the Futurists’ search for the Total Work of Art, for the com-
plete aestheticization of life, and their attempts to abolish the divide between
‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. The choice to highlight these preoccupations in the
opening wall-text, the first thing with which the visitor is presented, gives a clear,
directional framing narrative to the exhibition.
The overall design of the Guggenheim show is complex and detailed, in some
way resembling the symbolic structure Fortunato Depero designed in 1927 for the
Casa Editrice Bestetti Treves Tumminelli (the several-feet-high model of his Book
Pavilion is included in the New York exhibition). Numerous jutting soffits, hard
corners and display cases are built into the fluid curves of the central ramp. The
Guggenheim show is also user-friendly. The interactive, multi-sensorial assault
(to borrow a description commonly applied to Futurist works) is approachable,
and it emphasizes the connection between ‘high’ and ‘low’ arts that was a crucial
goal of the movement. Futurism, as the first artistic movement to actively concern
itself with mass culture and with levelling and democratizing the cultural sphere
itself, is made accessible to a wide audience here. The choice to include spoken
recordings of the manifestos and poetry was a move that encapsulates the totaliz-
ing aesthetic of the movement. The use of audio, video and visual aids, is, to my
knowledge, rather unique in exhibitions on Futurism. The extensive use of tech-
nology is both an hommage to the Futurists’ own obsession with progress and is
indicative of the sensitivity with which the exhibition was curated.
The Guggenheim museum is offering something that will satisfy both the
curious public and the informed visitor. From the outset, it is made immediately
clear that the curator has not shied away from confronting and then presenting
the paradoxes in Futurism. She starts off with a bang – the audio recording of the
Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism and a set of sculptures by one of the most
well-known and talented of the Futurist artists, Umberto Boccioni. Both present
a strong and engaging start and immediately set the tone for the exhibition;
however, again to the credit of the museum, Boccioni’s work does not domina-
1909–1944: Arte, architettura, spettacolo, grafica, letteratura. Roma: Palazzo delle Esposizioni,
7 July – 22 October 2001. And in 2009, Giovanni Lista and Ada Masoero offered a multi-disci
plinary survey in Futurismo 1909 – 2009: Velocità + arte + azione. Milano: Palazzo Reale, 6 Feb-
ruary – 7 June 2009.
3 For a discussion of some of these exhibitions see Michaelides: “FUTURISM 2009: Critical Re-
flections on the Centenary Year”; Di Genova: “The Centenary of Futurism: Lame Duck or Political
Revisionism?”; Berghaus: “A Bibliography of Publications Commemorating 100 Years of Futur-
ism”, pp. 409–413.
teas it has often done in past exhibitions.4 It is in this first gallery that the first
paradox is presented; in this case it is related to Boccioni’s Futurist sculptures,
modelled in plaster and cast in bronze – methods that are decidedly classical and
anti-Futurist.
The sheer number of artists, artworks and variety of media on display
allowed, in a nearly unprecedented manner, the inclusion of many lesser-known,
less studied figures.5 The exhibition also visually reinforces the core Futurist drive
to create syntheses between media and the synaesthetic nature of Futurist art,
repeatedly and rightly emphasizing the Futurist vision for the total fusion of the
arts. The progression up the ramp provides a widely varied selection of objects,
authors and artists that manages to be a tour de force without becoming either
haphazard or overwhelming.
Two principal organizational solutions prevent the exhibition from becom-
ing overpowering. Firstly, within a generally chronological order, there are
sub-groupings of specific objects, such as books in one display case, a series of
parole in libertà consolidated onto the same wall, or Antonio Sant’Elia and Mario
Chiattone’s architectural drawings grouped together on two facing walls. Then,
in order to explore individual artists such as Enrico Prampolini and Fortunato
Depero, or important trends within the movement such as the serate and the later
developments in Futurist theatre, side galleries are set-up in which to explore
in more detail themes and media highlighted in the Rotunda. Among these is
the ambitious reconstruction of Giacomo Balla’s sets and lighting design for Igor
Stravinsky’s Feu d’artifice (a 1917 staging of the 1908 orchestral fantasy), paired
in the preceding room with Depero’s marionettes and costume designs for I balli
plastici (The Plastic Ballets, 1918). Another prominent example is the side gallery
that addresses the 1932–34 Mostra della rivoluzione fascista held at the Palazzo
delle Esposizioni in Rome. It was a crucial moment in the cultural agenda of the
régime, the history of 1930s Italy and in the history of Futurism.
4 Although the practice of exalting Boccioni follows on Marinetti’s own publicity campaigns in
the wake of Boccioni’s death in 1916, modern analyses need to look more critically at this para-
digm and move beyond it. See Braun: “Futurism”, p. 633.
5 Notable exhibitions that did include lesser known members of the movement are the exhibi-
tions and their catalogues: Crispolti: Il secondo futurismo, Torino 1923–1938, and Hultén: Futur-
ismo e futurismi.
Confronting Futurism, warts and all
Marinetti’s influence is woven into the very fabric of Futurism, so it is not aston-
ishing that he is omnipresent in this exhibition and ties the whole together. Like
the question of Futurist politics, the rôle of Futurist women is integral to this
exhibition. Even though misogyny was an undeniable quality of Futurism, espe-
cially in its early years, the number of women artists the movement attracted is
astounding. The climax of the exhibition is granted to Benedetta (1897–1977) and
her series of monumental paintings, Sintesi delle comunicazioni aeree (Synthesis
of Aerial Communications, 1933–34), from the council hall of the Palermo central
post office. That the Guggenheim was able to secure such a historic loan and that
it managed to mount such a crowning masterpiece is a testament to the impor-
tance of women to the movement, both artistically and ideologically. Women
Futurists are interspersed, and not sparingly, throughout the exhibition, includ-
ing the groundbreaking Valentine de Saint-Point, Benedetta, Rosa Rosà and a
number of other, lesser-known figures such as Giannina Censi and Maria Goretti.
The contributions these women made to the movement fundamentally altered
its development; so hopefully this, and the number of essays on Futurist women
included in the catalogue, will foster a more nuanced discussion of gender pol-
itics within the movement and its sometimes radically progressive position on
women.6
It is one of the exhibition’s important strengths that it masters the formidable
task of accounting for the fraught relationship between Fascism and Futurism
without falling into the all-too-common fallacy trap of equating the two. With
respect to the history of exhibitions on Futurism, this is a bold move, as past
exhibitions have either cut off their exploration according to various arbitrary
markers on years ranging from 1914–1920, thence declaring Futurism dead after
the ‘heroic’ period wound down. Exhibitions that have ventured beyond the 1910s
have mostly done their best to minimize or completely avoid the issue, pushing
it under the rug.7 At the Guggenheim, however, these specious exclusions were
avoided and care was taken not to let the pendulum swing too far the other way on
the topic of Futurism’s complicity with Benito Mussolini and the Fascist régime.
The Guggenheim show presents a number of works that explicitly honour
Fascism. From Depero’s Proclamazione e trionfo del tricolore (Assertion and
6 On the topic of women and Futurism see, for example, Contarini: La femme futuriste; Re: “Fu-
turism, Seduction, and the Strange Sublimity of War”; Bello Minciacchi: Scrittrici della prima
avanguardia: Concezione, caratteri e testimonianze del femminile nel futurismo.
7 A rare exception was Di Genova: “L’uomo della Provvidenza”: Iconografia del duce 1923–1945.
Triumph of the Italian Flag, 1935), celebrating Italian conquests in Africa, to the
video montage of the Mostra della rivoluzione fascista, the Guggenheim exhibition
also presents Fascism’s socio-cultural project to a public that may have been pre-
viously unfamiliar with the nature of Italian Fascism and Italian culture from the
1920s until the mid-1940s. Instead of hiding this issue from the viewing public,
and isolating it under the purview of academic studies, the Guggenheim show
offers both a rare presentation of Fascist themed works, and actively demon-
strates both the political and military links between Futurism and Mussolini’s
régime, and with Fascism’s cultural activities. Presenting, instead of obscuring
Futurism’s problematic politics demonstrates the reciprocal nature of the rela-
tionship between ideologically driven groups, and has wider applicability for the
study of how politics and the arts interact. To balance this, there are numerous
acknowledgements of the Futurists’ struggle to be included in national exhibi-
tions, and how few government commissions they secured.
Nevertheless, the exhibition is not without its weaknesses. For one thing, it
would have been productive to have further explored the cult of the leader by
more thoroughly casting Marinetti and Mussolini in a comparative light. While
there are the numerous and exemplary portraits of Marinetti, the exhibition
includes only two of Mussolini: Alessandro Bruschetti’s massive triptych Sintesi
fascista (Fascist Synthesis, 1935) and one photographic image on the cover of
the booklet for the Mostra della rivoluzione fascista. Although one of the large
wall texts does address Marinetti and Mussolini’s (contentious) relationship, for
a museum project that is fundamentally visual, a pictorial exploration of their
relationship would have proved illuminating. The cult of the leader was an issue
of rapidly growing importance in the late 1920s and 30s throughout Europe as
a whole, but especially in countries such as Italy, Germany, France, Spain and
Romania.
When addressing Futurism’s political mission, one also needs to deal with
the politics of Modernism which, as historians have shown, is inextricably inter-
twined with the history of Fascism.8 Futurism did not create Fascism, but it did
provide Fascism with a useful visual tool box.9 The exhibition limits its acknowl-
edgement of the impact of Fascism’s classicizing influences on Futurism. It is not
8 See, for example, Adamson: Avant-garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism; Gentile: The
Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism; Griffin: Modernism and Fascism; He-
witt: Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Avant-garde; Ben-Ghiat; Fascist Modernities:
Italy, 1922–1945.
9 See Falasca-Zamponi: Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy.
made clear that some of the works that participate in the rappel à l’ordre flatly
contradict early Futurist tenets and are discursively tied to Fascism.
Futurism and left-wing politics
What I take greater issue with is that the exhibition does not sufficiently account
for the full breadth of the movement’s political activities. While its Irredentism
and war mongering receive due service early in the first section, there is no
explicit acknowledgement of the movement’s links to Anarchism,10 nor of its few,
but influential Communist members and works from the 1920s. The show does of
course feature Carlo Carrà’s Funerali dell’anarchico Galli (Funeral of the Anarchist
Galli, 1913) and Boccioni’s Rissa in galleria (Riot in the Gallery, 1910), but their
political significance goes unexplained. There are also a number of visual poems
on the same subject displayed nearby, for example Francesco Cangiullo’s Grande
folla nella Piazza del Popolo (Large Crowd in the Piazza del Popolo, 1914), which
thematizes social uprisings and worker riots in the first decade of the twentieth
century. The State’s brutal responses to the protests were important foundations
for early Futurist politics, which pronounced rabble-rousing and political unrest
to be beneficial for social renewal.11
Apart from the question of Futurist Anarchism, the issue of the futurbolsce-
visti, and Marinetti’s trip to Russia in 1914 with the intent of fostering Futurism
there, should have found a more ample reflection in the Guggenheim show.
Briefly acknowledging the question of Russian Futurism, which the exhibition
does not do (and which in other respects is a strength of the show), would have
opened a door to a discussion of Communist influences on Futurism.12 Address-
ing Communist Futurism would also have have counterbalanced the account of
Futurism’s collusion with Fascism. A small side room, or single bay of works and
some informative wall texts could have remedied this omission easily.
Futurism’s short-lived alliance with Antonio Gramsci and its brief dalliance
with Communism were pivotal – albeit short-lived – aspects of second-wave
10 See Ciampi: Futuristi e anarchisti: Quali rapporti?

11 See for example, Marinetti’s speech, “Necessità e bellezza della violenza” (The Necessity and
Beauty of Violence, 1910), in which he outlined his ideology of war and revolution. The text has
been edited and discussed in Berghaus: “Violence, War, Revolution: Marinetti’s Concept of a
Futurist Cleanser for the World.”
12 For a detailed discussion of this see the chapter “Rapproachement with the Left, 1920–1924”
in Berghaus: Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–
1944, pp. 172–217.
Futurism.13 Given the active involvement in leftist politics by many important

Futurists, and Gramsci’s influence on Italian politics and culture, this is a note-
worthy exclusion. Furthermore, given the number of review articles still fixated
on Futurism’s relationship with Fascism, to the near exclusion of all else, under-
lining the political variance within the movement in the 1920s might have limited
such a reductive response and encouraged more nuanced consideration of the
exhibition and of Futurism as a whole. This would also have opened an avenue to
highlight Marinetti’s disagreements with Mussolini, a topic on which the Futurist
leader remained vocal until the end of his life, despite his overall support for the
régime.
Another productive avenue of inquiry that has been attempted in the past,
although not with great success, would be a cohesive and sophisticated look at
the rôle Futurism played in the development of the other important European
avant-gardes. In the case of the Guggenheim show, this was largely left out. A
future show on a similar scale to this one could and should bring to the forefront
the relationship between Futurism and Dadaism, Constructivism, Vorticism, Sur-
realism and the Bauhaus, just to name some principal avant-gardes on whom
Futurism had a formative influence. In any case, the focus of the Guggenheim
show as it was presented became one of its strengths, as it allowed the Museum
to explore the fundamental italianità of Futurism and of Marinetti’s worldview.
Futurism and religion
The most substantial problem with the exhibition, however, is the complete
exclusion of Futurist religious art. Arte sacra futurista was a dominant motif in
the 1930s,14 and to entirely exclude it – no matter the motivations – misses out on
one of the most original developments in the movement’s later years, marginal-
izes an important facet of Futurism and leaves the picture of the movement’s later
preoccupations incomplete.
The history of Futurism was inextricably connected with the social and polit-
ical atmosphere of the 1920s and 30s, and very frequently with the aesthetic pol-
itics and the exploitation of the sacred by the Fascist régime, particularly follow-
13 See Mengozzi: Gramsci e il futurismo, 1920–1922, and Quarta: Gramsci e il futurismo.

14 See the exhibition catalogues by Buccellati and Manetti: Arte sacra e futurismo; Crispolti
and Di Bonaventura: Beata Passio: Quinta biennale d’arte sacra; Duranti: Piety and Pragmatism:
Spiritualism in Futurist Art.
ing the Lateran Pact in 1929.15 Given that the centre of later Futurism was Rome,
and no longer Milan, and given the tremendous influence wielded by the Catholic
Church even on the ideology of this formerly anarcho-atheist group, this lacuna
obscures a significant part of the Italian context and fundamental Italianness of
the movement.16 Futurism’s italianità is otherwise well analysed and extensively
presented. To exclude arte sacra, be it problematic or not, limits a full account-
ing of Futurism’s complexity and internal contradictions. It then remains, in my
estimation, impossible to follow the complete trajectory of Futurism’s evolution.
Moreover, despite Futurist bluster, Futurist religious art works had their roots in
the history of Italian art, literature, and culture. Displaying even a few examples
would have increased the clarity of that narrative.
The historical position of the Guggenheim show
That being said, it is clear that the curatorial and advisory committees counter-
balanced many of the organizational, critical and ideological issues that plagued
the centennial exhibitions in 2009, and most particularly those at the Tate
Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou and the Scuderie del Quirinale, simply and
vaguely called Futurism. The elusiveness of that exhibition’s title is ultimately
a reflection of the show’s imprecise demonstration of what can be understood
as ‘Futurist’. That exhibition of 2009, meant as the centrepiece of the celebra-
tions, and most of the other exhibitions of the centenary year were conceptually
flawed.17 Notably, some of the smaller exhibitions held on the peripheries took
on more unique arguments, looking at topics such as ceramics or design. These
were better planned, better executed and more original than the large ‘offical’
15 The agreements settled the ‘Roman Question’, i.e. the exclusion of the Vatican from the Unifi-
cation of Italy. The political treaty recognized the full sovereignty of the Holy See and the territory
of the Vatican City State.
16 I am here referring to two specific facets of Italian culture. The first is the fundamentally
politically engaged nature of so much of Italian literature. From Dante via Machiavelli to the
Commedia all’italiana and contemporary works, Italian literature is and has been politically en-
gaged. Furthermore, from the late eighteenth century, and especially post-Unification, until the
end of the Second World War, the theme of the nation and nation-building, and national identity
were pressing ones. The second is the influence that the Catholic Church, and the heredity of
centuries of religious art have on society and culture in Italy.
17 See Di Genova: “The Centenary of Futurism: Lame Duck or Political Revisionism?”, pp. 14–19.
For other reviews of this exhibition see: Braun: “Futurism”; and Michaelides: “Futurism 2009:
Critical Reflections on the Centenary Year.”
shows.18 Whether or not the subtitle of the Guggenheim show (and by exten-
sion some scholarship on the topic), ‘Reconstructing the Universe’, overempha-
sizes the importance of Balla and Depero’s manifesto, La ricostruzione futurista
dell’universo (The Futurist Refashioning of the Universe, 1915), is certainly a valid
question, and one that will continue to occupy scholars investigating secondo
futurismo; however, in this context, it combines well with Vivien Greene’s inten-
tion to present a defined narrative.
It is to be welcomed that an art institution of the United States of America
made significant progress toward presenting the fraught topic of Futurism’s rôle
in the Fascist years and its relationship with the régime. This topic has been
addressed much more thoroughly and frequently in Anglo-American scholarship
than in Italian, while the centenary exhibitions, mostly held in Italy, continued to
skirt the issue with varying degrees of fervour.
Fig. 2. The Rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum with the Futurism exhibition of 2014.
The Guggenheim exhibition can be compared to the groundbreaking Futur-

ismo e futurismi show, curated by Pontus Hultén at the Palazzo Grassi in 1986,
which also presented a sweeping vista of Futurism. The catalogue accompanying
18 Di Genova: “The Centenary of Futurism.”

the Guggenheim show,19 like that of the Palazzo Grassi published in three lan
guages,20 is certain to become a valuable resource for scholars, both for the high
quality and number of reproductions, and for the variety of topics covered in the
essays. The introductory pages present Futurism to those who have not studied
the movement before and are looking for a general survey. These overviews are
followed by specialized and targeted studies (see the bibliography section at the
end of this volume, pp. 564–565). Thus, the catalogue consolidates a wealth of
information in a single volume and can be considered an important document in
the historiography of Futurism.
The catalogue ‘interventions’ by scholars from a variety of disciplines bring
together many perspectives and provide an opportunity for including com-
mentaries on a multitude of topics. Some of these interventions are dense and
informative, but sometimes too brief to offer a meaningful analysis. The attention
granted to the question of women and Futurism, which was given careful atten-
tion in the exhibition, is also granted consideration in the catalogue. Some of the
authors address themes excluded from, or only touched upon very briefly in the
exhibition. However, the full breadth of Futurist politics does not find adequate
representation and Futurist sacred art and spirituality are omitted altogether.21
So, like the exhibition as a whole, the catalogue is excellent overall, but with
persisting weaknesses.
Critical responses to the critics
Wrapping up this short appraisal, it is not the reviewer’s job, to paraphrase Emily
Braun,22 to review the reviews; nevertheless, I shall close my review with a brief
comment on them. Since the exhibition is the first meaningful introduction of
Futurism to a US audience, and one of the goals of this exhibition was to famil-
iarize the US public with the movement, I feel that pausing on the journalistic
response will be of some use. Reviews of the exhibition have been mixed, and
some critics have entirely missed the point both of the exhibition and of Futur-
ism as a movement altogether. Predictably, some columnists did little more than
trot out the tired fallacy of equating Fascism and Futurism, thereby reducing the
19 Greene: Italian Futurism 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe.

20 Hultén: Futurismo e futurismi.
21 In recent years there has been a great interest in Futurist engagement with theosophy and the
occult. See Benzi: “Giacomo Balla e la teosofia” and Cigliana: Futurismo esoterico.
22 Braun: “Futurism.”
whole movement and its innovations to nationalist propaganda – something

which this exhibition actually set out to avoid. Futurism was built on publicity; it
was built on propaganda (but not solely nationalist or Fascist), and the Futurists
were the first group of poets and artists to grasp the power of publicity, and to
exploit the modern publicity machine.
Some critics claimed that Futurism produced little of distinction after World
War I, and that aeropittura was only dressed-up Social Realism. This is untenable
as Social Realism was a contemporary pictorial idiom to Futurism, not a fore-
runner of it. These criticisms entirely miss one of the fundamental ideological
aspects of a movement for whom theory and ideology were often more important
than execution. Futurism was built on ideas, so the fact that one reviewer char-
acterized Futurist minds as ‘narrow’ demonstrates that there is much work still
to be done, especially with regard to disseminating a more complex picture of
Futurism to the public at large.
Another spurious comment, based on scholarship that is decades out of date,
is the accusation that Futurism, the first avant-garde, is ‘dated’ or ‘satirical’. This
illustrates again the deeply ingrained tendency to value all things in French art
as the ‘better’ or ‘real’ form of Modernism. Clearly, the best studies in the fields
of history and political science concerned with Modernism and its relationship to
totalitarian politics have still not reached the editorial offices of newspapers and
magazines.
Fortunately, several reviews of the Guggenheim exhibition demonstrate sen-
sitivity when considering the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, and a
few gratifyingly point out that one of the main reasons that Futurism is so little
known internationally, and so unknown in the United States, has to do with the
francophile, and especially Picasso- and Cubism-centric canon of art historical
studies. Comparisons between Cubism and Futurism are fallacious on many
levels, including that of technical matters. Futurism did, unarguably, learn from
Cubism, but the exchange was reciprocal,23 and Futurism contributed crucial ele-
ments to all of the European avant-gardes in the 1910s and 20s. Ultimately, as
a testament to the successful execution of Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Recon-
structing the Universe, and to the work of Vivien Greene, the responses were gen-
erally positive. Interest in the movement has been piqued, and that is an excellent
indication that the study of Futurism will continue to grow and develop.
23 See Carmody: “Cubist and Futurist Aesthetics to May 1913”; Fauchereau: “Cubisme et futu-
risme”; Green: Leger and the Avant-garde, pp. 41–52, 82–93; Roche-Pézard: “Futurisme et cu-
bisme”.
Bibliography
Adamson, Walter L.: “Futurism, Mass Culture, and Women: The Reshaping of the Artistic
Vocation, 1909- 1920.” Modernism/Modernity 4:1 (1997): 89–114.
—: Embattled Avant-Gardes: Modernism’s Resistance to Commodity Culture in Europe.
Berkeley/CA: University of California Press, 2007.
Bello Minciacchi, Cecilia: Scrittrici della prima avanguardia: Concezione, caratteri e
testimonianze del femminile nel futurismo. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2012.
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth: Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945. Berkeley/CA: University of California
Press, 2001.
Benzi, Fabio: “Giacomo Balla e la teosofia. 1. Balla e il generale.” Art e dossier 22:235 (July 2007):
22–29.
2007): 20–27.
Berghaus, Günter: “A Bibliography of Publications Commemorating 100 Years of Futurism.”
International Yearbook of Futurism Studies 1 (2011): 409–435.
—: “Violence, War, Revolution: Marinetti’s Concept of a Futurist Cleanser for the World.” Annali d’
italianistica 27 (2009): 23–71.
—: Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944.
Providence/RI.: Berghahn Books, 1996.
Braun, Emily: “Futurism.” The Burlington Magazine 151:1278 (September 2009): 633.
Buccellati, Graziella, and Benedetta Manetti, eds.: Arte sacra e futurismo: Un incontro ad
alta quota. Con testo di Massimo Duranti e interventi di Flavio Caroli e Marco Garzonio.
Exhibition catalogue. Mantova: Museo Diocesano, 13 dicembre 2009 – 31 gennaio 2010.
Mantova: Tre Lune, 2009.
Carmody, Francis J.: “Cubist and Futurist Aesthetics to May 1913.” F. J. Carmody: The Evolution
of Apollinaire’s Poetics, 1901–1914. Berkeley/CA: University of California Press, 1963.
94–103.
Ciampi, Alberto: Futuristi e anarchisti: Quali rapporti? Dal primo manifesto alla prima guerra
mondiale e dintorni, 1909–1917. Pistoia: Archivio Famiglia Berneri, 1989.
Cigliana, Simona: Futurismo esoterico: Contributi per una storia dell’irrazionalismo Italiano tra
Otto e Novecento. Roma: La Fenice, 1996. 2nd edn Napoli: Liguori, 2002.
Contarini, Silvia: La femme futuriste: Mythes, modèles, et représentations de la femme dans la
théorie et la littérature futuristes (1909–1919). Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris 10,
2006.
Crispolti, Enrico: Il secondo futurismo: 5 pittori + 1 scultore, Torino 1923–1938. Torino: Pozzo,
1962.
Crispolti, Enrico, and Padre Adriano Di Bonaventura, eds.: Beata Passio: Quinta biennale d’arte
sacra. Exhibition catalogue. San Gabriele (Teramo): Museo Stauròs d’Arte Sacra Contem-
poranea, Santuario di San Gabriele dell’Addolorata, 22 settembre – 8 novembre 1992. San
Gabriele: Stauròs Internazionale ECO, 1992.
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Agnelli, 1988.
Di Genova, Giorgio: “The Centenary of Futurism: Lame Duck or Political Revisionism?”
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catalogue. Seravezza: Palazzo Mediceo, 19 agosto – 21 settembre 1997. Bologna: Bora, 1997.
Duranti, Massimo, ed.: Piety and Pragmatism: Spiritualism in Futurist Art. Exhibition catalogue.
London: Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 2007. Roma: Gangemi, 2007
Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta: Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy.
Berkeley/CA: University of California Press, 1997.
Fauchereau, Serge: “Cubisme et futurisme.” S. Fauchereau: Avant-gardes du XXe siecle: Arts &
littérature, 1905–1930. Paris: Flammarion, 2010. 130–157.
Gentile, Emilio: Il culto del littorio: La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista. Roma:
Laterza, 1993.
Green, Christopher: Leger and the Avant-garde. New Haven/CT: Yale University Press, 1976.
Greene, Vivien, ed.: Italian Futurism 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe. Exhibition
catalogue. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 21 February – 1 September 2014. New York:
Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2014.
Griffin, Roger: Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Hultén, Pontus, ed.: Futurismo e futurismi. Exhibition catalogue. Venezia: Palazzo Grassi,
4 maggio – 12 ottobre 1986. Milano: Bompiani, 1986. English edition Futurism and
Futurisms. Milano: Bompiani, 1986. French edition Futurisme et futurismes. Milano:
Bompiani, 1986.
Katz, M. Barry: “The Women of Futurism.” Woman’s Art Journal 7 (1986): 3–13.
Mengozzi, Dino: Gramsci e il futurismo, 1920–1922: Marinetti e una mostra all’ “Ordine Nuovo”.
[Roma: Federazione Italiana Associazioni Partigiane, 1981].
Michaelides, Chris: “FUTURISM 2009: Critical Reflections on the Centenary Year.” International
Yearbook of Futurism Studies 1 (2011): 20–31.
Quarta, Daniela: Gramsci e il futurismo. København: Universitet, 1978.
Re, Lucia: “Futurism, Seduction, and the Strange Sublimity of War.” Italian Studies 59:1 (2004):
83–111.
Roche-Pézard, Fanette: “Futurisme et cubisme.” F. Roche-Pézard: L’Aventure futuriste
1909–1916. Roma: École Française de Rome, 1983. 323–352.
Rosalind McKever
Gerardo Dottori at the Estorick Collection
Gerardo Dottori: The Futurist View. Ed. by Massimo Duranti. London:
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 9 July – 7 September 2014.
Perugia: EFFE Fabrizio Fabbri Editore, 2014.
Gerardo Dottori (1884–1979), like the majority of artists from the second phase
of Futurism, is little known in the United Kingdom outside of specialist circles.
Since 1972, the year in which he donated one of his early masterpieces, Esplosione
di rosso sul verde (Explosion of Red and Green, 1910–13), to the Tate Gallery, he
has been included in a handful of exhibitions of Futurist art in London, Newcas-
tle and Edinburgh, but has not received any focussed attention.1 By way of com-
parison, there have been more than thirty solo exhibitions of Dottori in Italy over
the same period. Gerardo Dottori: The Futurist View, curated by Massimo Duranti,
President of the Archivi Gerardo Dottori and author of Dottori’s catalogue rai-
sonée, seeks to introduce Dottori to the British public. Spanning the artist’s career
from his training at Perugia’s Accademia di Belle Arti to the mid-1960s, this exhi-
bition lucidly charts his development from skilled draughtsman to Divisionist,
his embrace of Futurism around 1910 and subsequent career as a protagonist of
aeropittura and modern landscape painting. Bar the one Dottori drawing in the
Estorick’s own collection, all the works in the two rooms of paintings and the one
dedicated to works on paper were lent from Italy (mainly Umbrian public collec-
tions and private collections) and most of the 49 objects, including some recent
rediscoveries, had never previously been exhibited in the United Kingdom.
The exhibition starts with Dottori’s Divisionist works, establishing his aptitude
for luminous and animistic landscapes. With Fanciulla umbra (Young Umbrian
Girl, 1904) Dottori’s mastery of the Divisionist technique and experimentation with
Symbolism is evident in the depiction of his sister, Bianca, in a long white dress
against a shimmering Umbrian landscape. Dottori’s six-month sojourn in Milan
during 1906, and his resulting familiarity with Divisionists such as Gaetano Pre-
viati is particularly evident in the diffused light of Alberi del bosco (Trees of the
Wood, 1906), a recent rediscovery. In the early 1910s, Dottori moved away from the
1 Futurismo 1909–1919: Exhibition of Italian Futurism. Newcastle Upon Tyne: University of New-
castle, Hatton Gallery, 4 November – 8 December 1972 / Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Academy,
The Mound, 16 December 1972 – 14 January 1973. Futurism in Flight: ‘Aeropittura’ Paintings and
Sculptures of Man’s Conquest of Space (1913–1945). London: Accademia Italiana delle Arti e delle
Arti Applicate, 4 September – 13 October 1990.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0032
Dottori at the Estorick Collection 517
Divisionist technique, his Symbolist interests coming more to the fore in I superstiti
(The Survivors, 1909–10), the only surviving panel of Trittico degli alberi (Triptych
of the Trees). The leap from these early works to the abstract and often-geometric
experimentation of Dottori’s early first Futurist works on the opposite wall is sig-
nificant. The subject in Primavera (Spring, 1912), a face in a landscape, is as pre-
vious works, but the dissected planes and bold use of red against verdant shades
show awareness of Boccioni’s style – a comparison with the Estorick’s own Idolo
moderno (Modern Idol, 1911) is fruitful. Spring is possibly Dottori’s first foray into
synthesizing the principles of Futurist painting with a landscape subject.2 The
selection of Dottori’s Futurist works from later in the decade feature more paradig-
matic subjects and further stylistic experimentation. Scontro di treni (Train Crash,
1919) is notable for its muter palette, and its dabbed application of paint reminds
the viewer of war-time Severini and Dottori’s own earlier Divisionism. The bright
colours and geometric compositions of Esplosione (Explosion, 1916–17) and two
versions of Motivo futurista (Futurist Motif, both 1920) show the influence of Balla.
The first room of the exhibition concludes with major canvases from the 1920s
and the beginnings of aeropittura, including Flora, 1925) and Incendio città (City
in Flames, 1926). The fragmentation of light in these works again recalls earlier
Futurist works by Boccioni, Carrà and Severini in the Estorick’s collection, but the
subjects, perspectives and techniques are characteristically Dottori.
Fig. 1. Gerardo Dottori: Left: Autoritratto (Self Portrait, 1928). Right: Ritmi astrali (Astral
Rhythms, 1916).
2 Whether this is Dottori’s first Futurist painting is dependent on when Explosion of Red and
Green was made. Dottori dated it to May 1910, which is remarkably early for such an abstract
work. A photograph in the Archivi Dottori has what is thought to be Dottori’s own annotation
dating the work to 1913.
518 Rosalind McKever
The second room opens with Autoritratto (Self Portrait, 1928), in which the artist
appears amongst Umbrian topographic and architectural elements and glinting
silver aeroplanes so essential to his aeropittura. The vermillion roofs, rolling
green hills and above all the lake (in this case almost certainly Lake Trasimeno)
continue around the room of landscapes from the early 1930s through to the
mid-1960s. The principles of the Manifesto dell’aeropittura futurista (Manifesto
of Futurist Aeropainting, 1929) and Dottori’s own Manifesto umbro dell’aeropit-
tura (Umbrian Manifesto of Aeropainting, 1941) which called for dense, polycen-
tric, harmonious and spiritual aerial images are well illustrated in works such
as Aurora sul Golfo (Dawn over the Gulf, 1935) and Lago-alba (Lake-Dawn, 1942).
A portrait of Franca Maria Corneli, painted in 1943, the year she published her
Aeropoema futurista dell’Umbria (Futurist Aeropoem of Umbria), shows the poet
integrated into an Umbrian landscape and points to the development of a sub-
stantial group of Futurists in the region. The works dating from after the death
of Marinetti (1944) and the conclusion of the Second World War (1945) do not
show a dramatic shift in style as could be observed between the earlier phases
in his career, but rather as a subtle increase in lyricism and idealization to create
‘the new modern landscape’, a term coined by Guido Ballo.3 However, amongst
works such as Umbria primavera (Umbrian Spring, 1945) and Umbria vergine (Vir-
ginal Umbria, 1949), the subdued palette of Temporale-paese (Thunderstorm-Vil-
lage, 1952) reminds us of Dottori’s concern with the built environment and of his
engagement with Nature.
The exhibition’s final room brings together works on paper from 1898
to 1940, offering a microcosm of the changes in style, similar to the ones that
could be observed in the galleries with his paintings, as well as an insight into
the development of Dottori’s compositions of exhibited paintings through his
sketches and studies. The change from the highly-skilled draughtsmanship of
Viso femminile (Woman’s Face, 1902) to the dynamic loose penmanship of the
Estorick’s own Studio per ‘Forze ascensionali’ (Study for ‘Ascending Forces’, 1916)
is as jarring as Dottori’s transition to Futurist painting. However, as in painting,
a continuity of subjects can be found; Studio per ‘Elementi architettonici’ (Study
for ‘Architectural Elements’, 1898) reverberates against the much later architec-
tural syntheses of Padua and Vicenza (both 1930). A highlight of this room is
Ciclista (Cyclist, 1913) and its verso Motociclista (Motorcyclist, 1914), the former
Dottori’s first depiction of the subject, the latter notable for the subtle landscape
picked out amongst the force lines and dynamic curves. Another interesting
element in this gallery is the inclusion of archival material to represent Dotto-
3 Ballo: Dottori aeropittore futurista.

ri’s position within the Futurist movement and to document the acquisition of
Explosion of Red and Green, the latter discussed below with reference to the cat-
alogue. Correspondence from Marinetti demonstrates both Dottori’s importance
within Futurism and his independence, the movement’s leader expressing his
disapproval of Dottori exhibiting at the 1924 Venice Biennale, from which the
Futurists had been excluded.
By the time the visitor has reached the last room, one has the feeling that syn-
thetic overview across Dottori’s career has been given, especially in terms of his
landscapes. Dottori’s early and late views of Umbria were juxtaposed successfully
with those of his better-known Futurist phases.4 Duranti’s decision to focus on
landscapes is noteworthy in the light of on-going debates about the prominence
and rôle of landscape in Futurism, and how Dottori’s approach can be reconciled
with the Futurist preference for depictions of city life. In 1988, Duranti himself
criticized Guido Ballo and Enrico Crispolti’s attempts to justify Dottori’s predi-
lection for landscapes “almost as if Futurism wanted to banish Nature and the
environment. Certainly, for Dottori it was a repeated and privileged theme and
he certainly expressed himself in it with greatest originality.”5 Notably Duranti
continued: “But I believe that his work should be seen in a wider perspective.
For Dottori, the landscape is an important but not dominant element. In fact, it is
often a scenario in which active and dynamic narratives or constructive syntheses
unfold, which are a necessary complement to the action.”6 To some extent, this
view becomes apparent in the exhibition, which includes a number of other sub-
jects, as well as works such as Autoritratto (Self Portrait, 1928) and Flora (1925),
in which the landscape is, as Duranti wrote, “important but not dominant”.7
However, the focus on Dottori’s aeropittura seems to go against Duranti’s previ-
ous efforts in the 1990s to widen Dottori’s subjects through exhibitions in Bologna
and Perugia. These included wall art and stage design, as well as his Free-Word
poetry and other writings,8 much like the concurrent exhibition, Italian Futurism
4 The exhibition differs greatly from the wider variety of subjects but more restricted chronology
of the exhibition curated by Duranti a few months before the Estorick show: Gerardo Dottori:
Brani di futurismo del maestro dell’aeropittura..
5 “[…] quasi che nel futurismo la natura e l’ambiente fossero banditi. Certamente questo tema
è per lui ricorrente e privilegiato e sicuramente in esso si è espresso con punte di originalità
elevatissime.”
6 “Credo però che la sua opera debba essere vista con un’ottica più ampia, essendo in realtà il
paesaggio un elemento importante, ma non dominante. Esso infatti è spesso scenario attivo di
narrazioni dinamiche, di sintesi costruttive, complemento necessario dell’azione.”
7 Duranti: Gerardo Dottori nelle collezione pubbliche e private, p. 16.
8 See Duranti: Gerardo Dottori pittore totale and Gerardo Dottori opere 1898–1977. For more
1909–1944 Reconstructing the Universe, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

in New York, which includes Dottori’s Trittico della Velocità (Triptych of Speed,
1925–27) alongside his furniture and light fittings for the Casa Cimino dining
room. Arguably, for a British audience unfamiliar with Dottori, his landscapes
are the best mode of introduction. Moreover, one could generalize that such an
audience is likely to be wary of overtly political works of secondo futurismo – the
political connotations of Dottori’s landscapes is entirely sidestepped in the cat-
alogue – and fond of the Italian countryside, rendering Dottori’s landscapes the
most attractive aspect of his artistic output.
For those seeking to develop their interest in Dottori through the exhibition
catalogue, Duranti’s essay gives an elegantly concise overview of the artist’s
involvement in Futurism and his development through phases of Divisionism,
Futurism, aeropittura and ‘the new modern landscape’. This is complemented
by reproductions of relevant works included in the exhibition. Although Duranti
identifies the exhibition as an opportunity to clarify the meaning of the labels
‘rural Futurist’ and ‘mystic of Futurism’, applied to Dottori by his contemporaries,
the curator does not probe these issues in the catalogue in any great depth. While
his essay is nonetheless an excellent summary of Dottori’s career for the uniniti-
ated, at the other end of the spectrum two other catalogue essays are surprisingly
specific in their consideration of archival and scientific material related to certain
works, and thus more suited to a specialist scholars rather than a general reader.
Andrea Baffoni’s essay on Explosion of Red on Green sheds new light on the
correspondence in the Archivi Dottori, in particular providing details of the paint-
ing’s acquisition by the Tate Gallery and the rôle played in it by Ronald Alley,
then curator of its modern Collection. It is indicative of the distaste for secondo
futurismo that the Tate Board politely rejected his offer of the 1935 painting Dawn
over the Gulf, requesting a work from 1909–1913 in keeping with their existing
holdings of Futurism. Baffoni draws heavily on the manuscript collection of the
Archivi Dottori, but is unclear on whether Tate’s archive holds additional material
on the acquisition which could further enrich our understanding of the British
reception of Futurism and aeropittura. While the inclusion of archive material in
the exhibition highlighted the presence of an important Dottori work in London,
it is disappointing that this work, which could not be secured for loan to the exhi-
bition, was not on display at the Tate Modern over the summer, and thus could
only be seen in reproduction.
on Dottori’s exhibition history and historiography see Pesola: “La fortuna critica di Dottori”,
pp. 337–351.
The third catalogue essay recounts technical analyses undertaken on a

number of Dottori’s paintings between 1904 and 1942 by the Italian research
project FUTURAHMA (Dal Futurismo al ritorno al classico 1910–1922. Tecniche
pittoriche, critica delle varianti e problemi conservativi).9 The research focussed
on three areas of Dottori’s technique: design and underdrawings; palette and
binders; and the hidden painting found below the pictorial layer of Lago umbro
(Umbrian Lake, 1942). The information uncovered about certain works in the
exhibition is undoubtedly interesting. Young Umbrian Girl was originally drawn
as a nude rather than wearing a long white dress. Some of Dottori’s distinctive
star-shape flowers were drawn for Flora, but never painted in. Silver metallic
paint was used under the grey paint layer of the wings in the 1928 Self Portrait.
The hidden painting under Umbrian Lake, with a composition reminiscent of
Dottori’s 1931 works Paesaggio (Landscape) and La virata (The Change of Direc-
tion),10 uses Thénard blue rather than the ultramarine uses on the surface layer,
and unlike Umbrian Lake has a full underdrawing. However, there is no indica-
tion as to how this research impacted on the curation of the exhibition, and what
repercussions it may have for our understanding of Dottori’s technique and mate-
rials, and of Futurism in general.
The bilingual catalogue follows that of the exhibition Alberto Burri: Form and
Matter, held at the Estorick in 2012, also curated by Duranti, with its inclusion of
an annotated chronology, and selected exhibition list and catalogue entries and
bibliographies for each work. This information is a useful update of the informa-
tion supplied by the same team for the artist’s catalogue raisonée published in
2006.
Bibliography
Ballo, Guido: Dottori aeropittore futurista. Ed. by Tancredi Loreti. Roma: Editalia, 1970.
Duranti, Massimo, ed.: Gerardo Dottori nelle collezione pubbliche e private. Exhibition
catalogue. Perugia: Galleria Il Sole, 26 maggio – 26 giugno 1988. Verona: Ghelfi, 1988.
9 The multidisciplinary project is a collaboration of institutions: the Università di Pisa conducts

art-historical research and imaging analysis and coordinates the four groups; the Scuola Nor-
male Superiore di Pisa undertakes art historical research on sources and in the development of
the database and website; the Institute of Molecular Science and Technologies, CNR, Perugia is
involved in the spectroscopic analysis of paintings in situ and samples in the laboratory; and the
Institute of Nanotechnology and Photonic, CNR, Milan is responsible for application of optical
and vibrational spectroscopy and imaging. See: http://www.futurahma.it/en/home/
10 Duranti: Gerardo Dottori: Catalogo generale ragionato, vol. 2, nos. 230–1510, p. 486, nos. 262–
1380, p. 495 and nos. 266–123, p. 497.
—: Gerardo Dottori: Brani di futurismo del maestro dell’aeropittura. Exhibition catalogue.

Roma: Galleria Russo, 6 febbraio – 8 marzo 2014. Roma: Palombi, 2013.
—: Gerardo Dottori: Opere 1898–1977. Exhibition catalogue. Perugia: Rocca Paolina-CERP,
7 dicembre 1997 – 7 febbraio 1998. Milano: Fabbri, 1997.
—: Gerardo Dottori: Pittore totale. Exhibition catalogue. Bologna: Galleria Marescalchi,
20 marzo – 30 aprile 1993.
Pesola, Antonella : “La fortuna critica di Dottori.” Massimo Duranti, ed.: Gerardo Dottori:
Catalogo generale ragionato. Vol. 1–2. Perugia: EFFE Fabrizio Fabbri Editore, 2006.
337–354.
Irene Chytraeus-Auerbach and Lisa Hanstein
The Russian Avant-garde and Its Eastern
Roots
L’avanguardia russa, la Siberia e l’Oriente: Kandinsky, Malevič, Filonov,
Gončarova [The Russian Avant-garde, Siberia and the East: Kandinsky,
Malevich, Filonov, Goncharova]. Curated by John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta
Misler, and Yevgenia Petrova. Florence: Palazzo Strozzi, 27 September 2013
– 19 January 2014.
Following earlier exhibitions on De Chirico, Max Ernst, Magritte, Balthus: Uno

sguardo nell’invisibile (2010) and Picasso, Miró, Dalí: Giovani e arrabiati. La
nascità della modernità (2011), the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence offered once more
an interesting insight into the history, development and diversity of European
modern art with L’avanguardia russa, la Siberia e l’Oriente, on display from 27
September 2013 until 19 January 2014. In contrast to the previous shows, which
concentrated on Western European artists, L’avanguardia russa, la Siberia e l’Ori-
ente focussed on the Russian connection to the geographical East and the Orient,
especially on tracing the ‘primitive’ or archaic roots of Russian Modernist art.
As the curators John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta Misler and Yevgenia Petrova point out
in their introduction to the exhibition catalogue, the main purpose of the show
was to place Russian art of the Silver Age “within a widened historical-geographi-
cal context”, and on the other hand showing “the plurality of its sources”.1 Thus,
the exhibition showed a wide range of artworks (in total 130 paintings, water-
colours, drawings, sculptures, traditional artefacts and ethnographical objects)
representing the Eastern regions of the Russian State as well as the neighbouring
cultures of Persia, India, China, Japan, to name but a few. By highlighting the
particular impact of Oriental2 and Eurasian cultures on Russian Modernism, the
exhibition undertook a large-scale attempt – preceded only by a minor exhibition
in Moscow in 19783 – to counterbalance the prevalent tendency of emphasizing
the relationships and reciprocal influences between the Russian avant-garde
and Western European movements such as Italian Futurism, French Cubism and
German Expressionism.
1 “Fuoco e ghiaccio”, in Bowlt et al.: L’avanguardia russa, p. 21.

2 The term ‘Oriental’ is used here in line with the exhibition title. It is meant to be a geographical
indication rather than the value-laden term from the colonialist period.
3 L’vova and Miasina: Vostok i russkoe iskusstvo [The Orient and Russian Art].
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0033
524 Irene Chytraeus-Auerbach and Lisa Hanstein
Given the vast geographical area that had to be covered in this exhibition,
the curators decided to approach their task by presenting the Oriental impact on
Russian Modernist art by means of a journey. They followed Czar Nicholas II’s
progress to the borders of the Russian Empire in 1890, albeit in a “metaphoric
rather than geographical way”, interpreting it as a metaphor of “East-West and
West-East circularity”.4
In line with the curators’ intention of unveiling some of the sources which
inspired Russian avant-garde artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir
Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois,
David and Vladimir Burliuk, Vera Khlebnikova and others, the visitor found in
the eleven sections of the show very different ways of engaging with and inter-
preting the Eurasian and Oriental cultures.
The Far East as a source of inspiration
Section 1 of the exhibition used the natural-elementary and metaphorical opposi-

tion of “Fire and Ice” to allude to the enormous geographical contrasts within the
vast landscapes of the Russian Empire and, simultaneously, to the apocalyptic
insecurity Russian inhabitants and artists experienced at the turn of the century.
These contrasts and the emotions of restlessness and fear were represented by
a large monolith of the so-called kamennye baby (interpreted as stone women)
variety, statues of the Polovtsians (Cuman people) from the tenth to thirteenth
century, which were worshipped as cultic objects and served as guardians of
burial complexes in the steppes of the Russian Empire, and two paintings – Saryan
Martiros’s Gieny (Hyenas, 1909) and Aleksei Stepanov’s Volki noch’iu (Wolves at
Night, 1910s) – in juxtaposition with three major works of Russian Modernism:
Natalia Goncharova’s Pustota (Emptiness, 1913), Wassily Kandinsky’s Chernoe
piatno (Black Spot, 1912) and Kazimir Malevich’s Chernyi krug (Black Circle, 1923).
After this metaphorical introduction, the second section, “Exotic Sources:
From Greece to Siam”, concentrated on selected artwork presented in an exchange
of gifts to Nicholas II on the occasion of his journey in 1890. Exhibited in 1893
at the Saint-Petersburg Hermitage Museum, these artworks served as means of
information about the still unexplored Eastern regions of Siberia as well as the
neighbouring cultures of China, Ceylon, India, Japan, Java and Siam. A further
important source of inspiration for Russian avant-garde artists was Buddhism,
which formed the topic of section 3, “Enchanted by the Orient”. The works on
4 “Fonti esotiche: Dalla Grecia al Siam”, in Bowlt et al.: L’avanguardia russa, p. 149.
display here illustrated the encounter with traditional Indian religion, present in
Russia long before the first Buddhist temple opened in Saint-Petersburg (1913).
It included Nicholas Benois’ Pered Buddoi (Before the Buddha, 1915), Boris Anis-
feld’s Oformlenie stseny dlia baleta Miliia Balakireva “Islamei” (Stage design
for Milii Balakirev’s ballet “Islamei: Oriental Fantasy, Op. 18 [1869]”, 1911) and
Nikolai Kalmakov’s Zhenshchina so zmeiami (Woman with Serpents, 1909). But
Modernist artists were not only drawn to the spiritual or cultic elements of Bud-
dhism; its colourful and quasi-naïve traditional motifs also found their way into
Modernist imagery.
Absolutely different in content and style was section 4, “The Far East”, which
introduced Japan as a ‘beloved enemy’ and showed battle representations by
Russian and Japanese artists, together with two peaceful Japanese sceneries by
the hands of Vasilii Vereshchagin and David Burliuk. The curator’s intent was
to illustrate the influence of Japanese prints on the Russian artists’ concept of
space and their choice of colours as a first step towards a modern style. The fol-
lowing presentation of ‘Chinoiseries’ showed a similar impact of Chinese popular
prints on Russian paintings and costume design. Furthermore, the avant-gar-
de’s interest in the “Empire of Signs”5 offered the curators a chance to focus on
Chinese (calligraphic) writings and images. Relatedly, the fifth section – “Orien-
tal Prints and the Avant-garde” – offered a survey of the particular importance
which popular Oriental prints had had on the work of Natalia Goncharova,
David Burliuk, Mikhail Larionov and Nikolai Vinogradov, who not only collected
popular prints and displayed them in exhibitions, but also integrated the colour-
ful motifs into their own artistic production. The traditional and popular print
techniques provided the artists with an additional source of inspiration and a
means for the elaboration of a personal imagery and an original organization of
space in their works.
The vast Russian territory and especially the variety of ‘Oriental’ cultures
within and near to its boundaries made it difficult to consider Russia in the tradi-
tional terms of ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’. It thus led to the introduction of the geo-
graphical and political concept of ‘Eurasia’, which saw Russia as an independent
continental area stretching from the Carpathians to the Pacific. Section 6 – “East
or West. The Steppes of Eurasia” – explored this topic and the different ways in
which the Russian avant-garde artists dealt with it: While Pavel Filonov intro-
duced this dichotomy directly into his twin paintings, Vostok i Zapad / Zapad i
Vostok (East and West / West and East, 1912–13), other artists such as Aristarkh
Lentulov, Ruvim Mazel, Nicholas Roerich and Pavel Kuznetsov sought inspira-
5 “China: Empire of Signs”. Bowlt et al.: L’avanguardia russa, p. 182.

tion in the Eurasian landscapes and its mostly nomadic and rural societies, and
transferred their – often personal – experiences of living in the steppe into their
paintings, stage designs and sculptures. The most impressive artefacts shown in
the exhibition were certainly the kamennaia baba statues, which Russian artists
interpreted as female, although the term ‘baba’ originally had been used by the
ancient Turkish peoples for ‘father’, or ‘ancestor’.6
Fig. 1. Natalia Goncharova (Nagaevo 1881-Paris 1962): Statues of Salt, c.1910. Oil on canvas;
80.5 x 95.5 cm. Originally in Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. Zh-1579. Shown in the
exhibition L’avanguardia russa, la Siberia e l’Oriente (Florence: Palazzo Strozzi, 2014).
Already displayed in section 1, the Scythian statues were the declared protag-
onists of section 7: “The kamennaia baba. Custodians of Space”. Positioned
between two large-scale canvases by Natalia Goncharova, which made the impor-
tance of the kamennye baby for her work obvious, the stone figure transmitted
6 See “Regesto”. Bowlt et al.: L’avanguardia russa, p. 276.

a serene power. Goncharova’s Natiurmort so statuetkoi (Still Life with Statuette,

1908) showed a kamennaia baba next to flowers on a table. Two years later she
created Solianye stolpy (Statues of Salt, c.1910), which went far beyond the rep-
resentation of a primitive object in a modern context. In painting three kamennye
baby in an abstract style together with a fourth looking like a mother with a child
kneeling behind them, Goncharova merged the Christian pietà motif with archaic
cultic objects. While this seventh section concentrated on the stone kamennaia
baba sculptures, the following section 8 – “Effigies of Wisdom. Emissaries of the
Cosmos” – dealt with magic and the invisible forces of life, transmitted by nature
spirits to human beings through intermediaries like shamans or ‘wise’ persons.
Apart from Goncharova’s re-presentation of the kamennye baby, the forces of
Nature and archaic concepts of cosmos found an impressive resurrection in
Pavel Filonov’s abstract visionary paintings, Formula perioda s 1904 po iiul’ 1922
goda: Vselenskii sdvig cherez Russkuiu revoliutsiiu v mirovoi rastsvet (Formula of
the Period 1904 – July 1922: Universal Shift in the Flowering of the World via the
Russian Revolution, 1920–22), and Belaia kartina (White Painting, c.1919).
The ninth section – “Gestures and Rituals. Thaumaturgic Images” – explored
the way in which Modernist artists turned to archaic gestures and primitive rituals.
How this occupation with elements of Oriental rural traditions led to the intro-
duction of ritual objects and primitive signs into Modernist imagery was exem-
plified, amongst others, by Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov and Kazimir
Malevich. As the curators of the exhibition suggested, Kandinskys abstract Belyi
oval (White Oval, 1919) and Dva ovala (Two Ovals, 1919) recall the shape of the
drums used in shamanic rituals, whereas the oil paintings from Mikhail Larion-
ov’s cycle, Vremena goda (The Four Seasons, 1912), referred in style and in the
selection of objects directly to shamanic drawings. In the same way, the juxta-
position of Kazimir Malevich’s Golova (Head, 1928–29) with a wooden mask of
the Koryaki people on the Kamchatka peninsula revealed the vicinity of primitive
ritual objects and modern art.
The last two sections – “The Presence of the Forest. Idols of Wood. Idols of
Temperament” and “Sylvan Spirits” – offered a more materialistic approach to
the Oriental, archaic and primitive sources of inspiration. It focussed entirely
on wood as a material favoured in the manufacturing of ritual objects amongst
prehistoric peoples and on how they resurfaced, thoroughly transformed, in
sculpture as well as in the media of painting and drawing by Modernist artists.
Most interesting in this section was the juxtaposition of an untitled painting by
Pavel Filonov from 1923, Mikhail Matyushin’s wooden or root sculptures, Venera
(Venus, 1920), Begushchii chelovek (Man Running, 1915–16) and Tantsuiushchaia
zhenshchina (Woman Dancing, 1915–16), as well as primitive sculptures called
Proprietary Spirit of the Mountains and Woods from Eastern Siberia, Protector
Spirit of the Family from Kamchatka, Protector Spirit for Hunting and Fishing of
the Khanty People, the Chinese sculpture Old Man Dancing, or a Proprietary
Spirit of the House from the Island of Sakhalin, as well as Kazimir Malevich’s
Moliashchaiasia zhenshchina (Woman at Prayer, 1910–11). In “Sylvan Spirits”, this
material approach was extended to a more general consideration of the ‘Forest’
as a metaphorical source of inspiration – reflected at its best in two drawings
by Vera Khlebnikova, Shaman i Venera (Shaman and Venus, 1920) and Lipovyi
paren’ (Linden Man, c.1920), and a watercolour Veter: Lesnaia toska (Wind: Forest
Longing, 1920).
Primitivism and Modernism
A major characteristic of the exhibition curators’ concept was to confront archaic

artefacts with modern paintings. A direct transfer of an ancient object into a
modern artwork could be observed in Ilya Mashkov’s painting Portret damy v
kresle (Portrait of a Lady in a Chair, 1913), in which the decorative Kalamkari panels
of the Iranian Master Arufbek reappear in the background. Even more interesting
were the sections that illustrated how the magic forces of ancient artefacts indi-
rectly found a way into the innovative imagery used by avant-garde painters. By
examining the objects and their respective history, the modern artists reinvented
them in their own and personal manner, as Goncharova’s above-mentioned inter-
pretation of the kamennye baby demonstrates. Another form of inspiration came
from the material the artists used in their creative process. Mikhail Matyushin’s
wooden sculptures demonstrate clearly how ‘primitive’ magic could be amalga-
mated with new spirituality. By confronting ancient artefacts with works by Mod-
ernists, the curators managed to follow “the destinies of Russia’s self-proclaimed
‘Barbarians’ in their search for new sources of artistic inspiration” and to demon-
strate “how modern Russian culture experienced a deep attraction to – and an
apprehension of – the exotic, the unknown and the ‘Other’, which artists and
writers identified with the spirit of the taiga, the virgin territories of desert and
steppe and the ‘otherness’ of Oriental culture”.7
At the same time, the exhibition demonstrated how differently Russian and
Western European avant-garde movements approached ‘archaic’, ‘primitive’,
‘exotic’ or ‘Oriental’ sources. Italian Futurism, for example, although based on an
explicit anti-traditionalist position and on the exaltation of modernity, especially
of speed and technology, shared with their Russian colleagues a certain interest
7 See Bini Smaghi’s preface to the exhibition catalogue. Bowlt et al.: L’avanguardia russa, p. [11].
in archaic cultures, occult doctrines and Eastern philosophies. However, these

sources could rarely be found on native soil. The Russian avant-garde artists were
much more inclined to reclaim their cultural roots and to base their artistic iden-
tity on them. The exhibition presented one aspect that can be seen as a common
ground between Russian and Italian avant-garde artists: their interest in magic,
the unknown and the invisible.
However, there is a notable difference between the Futurist twins, as the
exhibition makes very clear. While the Italian Futurists declared themselves to
be “primitives of a completely renewed sensibility”8 and were interested in the
most up-to-date developments of technology and (para)science, the Russian
‘Barbarians’ often oriented themselves towards primitive objects because they
believed them to possess a truly magical power. The Italian Futurists only con-
sidered an object itself as a medium of magic or cultic reverence when they were
worshipping ‘modern products’, such as automobiles, motorcycles, ocean liners
and aeroplanes. Like in Cubism and Expressionism, the artefacts of ‘primitive’
cultures inspired the Russian Modernists in a very profound manner, as it helped
them to find new ways of expression by reducing form to its essential features.
Whereas in France and Germany, the fascination emerged by discovering exotic
worlds in distant countries, the interest of the Russian artists concentrated on
their own traditions and, as the exhibition illustrated, on the archaic artefacts of
the Eastern regions of Russia as well as its neighbouring cultures of Persia, India,
China and Japan.
Bibliography
Boccioni, Umberto, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini: “Les
Exposants au public.” Les Peintres futuristes italiens. Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Galerie
Bernheim-Jeune, 5–24 février 1912. 1–14. English translation “The Exhibitors to the Public,
February 1912.” Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, eds.: Futurism: An
Anthology. New Haven/CT: Yale University Press, 2009. 105–109.
Bowlt, John Ellis, Nicoletta Misler, and Yevgenia Petrova, eds.: L’avanguardia Russa, la Siberia
e l’Oriente. Exhibition catalogue. Firenze: Palazzo Strozzi, 27 settembre 2013 – 19 gennaio
2014. Milano: Skira, 2013.
Bowlt, John Ellis: “Neo-primitivism and Russian Painting.” Burlington Magazine 116:852 (March
1974): 133–140. Reprinted in J. E. Bowlt: Russian Art, 1875–1975: A Collection of Essays.
New York: MSS Information Corporation, 1976. 94–108.
Bowlt, John Ellis, ed.: “Neoprimitivism and Cubofuturism.” J. E. Bowlt, ed.: Russian Art of the
Avant-garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902–1934. New York: Viking Press, 1976. 39–83.
8 Boccioni et al.: “Les Exposants au public”, p. 12.

Hansen-Löve, Aage Ansgar: “Vom Vorgestern ins Übermorgen: Neoprimitivismus in der

russischen Avantgarde.” Nicola Gess, ed.: Literarischer Primitivismus. Berlin: De Gruyter,
2012. 269–314.
Lang, Walter K.: “Ab origine: Michail Larionov e il primitivismo.” Art e dossier 24: 251 (January
2009): 42–47.
L’vova, Eleonora Semenovna, and Marianna Borisovna Miasina, eds.: Vostok i russkoe iskusstvo
[The Orient and Russian Art]. Exhibition catalogue. Moskva: Gosudarstvennyi muzei
iskusstva narodov vostoka, 1978. Moskva: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1978.
Misler, Nicoletta, ed.: “Manifesti del futurismo russo: Il neoprimitivismo.” Rassegna sovietica
32:1 (January-February 1977): 101–116.
Misler, Nicoletta: “Apocalypse and the Russian Peasantry: The Great War in Natalia
Goncharova’s Primitivist Paintings.” Experiment = Eksperiment: A Journal of Russian
Culture 4 (1998): 62–76.
Nilsson, Nils Åke: “Futurism, Primitivism and the Russian Avant-Garde.” Russian Literature 8
(1980): 469–482.
Petrova, Evgeniia N., and Jochen Poetter, eds.: Russische Avantgarde und Volkskunst.
Exhibition catalogue. Baden-Baden: Staatliche Kunsthalle, 24. Juli – 12. September 1993.
Stuttgart: Hatje, 1993.
Raev, Ada: “Eine ‘zweistellige Formel’ des russischen Neoprimitivismus: Nataliia Goncharova
und Michail Larionov.” Renate Berger, ed.: Liebe Macht Kunst: Künstlerpaare im 20.
Jahrhundert. Köln: Böhlau, 2000. 157–191.
Sharp, Jane Ashton: Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal’ia Goncharova and the
Moscow Avant-garde. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Torelli Landini, Enrica: “I ‘primitivi’: Larionov e Gončarova.” E. Torelli Landini: Artisti delle
avanguardie russe. Milano: Mondadori, 1997. 8–15.
Warren, Sarah Jane: “Spent Gypsies and Fallen Venuses: Mikhail Larionov’s Modernist
Primitivism.” Oxford Art Journal 26:1 (2003): 25–44.
Zelinsky, Bodo: “Der Primitivismus und die Anfänge der avantgardistischen Malerei und
Literatur in Russland.” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 27:2
(1982): 121–141.
Ulrike Mühlschlegel
Futurism in Latin America: An Exhibition
at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin
The venue
The Ibero-American Institute (IAI) is a scholarly institution in Berlin concerned

with academic and cultural exchange with countries in Latin America, the Car-
ibbean, Spain and Portugal. It houses the largest European specialist library for
the Ibero-American region. Moreover, in its combined function as information,
research and cultural centre, it acts as a platform for cooperation, as well as a
catalyst for inter-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogues between Europe and
the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries world-wide. Founded in 1930
on the basis of some major book donations from Latin America, it became, in
1962, a body of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage
Foundation) and is now accommodated in the Kulturforum Berlin, a block of cul-
tural institutions on Potsdamer Straße that includes museums, libraries, concert
houses, etc.
The IAI contains a library with books, journals, digital documents, maps,
recordings, photographs, videos, DVDs, literary estates and various other manu-
script materials. It covers subjects ranging from literature, humanities, econom-
ics, law, social sciences, geography to parliamentary and government papers
and the agricultural and environmental sciences. The current book collection
amounts to 930,000 volumes, which increases annually by 30,000 new acquisi-
tions; it holds almost 42,000 periodicals, including cultural journals and literary
magazines of the nineteenth century, and has 4,300 current subscriptions.
The IAI possesses a number of special collections that make it function simul-
taneously as library, archive and research centre. They include a sound archive
with over 40,000 historical recordings on gramophone record and compact disc,
a film collection of 6,000 videos and DVDs, a geographical collection with 72,000
maps and plans, a photo collection with more than 60,000 historic and contem-
porary photographs, a collection of 6,000 political and artistic posters, a slide
collection and a news clippings archive.
All of these documents serve as starting points for research, publication and
exhibition projects. They are making an outstanding contribution to the preserva-
tion of several cultural heritages and allow the user to approach the Ibero-Amer-
ican regions in a variety of ways.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0034
532 Ulrike Mühlschlegel
The exhibition and its context
From 14 June to 12 July 2014, the IAI showed the exhibition, Futurism: Poetry and
Texts of the Avant-garde in Latin America. It was curated by Talí Waiss and formed
part of a series of events commemorating the outbreak of the First World War a
hundred years ago.
The main focus of this exhibition was on visual poetry by three authors:
Vicente Huidobro (Chile), Alberto Hidalgo (Peru) and José Juan Tablada (Mexico).
By way of an introduction, it included precursors from the Spanish Baroque, and
as complements it showed some parallel developments in Dada and Surrealism.
In the final section, influences on poetry after the Second World War were indi-
cated through examples taken from Concrete Poetry and Net.Art.
As Octavio Paz wrote, “visual poetry is an amphibious creature that lives
between two elements: the word and the image, the literature and the visual arts.
A visual poem you can watch and read at the same time.”1 This genre, which is
also called calligram, pattern poetry or shape poetry, goes back to ancient times,
but was particularly popular in the Mannerist period. It was rediscovered in the
nineteenth centry and became a favourite medium in the historical avant-garde. A
common starting point of European and Latin American Modernism was a search
for a renewal in art and literature. Tradition was called into question, and instead
of reproducing reality in a mimetic manner, artists and poets experimented with
language in order to create “new worlds that never existed before and that only
the poet can discover”, as Vicente Huidobro wrote.2
Manifestos and other key texts from Futurism and Dada spread rapidly
through Latin America, usually mediated through cultural magazines from Spain
and France. At that time, many writers from the New World travelled to Europe,
especially to Paris, where they gained first-hand experience of the latest artistic
trends; conversely, many European avant-gardists received invitations to lecture
and exhibit their works in the Americas. This traffic across the Atlantic enabled
an exchange of ideas in both directions.
The exhibition in Berlin showed how the new ideas from Europe were
adapted to a Latin American reality and how aesthetic principles and new writing
1 “El poema-objeto es una criatura anfibia que vive entre dos elementos: el signo y la imagen,
el arte visual, y el arte verbal. Un poema-objeto se contempla y, al mismo tiempo, se lee.” Paz:
“Poemas mudos y objetos parlantes: André Bretón”, p. 92.
2 The Selected Poetry of Vicente Huidobro, p. XVIII. A synthesis of the doctrine of Creationism
reads: “Inventa nuevos mundos y cuida tu palabra.” Huidobro: “Arte poética”, in Obras comple-
tas. Vol. 1, p. 22.
Futurism in Latin America: An Exhibition at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin 533
Fig. 1. José Juan Tablada: “La calle donde vivo” and “Impresión de La Habana”, from Li-Po y
otros poemas (1920).
techniques were integrated into an already existing drive towards innovation.

The examples selected by the curator followed in both content and chronologi-
cal arrangement the overarching theme of “1914” and showed examples of visual
poetry associated with the First World War.
The Mexican journalist, writer and diplomat José Juan Tablada (Mexico
City, 1871 – New York, 1945) encountered different literary trends during his
many travels and stays abroad. In Japan, he learned about the poetic form of
the haiku and employed it in his book, Un día: Poemas sintéticos (One Day:
Concise Poems, 1919). Later, he adapted the bold metaphors and neologisms
of ultraísmo, a literary movement in Spain and Latin America that sought to
merge the visual and literary arts, and to develop a new form of typography,
inspired by the Futurist parole in libertà. Tablada is considered the founder of
the Mexican avant-garde and exercized an important influence on Estrident-
ismo (Stridentism)3 and the Contemporaneos group. The exhibition in Berlin
presented his caligrams, ideographic poems and figurative art. A highpoint of
3 See Gallo: “Wireless Modernity: Mexican Estridentistas, Italian and Russian Futurism.”
the exhibition, undoubtedly, was Li-Po y otros poemas (Li-Po and Other Poems,
1920), which includes the well-known “Impresión de La Habana”, in which a
palm tree and a lighthouse is formed from words – an emblematic visual poem
from Latin America (see Fig. 1).4
Alberto Hidalgo (Arequipa, 1897 – Buenos Aires, 1967) published in 1916 his
first poetry collection, Arenga lírica al emperador de Alemania (Lyric Diatribe to
the German Emperor), which introduced the Futurist aesthetic to Peru. Hidalgo
shared Marinetti’s fascination for war as a cleansing experience and became
friends with Ramón Gómez de la Serna, who wrote the foreword to his book
of poems, Química del espíritu (Chemistry of the Spirit, 1923). In 1925, Hidalgo
founded his own Futurist-inspired movement in Buenos Aires, simplismo, which,
however, never found any followers. When he moved to Buenos Aires (1926), he
spent many years with Ricardo Güiraldes, Xul Solar and Oliverio Girondo, and
collaborated with Jorge Luis Borges and Vicente Huidobro on the first anthology
of Latin American avant-garde poetry, Índice de la nueva poesía americana (1926),
a book that is nowadays a pricey and much sought-after rarity. The exhibition
showed poems from his Química del espíritu, including “Choque de trenes” (Train
Crash), which combines elements of visual design, technical neologisms and the
subject matter of brute force:
Train Crash
(Read from bottom to top, and
the second verse from right to
left.)
the noise of the terrible collision.

in the distance the wind repeated
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
pron
both were moving along the same track, tniop emas eht ta deppots straeh rieht.5
4 See Meyer-Minnemann: “Formas de escritura ideográfica en ‘Li-Po y otros poemas’ de José

Juan Tablada.”
5 Translation by Willard Bohn in his Reading Visual Poetry, p. 69.
Futurism in Latin America: An Exhibition at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin 535
Vicente Huidobro (Santiago de Chile, 1893 – Cartagena, 1948) is best known

as the founder of creacionismo, a literary school he presented in 1921 in his
magazine Creación / Création (Madrid and Paris, 1921 and 1924), as well as in
the collection, Manifestes (Paris: Éditions de la Revue Mondiale, 1925). He was
in close contact with the representatives of ultraísmo, both in Spain and Argen-
tina. Huidobro lived in Paris from 1916 to 1925, where he met with poets and
artists of the avant-garde, such as Picasso, Gris, Apollinaire and Tzara. To his
most experimental phase belong the poetry collections, Horizon carré (Square
Horizon, 1917) and Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower, 1918), which were first published
in French and showed an awareness of Futurist visual arts and typographical
innovations. Among the numerous works exhibited in Berlin was also La Salle
XIV, a cycle of painted poems started around 1917 and exhibited for the first
time in Paris in 1922. At the IAI, these gouaches were complemented by visual
texts from Horizon carré and the poem “1914” from Hallali: Poème de guerre
(Hallali: War Poem, 1918).
The various currents of the Hispano-American avant-gardes during the 1920s,
such as creacionismo, estridentismo, ultraísmo and the movimento antropofágico
in Brazil, had to be excluded, by and large, from the exhibition, but it did present
Oliverio Girondo, whose Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía (Twenty Poems
to be Read on the Tram, 1922) were inspired by Futurism, and whose “Cantar de
las ranas” from Espantapájaros (al alcance de todos) (“Song of the Frogs”, from
Scarecrow: A Book Accessible to All, 1932) counts as a major example of Argentine
visual poetry. The given thematic and chronological framework “1914” imposed a
certain time limit, yet overall, the many book objects, visual poems, typographic
experiments as well as explanatory wall panels offered a fascinating glimpse into
the way in which Futurism was received and adapted by members of the Latin
American avant-gardes.
Bibliography
Bohn, Willard: Reading Visual Poetry. Madison/NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011.
Gallo, Rubén: “Wireless Modernity: Mexican Estridentistas, Italian and Russian Futurism.”
Huidobro, Vicente: “Arte poética.” V. Huidobro: El espejo de agua: Poemas, 1915–1916. Buenos
Aires: Biblioteca Orión, 1916. Reprint Santiago de Chile: Pequeño Dios, 2011. 11–22.
—: Obras completas. Vol. 1. Santiago de Chile: Zig-Zag, 1964.
—: The Selected Poetry of Vicente Huidobro. New York: New Directions, 1981.
Meyer-Minnemann, Klaus: “Formas de escritura ideográfica en Li-Po y otros poemas de José
Juan Tablada.” Nueva revista de filología hispánica 36:1 (1988): 433–453.
Paz, Octavio: “Poèmes muets, objets parlants.” André Breton: Je vois, j’imagine: Poèmes-objets.
Paris: Gallimard, 1991. V–XI. Spanish translation “Poemas mudos y objetos parlantes:
André Bretón.” O. Paz: Obras completas. Vol. 4. Los privilegios de la vista: Arte moderno
universal, arte de México. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores; México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1994. 91–97.
Manfred Hinz
A New Analysis of Futurist Manifestos
Benedikt Hjartarson: Visionen des Neuen: Eine diskurshistorische Analyse
des frühen avantgardistischen Manifests. Heidelberg: Winter, 2013.
ISBN-13 9783825373412; ISBN-10 382537341X. 408 pp., hb. 58,00 €.
The present study, based on a Ph.D. dissertation from Groningen University

(2012), is undoubtedly worthy of notice by Futurism scholars. It investigates the
vast corpus of avant-garde manifestos published between 1909 (Marinetti’s The
Founding and Manifesto of Futurism) and 1923. It covers a very broad range of
early avant-garde movements – Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, French
and German Dada, Russian Ego- or Cubo-Futurism, Serbian Zenitism, English
Vorticism and Imagism, Spanish Ultraism etc. – and interprets them in a com-
parative perspective. Hjartarson’s investigation into all these movements, which
(unfortunately) does not include Breton’s Surrealism, is preceded by a lengthy
and rather laborious introduction in which he distinguishes between his “his-
torical discourse analysis” à la Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz and all its
imaginable competitors (system theory, speech act theory, classical hermeneu-
tics, constructivism, radical constructivism and symbolic capital theory, to name
just a few), which is, perhaps, an indispensable initiation rite for a Ph.D. thesis
today, but expendable for a reader interested in the avant-garde.
The following chapters of Hjartarson’s book, however, deserve attention
because they propose a coherent thesis: The early European avant-garde (and,
presumably, also the later movements) was rooted in a revival of occultist, i.e.
anti-deterministic, thinking. This mystical tradition emerged in the late-nine-
teenth and early-twentieth century and reached its apex during the Symbolist
period in European art, the immediate precursor to the avant-garde. Hjartarson’s
thesis is not entirely new, but it is pursued here with systematic rigour. He traces
this occultist or mystical undercurrent through the writings of eminent thinkers
such as Henri Bergson and William James (for whom ‘occultist’ might be a debat-
able label) via Eliphas Lévi, Jules Bois, Rudolf Steiner down into the marasmus
of Mme Blavatsky and many other wonder gurus. Given the chaotic profusion of
avant-garde magazines and leaflets, which even after decades of research have
never been fully surveyed, one cannot, of course, expect a Ph.D. candidate to
analyse such a plethora of theoretical statements in a comprehensive manner.
Yet, Hjartarson’s thesis does not imply that the occultist drift within Sym-
bolism and its appeal to the unconscious and unknown forces of the universe
are to be equated with the avant-garde endeavour to map out, in an act of “aes-
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0035
538 Manfred Hinz
thetic voluntarism” (pp. 350f), an entirely new world. Earlier studies had tried to
grasp this phenomenon by stating that the avantgardistic aesthetic subject sur-
passes (literally, by being faster than) the transcendental subject of theoretical
reason. Hjartarson’s approach implies two theoretical issues that are important
to bear in mind. Firstly, it stresses the unrepeatable “historical otherness” (p. 7)
of the avant-garde moment and, secondly and more pertinently, it breaks with
Peter Bürger’s assumption that this movement had aimed at abolishing aesthetic
autonomy (see pp. 5f). Rather, the contrary is the case: the avant-garde claimed
an exuberant artistic autonomy in order to use it as leverage for revolutionizing
every sphere of human life, politics included, so that, ultimately, alienated life
could be transformed into a new kind of Lebens-Gesamtkunstwerk (life as a total
work of art). However, Hjartarson’s conclusion that the form of the manifesto
itself, as a “magical” performative speech act, already fulfils the demands of the
avant-garde (p. 350) appears problematic. Such self-referential confinement is
certainly alien to the revolutionary project of the avant-garde.
Hjartarson concludes his study with a very honest and modest remark: “If
the methodical approach of this study has been successful, its heuristic value
lies less in the results presented here than in providing an incentive for future
research and for a theoretical debate on the significance of the avant-garde” (p.
356). I am very happy to accept this invitation and to concentrate in my review on
Marinetti’s Futurism, which occupies the bulk of this book.
Hjartarson correctly links Marinetti’s pre-Futurist writings with the Symbolist
writer Jules Bois and states:
A change of direction can be observed between Le Roi Bombance and Mafarka le futuriste.
[… Marinetti’s] pre-Futurist writings still belonged to the Decadent tradition, in which terms
such as ennui, spleen and blasé play a key rôle and in which the individual is seen as a
product of a civilization characterized by a fading will power. His Futurist writings, on the
other hand, were fuelled by a desire to radically break with these traditions. (p. 333).
Seen from a historical viewpoint, this contention is not entirely true. Marinetti’s
lengthy (and pretentious) epics, La Conquête des étoiles (1902) and Destruction
(1904), written before Roi Bombance, had already bidden farewell to the Deca-
dent ennui and spleen and, in fact, inaugurated the destructive impulse of Futur-
ism. The first ‘Futurist’ novel, Mafarka il futurista (1909/10), cannot be consid-
ered ‘occultist’, simply because Marfarka’s son Gazurmah who accomplishes the
Gesamtkunstwerk by destroying the world, is a machine, rationally calculated
and constructed “without the collaboration and foul-smelling involvement of a
woman’s uterus” (Preface to Mafarka the Futurist).
Like many scholars before him, Hjartarson takes notice of the military con-
notations of the term ‘avant-garde’, especially for Marinetti. But I consider his
A New Analysis of Futurist Manifestos 539
comment that “the Futurist project is grounded in a fundamentally dualistic world

view that goes back to the Gnostic tradition and aims at a redemption of mankind
from the shadowy sphere of appearances in order to enable its passage into a
space of pure spirituality” (pp. 225f), to be untenable. It ascribes to Marinetti a
‘spiritual’ (in the broadest sense) intention which, in fact, he had constantly and
explicitly rejected. Walter Benjamin, a missing author in Hjartarson’s study, had
dwelled on Marinetti in the last paragraph of his famous though enigmatic, essay,
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), and grants him at
least, in spite of all his animosity, the “the virtue of clarity”.1 Marinetti was not a
hypocrite, and if he advocated violence for purely aesthetic reasons, this should
not induce us to see in his Futurism a ‘spiritual’ project.
Hjartarson is very precise when he writes about violence (and, of course, war)
and compares it to Georges Sorel’s “mythological violence” (pp. 234f). However,
as in Sorel, this violence is not intended to allow mankind to reach a level of ‘pure
spirituality’. There have certainly been occultist currents in Italian Futurism, par-
ticularly in Arnaldo Ginna and Bruno Corra (pp. 298f) or in the painter Gino Sev-
erini (pp. 208f), but Marinetti’s position was primarily focussed on his technolog-
ical project. The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism declared that mythological
figures (for example, the Centaur and the Angel) have become obsolete through
their technical counterparts, the automobile and the aeroplane. Therefore, if we
wish to ascribe a ‘mystical’ dimension to Marinetti’s Futurism, we should search
for it from within the machine itself. This would be a difficult, although not alto-
gether impossible line of argument, but it would require a Marxist underpinning,
which Hjartarson does not embark on. Florentine Futurism, on the other hand,
largely depended upon William James’ pragmatism, which seems difficult to be
placed under the label of ‘occultism’. Strangely enough, Hjartarson mainly con-
siders Giovanni Papini’s Un uomo finito (pp. 280f), published in 1912 and written
long before his adherence to Futurism, whereas he neglects Ardengo Soffici’s
Primi principi di un’estetica futurista (1919), the most ambitious attempt to sys-
tematize Futurist aesthetics.
In sum, Hjartarson’s investigations into occultist or mystical influences on
European avant-garde movements correctly underline an aspect frequently
neglected in avant-garde studies, but they reach different levels of plausibility
depending on which faction of the avant-garde is being considered. Occultist
undercurrents seem to surface prominently in Serbian Zenitism, and its ideo-
logue, Ljubomir Micić (pp. 184f), combined it with a pan-Slavic drift according
to which only the East is capable of redeeming the West. In the case of Russian
1 Walter Benjamin: Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. London: Pimlico, 1999, p. 235.
540 Manfred Hinz
Futurism, a certain amount of occultism is present in Aleksei Kruchenykh (p. 151),

whereas the poet Velimir Khlebnikov seems to be pursuing a different line of
thought. No doubt, he and Mayakovsky shared Marinetti’s military metaphors
(p. 144), but Khlebnikov’s long and complicated calculations of the ‘Law of Time’
carried lucidity into an entirely irrational realm.
Finally, I should like to emphasize again that Hjartarson’s chronological
boundaries impose on his argument an unfortunate limitation. As occultism
and mysticism tried to mobilize the unconscious forces of humankind, the true
successor to this endeavour was therefore Surrealism rather than Futurism. Both
Louis Aragon and André Breton were much more sophisticated authors than Mari-
netti; both had actually studied in depth a path-breaking theoretician, Sigmund
Freud, who had attempted to unravel the unconscious. This form of ‘occultism’
was entirely absent in both Italian and Russian Futurism.
Günter Berghaus
The Dramaturgy of Sound in Futurist Theatre
Mladen Ovadija: Dramaturgy of Sound in the Avant-garde and Postdramatic
Theatre. Montreal: McGill – Queens University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-
7735-4173-3 (cloth); 978-0-7735-8866-0 (electronic PDF); 978-0-7735-8867-7
(electronic publication). 24 cm. vii, 252 pp. $95.00, €74,00, £64.00
In this volume, Mladen Ovadija addresses the oral and aural dimensions of
theatrical performances in the historical and postmodern avant-garde, cover-
ing both the semantics of stage sounds and the textualities of vocal production.
Although the author’s compass is quite wide-ranging, a good half of the pub-
lication is actually dedicated to Futurism. It is a major asset of this book that
Ovadija’s examples are taken from both Italy and Russia, and as all texts are
quoted in English translations, readers are not required to be familiar with either
language.
Ovadija worked for a while for Radio Sarajevo and Radio Toronto and has
been a sound designer in various Canadian theatres. He is therefore well qualified
to examine the performativity and materiality of sound in a theatrical setting. His
focus in this study is not on the sound practices in dramatic theatre, but on sound
as a non-figurative and non-illustrative, synaesthetic device in a wide range of
theatrical performances. In his view, the rejection of narrative theatre and the
emphasis on the physical nature of performative processes within the European
avant-garde found a first flourishing within the Futurist movement. Expression-
ism, Dada and Bauhaus no doubt expanded the repertoire of practices, but many
of the key developments could first be observed in Futurism.
Ovadija’s reflections on sound experiments in twentieth-century avant-garde
performance reveal a sound grasp of relevant theoretical texts by practitioners
and critics alike. However, when he addresses actual stage events, it very quickly
transpires that performance analysis is not his forte. This book exemplifies a trend
I have encountered repeatedly in postgraduate courses, namely that students feel
much more at home with theories of art than with the admittedly arduous task
of reconstructing stage events on the basis of reviews, eyewitness reports, pho-
tographs etc. Although Ovadija wrote his PhD thesis on Futurist performance,
he clearly has not spent much time on archival research and is not particular
familiar with first-hand accounts of the shows he discusses in his book. Such an
over-reliance on secondary and tertiary sources is highly dangerous, particularly
when it is combined with a birds’ eyes view on long-term developments, as it reg-
ularly leads to skewed or factually incorrect generalizations.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0036
To give two examples: “The artistic uprising signalled by Italian Futurists

almost immediately spread to Russia and Germany” (29) and “many Futurist
bruitist works made it into the repertory of the Cabaret Voltaire soirees” (31).
Anybody familiar with the Russian reports on Marinetti’s visit to Moscow and
Saint-Petersburg (26 January – 17 February 1914) would be aware of the hostil-
ity he encountered even five years after the publication of his Foundation and
Manifesto of Futurism. And although seven years after this manifesto the Dadaists
advertised in two Zurich newspapers that they were going to perform “a Futur-
ist comedy and some Futurist programme-music”,1 no document has ever been
found that confirms that this event actually took place, or that “many Futurist
bruitist works” were performed in Zurich. So, “almost immediately” and “many”
are epithets that simply do not square with the documents Ovadija should be
familiar with.
Nobody who has ever studied the primary source material related to the
Futurist serate at the Teato Costanzi would describe the events as Ovadija does
on pp. 46–47. First of all, there was no performance on 2 March 1913, but two
separate events, held on 21 February 1913 and 9 March 1913. Boccioni did not
exhibit his painting and sculpture “onstage”, but in the adjacent Ridotto; Maestro
Pratella conducted his Inno alla vita, but this symphony was not particularly
innovative and was not “on later occasions joined by the machine music of
Russolo’s intonarumori”. Pratella’s Hymn to Life was judged by the critic of La
tribuna “absolutely passéist in form and substance”2 and when, on 2 June 1913 at
the Teatro Storchi, Russolo presented his noise intoners, Pratella only read pas-
sages from his manifestos. He did so with such poor stage presence that even
those audience members genuinely interested in his thoughts switched off after a
while. The Gazzetta dell’Emilia reported that, on other occasions and in contrast
to the other Futurists, Pratella won the sympathy of the audience because of his
boyish appearance, his gay and happy airs, and his essentially pacifist conduct.
La provincia di Ferrara even testified that Pratella’s talk on Futurist music won
him “sustained applause and shouts of ‘bravo!’”
Therefore, when Obadija characterizes a serata as a “Molotov cocktail of agi-
tations, invectives, extravagant theories, and provocative art” (46), he needs to
make sure that the details are right and not just draw general attributes from sec-
ondary literature to turn each and every event into “a provocative hybrid of sound
poetry, installation, happening, and performance.” (47)
1 Sheppard: Dada Zürich in Zeitungen, p. 11

2 “[…] assolutamente passatista nella forma e nell’essenza.” La tribuna, 23 February 1913.
In the first chapters of his volume, Obadija claims that Futurist poetry, espe-
cially when recited in the theatre, amounted to “onomatopoeic sound bombs”.
(34) If he had read and studied the first collection of Futurist poetry, I poeti futur-
isti (Edizioni futuriste di “Poesia”, 1912), he would have gained a clearer picture
of the material the Futurists were presenting in the early serate. In the case of one
famous, but quite rare, exception, Palazzeschi’s “Ailing Fountain” (“Clof, clop,
cloch, cloffete, cloppete, clocchete, chchch....” etc.), the Gazzetta dell’Emilia
described the audience’s reactions to the onomatopoeic verses thus: “They
could not hold back their laughter. Their noise interrupts the declamation and
some people have the sarcasm to demand Balilla Pratella back on stage.” A more
typical recitation, but entirely in contrast to Obadija’s claims, was that of Palazz-
eschi’s poem “The Rule of the Sun”, a work of much grace and delicate lines that
was read out by the author with such a faint voice that Marinetti had to exhort
him: “Prepare yourself for a declamation of your verses and not just a reading.”3
A great deal has been written about Futurist poetry, especially visual poetry
and Words-in-Freedom, but not much attention has been paid to the fact that this
poetry was also an auditory art, i.e. it was composed with a performance in mind.
Obadija is therefore to be commended for his insistence on a vocal interpretation
of works such as Marinetti’s Zang tumb tuuum: Adrianopoli ottobre 1912. Parole in
libertà (Zang Tumb Tumb: Adrianople, October 1912. Words-in-Freedom, 1914). A
great deal of Futurist poetry was indeed an “interplay of graphemes, phonemes,
and vocal gestures” (24), and Obadija assembles some valid arguments for his
claim that Futurism rang in an “acoustic turn in the arts and theatre” (27). He
analyses how Italy shifted from an agricultural to an urban society and argues
that the Futurists reflected in their works the new Big-City life and harnessed its
multifaceted features for a renewal of human sensibilities in the modern age.
But he is overstating his case when he considers Futurist texts to produce an
abstract cacophony of sounds which, when recited, was “dissociating itself from
mere verbal meaning” and became “nothing but an immediate non-representa-
tive performance” (55). Futurist sound poetry, in my view, should not be reduced
to “a cloud of ‘floating signifiers’” (55), and I only know of a few examples where
a poetry recitation “questioned the limits of the performer’s physicality” (54).
Obadija’s book is full of unsubstantiated generalizations. He does not
analyse in detail any Futurist performance and does not quote one single review
of a Futurist poetry recitation. It is pure theory when he writes:
3 Carteggio Marinetti-Palazzeschi, p. 9. Palazzeschi’s poor stage presence and “fievole voce” is

highlighted in Attilio Tamanini’s review of the Trieste serata in the journal Arte, reprinted by
Marinetti in his compilation, Rapporto sulla vittoria del Futurismo a Trieste.
Marinetti’s onomatopoetic mimesis of the noise of exploding shells, whistling shrapnel,

or heavy engine roar replaced the verbal description of the events. The ensuing non-verbal
idiom of Futurist performance adhered to Artaud’s proposition for a sign language that con-
sists of noises, cries, gestures, poses, and signs. (54)
Marinetti was, by all accounts, a highly effective reciter. His Bombardamento di

Adrianopoli (The Bombardment of Adrianople, 1912) was declaimed on hundreds
of occasions, often in salons and social soirées, and Marinetti always emerged
from it with tuxedo and bow tie in perfect order, drawing nonchalantly on his cig-
arette and going on to entertain his audience with more repertoire pieces like his
“Ode to a Racing Car” (A l’Automobile de course / A Mon Pégase / All’ automobile
da corsa, 1908). His vocal acrobatics may have been an inspiration to Artaud,4
but they certainly were not, like the Théâtre de Cruauté, aiming a total transfor-
mation of the audience. Rather, they were highly accessible and perfectly under-
standable virtuoso performances that won him great popular acclaim: “He made
his versatile voice thunder, purr, murmur, gibber, whisper, blare or sing until the
hands were raised for a round of applause.”5
Following some rather sweeping theoretical reflections on the use of the
voice in avant-garde performances, Obadija reflects on the dramaturgy of sound
and the developments from serate to sintesi (i.e., the Theatre of Essential Brevity,
created in 1915). His main source for this, it seems, is a 76-page postgraduate
thesis, Bertini’s Marinetti e le eroiche serate,6 which has the disadvantage of
using the term “serata” in a general way to signify all sorts of theatrical soirées,
including the first performances of Marinetti’s play Elettricità (1913) and the after-
noon events in the Sprovieri Gallery (1914). Obadija even goes a stage further and
includes “conferences” (by which he presumably means conferenze, i.e. lectures,
and not symposia-like meetings), exhibitions and concerts, even tours to London
and Paris. With such an array of formats joined under one umbrella term it is
difficult to see what a “typical Futurist serata” (57) may have looked like. They
certainly did not all “begin on a serious note with hymns like ‘Inno alla vita’”
and “would then continue with the declamation of chains of incomprehensible
4 I have not found any evidence of Artaud having been a witness of one of Marinetti’s many poe-
try recitations in Paris, but he was clearly informed about such events. See Alfonsi: “Marinetti ed
Artaud.” Lista: “Antonin Artaud et le futurisme.” Virmaux: “Artaud et le futurisme.”
5 “Kunstchronik”, Berliner Tageblatt, 9 October 1913; “Kleine Mitteilungen”, Berliner Tageblatt,
11 October 1913, and Th.P.: “Marinettismus”, Berliner Tageblatt, 13 October 1913, quoted in
Chytraeus-Auerbach: “Marinetti in Berlin”, p. 121.
6 The second and much longer part of its published version (pp. 77–202) consists of images,
documents, poetic texts and bibliography.
words” (57). Pratella’s optimistic symphony – describing a young man’s transi-

tion from boyhood to adolescence to adulthood – can be considered “serious”,
but it was not a “hymn” in the sense of a song honouring a deity, and it was
only performed twice in a theatrical setting. Palazzeschi’s sound painting of a
fountain running out of water was not at all “incomprehensible” to the audience,
as the reviews make perfectly clear, and Marinetti’s poetic evocation of the Bul-
garians battling against the Turks in the Balkan War was not interpreted by the
spectators as “nonsense” (57). Italian newspapers had reported for weeks on the
Battle of Adrianople (3 November 1912 - 26 March 1913), and Marinetti effectively
employed the metaphor of the Balkan conflict to characterize his battle against
the Italian establishment (“I have the impression of finding myself in front of a
Turkish fortress in the Dardanelles. But I see that their munitions are running out
and they still have not vanquished us.” 7)
In 1910–11, the Futurists organized ten serate. All Futurists poems recited
during that period were written in a late-Symbolist, Free-Verse vein. None of
the performances were “replete with ludic free-word novelties of Buzzi, Luciano
Folgore, Auro d’Alba, Francesco Cangiullo and others” (57) because “Free words”
(parole in libertà) only came into existence in 1912 with the Technical Mani-
festo of Futurist Literature (which on p. 60 Obadija erroneously dates 1910). The
“freedom” (libertà) Marinetti was referring to was not suggesting liberation from
meaning but was advocating a more expressive form of meaning that was no
longer tied to traditional syntax and the conventional graphic arrangement of the
printed page. Zang tumb tuuum is a good example of this. Marinetti’s poetological
strategies have recently been discussed by Patrick Suter in his essay, “Mallarmé
and His Futurist ‘Heir’ Marinetti”, to which I can refer for details. Suffice it to state
that Marinetti challenged the journalistic discourses on the Battle of Adrianople
by transmitting his messages ‘telegraphically’ and using the new techniques he
elucidated in the manifesto, Destruction of Syntax – Untrammelled Imagination –
Words-in-Freedom (1913).
Obadija discusses Zang tumb tuuum on pp. 72–79, together with examples
drawn from Les Mots en liberté futuristes (Futurist Words-in-Freedom, 1919), which
he erroneously dates 1916. Whether the 225 pages8 of this publication qualify to
be called a “sound poem” (72) is debatable; but Obadija is unquestionably wrong
when he writes: “Marinetti saw the siege close up, as a war correspondent for the
7 See the chapter “La serata futurista al Teatro Verdi” in Alberto Viviani’s memoirs, Giubbe
rosse, pp. 65–70, where the quotation can be found on p. 67.
8 Obadija on p. 73 writes that it is a “159-page book”. Such an edition is unknown to me. All ten
copies I have seen have a page range of [4] fol., 225 pp., [2] fol.
French newspaper Gil Blas.” (73) First of all, Marinetti did not publish a single
line on the Balkan War in Gil Blas,9 and secondly he never reached the battle-
fields of Edirne / Adrianople. But, apparently, when he recited from his volume,
he must have informed his audience that he had witnessed the military actions
first hand. Concerning the veracity of that statement, we published in Yearbook 4
an interesting report from Delft:
Marinetti had just experienced the Balkan War, and as a souvenir he recited an onomato-
poeic war song, The Fall of Adrianople. He gave an admirable performance of the rat-a-tat
of the machine guns, the booming of the cannons and the ripping sound of the projectiles.
During the supper that followed, while Marinetti appalled us with tales of the horrors of
war, the now deceased Capt. R., who had travelled with him as a reporter, smiled as he
whispered in my ear: “Neither he nor I was ever admitted to the front by the Bulgarians.”10
Irrespective of whether Marinetti’s evocation of the battle was based on personal

experience or “untrammelled imagination”, there is no doubt that his audiences
did not understand his verses to be meaningless gibberish. Zang tumb tuuum,
especially when recited by Marinetti, made perfect sense to them. The passage
Obadija cites on p. 58 can easily be recognized as the cries of pain of mutilated
soldiers in a hail of shrapnel, and hardly qualifies to be called “nonsense”.
For reasons I cannot quite understand, Obadija never makes it very clear
when “Zang tumb tuuum” refers to the book and when to the poem Bombarda-
mento di Adrianopoli, drawn from chapter 10. The former was published in 1914,
the latter is conventionally dated “1912” (because of the book’s subtitle Adrian-
opoli ottobre 1912). This date may in fact not be correct, as the surviving French
manuscript, Bombardement d’Andrianople, preserved at the Charles E. Young
Research Library, Los Angeles, stems from 1913. 11 It certainly was created after
the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature (11 May 1912) and not in parallel to it
or “during the same period”, as stated on p. 73,12 as the Balkan War had not even
started at that point.
9 Admittedly, Obadija is not the only scholar to have made this incorrect statement. None of
these authors ever bothered to leaf through the pages of Gil Blas to check before making wrong
assertions. Obadija is, however, unique in claiming: “ Zang tumb tuuum is an ear-witness’s tele
graphic account of the battlefield first in history to deploy an air force.” (74). The Libyan war of
1911/12 was the first in history that featured air attacks, and Marinetti drew on this in his other
battle epic, La Bataille de Tripoli (The Battle of Tripoli, 1912).
10 De Hollandsche Revue, 1 October 1919, pp. 573–574. Quoted in Kalmthout: “Futurism in the
Netherlands, 1909–1940”, p. 182.
11 See Sansone: F. T. Marinetti = Futurismo, p. 162.
12 Another misdating occurs on p. 92, when he writes that the Technical Manifesto of Futurist
As indicated above, Obadija’s book also addresses the dramaturgy of sound

in Russian Futurist theatre. Chapter 4 “Zaum: From a ‘Beyonsense’ Language
to an Idiom of Theatre” highlights again the fact that “poets and visual artists
eschewed figural and representational modes and focused on the materiality of
their means” (87). He adds that the Russians “phonetically sculpted words” (88),
created “phonemes stripped bare of their signifying fetters” (97) and “fought
for the ‘pure word’, not loaded with any referential or symbolic function” (98).
An excursus into Primitivism offers Obadija an opportunity to draw attention
to myth, magic and ritualistic (shamanistic) performances, and to address two
of the best-known and most widely discussed Futurist plays, Pobeda nad solnt-
sem (Victory over the Sun, 1913), and Zangezi: Sverkhpovest’ (Zangezi: Super-
tale, 1922). Considering that there is a wealth of material documenting the per-
formances at the Teatr “Luna Park” in Saint-Petersburg (3 and 5 December 1913)
and in the Museum of Artistic Culture in Petrograd (11 May 1923), I find it rather
disappointing that Obadija has nothing to say on the stage performances and
instead fills many pages with plot descriptions, statements on the author’s inten-
tions and literary analyses. Surely, it would have been worth exploring how the
zaum’ concept of picture-sounds evident in the Matyushin-Malevich correspond-
ence was borne out in the performances themselves. But neither the vocal sounds
composed by Kruchenykh nor the musical sounds composed by Matyushin are
given any detailed consideration. The reader is left wondering whether the artis-
tic vision of a “stage with sonic masses hanging in space like aural sculptures”
(103) ever came to fruition.
Obadija’s interest in the physicality of the zaum’ stage makes him consider
the relations between the material quality and energy of sound in zaumnyi iazyk
and the Futurist “lyrical obsession for matter”,13 or between poetry and what
Obadija calls “fisicoffolia” (77, 82, 111). Spelling errors aside,14 this is an inter-
esting area of investigation, but it gets problematic when Obadija states that the
technique was meant to release the “vibrations of an I” (111). Marinetti was not an
Writers [sic] appeared in Russia in 1912. To my knowledge, it was first printed (together with its
supplement) in Manifesty ital’ianskogo futurizma, published by Shershenevich in February 1914.
13 Marinetti: Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature, p. 111
14 They affect not only names, as in “Einer Schleef” (8), “Hebert Ihering” (160) or “Nataliya
Gonchareva” (171), but also technical terms such as “their sintesi teatrale” (113), “Pomeriggi spe-
tacollari” (162), and “storneli vocali” (165). More worrying even are references to “Ivo Pannaggi
and Giacomo Balla’s Balli Meccanici” (178), probably meaning Ivo Pannaggi and Vinicio Paladi-
ni’s Ballo meccanico, or Marinetti the Academic serving the Fascists in “Libya” (155), probably
meaning his engagement as a volunteer in the Italian conquest of Ethiopia (1935–36). The Libyan
War (1911–12) had nothing to do with Fascism and Marinetti was not an Accademico then.
Expressionist seeking to give articulation to an author’s ego; he actually sought

to destroy the literary ‘I’ by fusing it with “the superior vibrancy of the cosmos”.15
Still, Obadija has touched upon an important issue here; the physical language
of Futurist performance and Marinetti’s philosophy of matter is a topic worth
exploring in more detail.
Some of this is undertaken in chapter 6, “Sound as Structure: Toward an
Architecture of Theatre”, which I regard as one of the more successful parts of
the book. One of the great achievements of Futurist theatre was that it opened up
the borders between different arts and explored their synaesthetic correlations.
Sound played a major rôle in this, as Obadija demonstrates in his discussion of
the complessi plastici, the Teatro del colore, the Teatro della pantomima futurista,
as well as various forms of multichannelled recitation. However, as Obadija is
again entirely reliant on secondary and tertiary sources, his grasp on the perfor-
mances can be extremely tenuous, and his discussions tend to be opaque rather
than illuminating.
I do not wish to comment here on other parts of Dramaturgy of Sound in the
Avant-garde and Postdramatic Theatre, as they will be of little interest to readers
of this Yearbook. Obadija’s study could have occupied a useful place in the exten-
sive literature on Futurist performance, as the rôle of sound is markedly less
investigated than, say, stage design. As the first sections of the book indicate,
the author is very familiar with current theoretical models of anti-narrative and
anti-textual theatre, the rôle of sound in non-representational performance, the
material/physical aspects of oral/aural semiosis and their interaction with light-
ing and stage design. But when he confronts historical stage events, he does not
have at his fingertips the methodological instruments to undertake a penetrating
performance analysis. We are offered many, and sometimes stimulating, thoughts
on the dramaturgy of sound, but we are never made to understand the dramatic
effect (and sensory affect) of sound in a performative setting.
Bibliography
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futurista 1978. Roma: Arte-Viva, 1977. 208–209.
Apollonio, Umbro, ed.: Futurist Manifestos. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.
Berghaus, Günter: “Variety, Music-hall and Futurist Theatre Aesthetics.” Gianni Eugenio Viola,
ed.: Una bellezza nuova: Studi e ricerche nel Centenario del Manifesto di Fondazione del
Futurismo di Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Roma: Biblioteca d’Orfeo, 2009. 111–143.
15 Marinetti: “Dynamic, Multichanneled Recitation”, p. 194


Bertini, Simona: Marinetti e le eroiche serate: Con antologia di testi e sezione iconografica.
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Futurism Studies 4 (2014): 165–201.
Lista, Giovanni: “Antonin Artaud et le futurisme.” Espaces (Bruxelles) 6 (Autumn 1975): 5–10.
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libertà.” F. T. Marinetti: Teoria e invenzione futurista. A cura di Luciano de Maria. 2nd edn
Milano: Mondadori, 1983. 65–80.
—: “Dynamic, Multichannel Recitation.” F. T. Marinetti: Critical Writings. New York: Farrar,
—: “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature.” F. T. Marinetti: Critical Writings. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 107–119.
—: Les Mots en liberté futuristes. Milano: Edizioni Futuriste di “Poesia”, 1919.
—: Selected Writings. Ed. by Richard W. Flint, and Arthur A. Coppotelli. London: Secker and
Warburg, 1972.
—: Teoria e invenzione futurista. A cura di Luciano de Maria. 2nd edn Milano: Mondadori,
1983.
Sansone, Luigi, ed.: F. T. Marinetti = Futurismo. Milano: Fondazione Fondazione Stelline, 12
febbraio - 7 giugno 2009. Milano: Motta, 2009.
Virmaux, Alain: “Artaud et le futurisme.” A. Virmaux: Antonin Artaud et le théâtre. Paris:
Seghers, 1970. 124–126.
Viviani, Alberto: Giubbe rosse: Il caffè fiorentino dei futuristi negli anni incendiari 1913–1915. A
cura di Paolo Perrone Burali d’Arezzo. Firenze: Vallecchi, 1983.
Toshiharu Omuka
Futurism in the Far East
Elena Iur’evna Turchinskaia: Avangard na Dal’nem Vostok: “Zelenaia
koshka”, Burliuk i drugie [The Avantgarde in the far East: “Green Cat”,
Burliuk and Others]. Sankt-Peterburg: Aleteiia, 2011. Hbk 146 pp.
ISBN 987-5-91419-174-7. Price 975 rubles. $ 49.00.
Russian avant-garde art is still attracting public attention in the international art
scene, as the recent exhibition “Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-garde”
in Amsterdam, Bonn and London demonstrates, even though the height of pop-
ularity seems to have passed. The general interest is no longer restricted to major
artists such as Malevich and Tatlin, but has expanded to other aspects of the
movement. Since the 1990s, research has extended from the cultural centres of
Moscow and Saint-Petersburg to peripheral areas such as the Russian Far East (as
far as Kharbin, now the Northeast Chinese city Harbin1) and the Uzbek autono-
mous region of Karakalpakstan, home of the Nukus Museum of Art (holding the
Savitsky Collection, the world’s second largest collection of Russian avant-garde
art2). However, there was a serious impediment to research into Modernism in the
Russian Far East: access to Vladivostok, one of the two main centres of the region
and home to a navy base, was strictly forbidden from the late 1950s until the fall
of the Soviet régime.3
Modernist art in the region developed around the two main centres of Vladi
vostok and Khabarovsk – and later, to some extent, Chita. The fairly active and
varied local art scene was described by Vitalii Kandyba in Istoriia stanovleniia i
razvitiia khudozhestovennoi zhizni Dal’nego Vostoka, 1858–1938 gg. (History of the
Formation and Development of Artistic Life in the Far East, 1858–1938), among
others. However, in 1999, when I was preparing an exhibition of pre- and post-rev-
olutionary Modernist art from the Russian Far East, I was able to visit both cities,
together with several museum curators.4
1 See Melikhov: Belyi Kharbin.

2 See Kovtun, et al.: Avangard, ostanovlennyi na begu.
3 Vladivostok opened to Soviet citizens in 1989, and finally to foreigners in 1992, although entry
into the city had been possible under certain conditions. For example, the Japanese scholar of
Russian modern history, Hara Teruyuki of Hokkaido University, received official permission and
was able to visit the city for a week in 1989. See Hara: Urajiosutoku monogatari.
4 This exhibition opened in 2002 under the title, Modernism in the Russian Far East and Japan,
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0037
A key focus of my initial research was the Futurist poet and painter David
Burliuk (1882–1967), who was born in Ukraine, studied art in Russia and in
Western Europe, and became an animateur of the Russian Futurist movement. He
was a leading figure of the legendary literary group Hylaea, formed in 1910 and
famous for its polemical manifesto, Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu (A
Slap in the Face of Public Taste, 1912), which he co-signed with major poets such
as Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh. During the Revolution, Burliuk left
Moscow and moved eastward, first to the Urals, and then across Siberia to the Far
East. In 1919, he gathered his family in Vladivostok, and in September 1920 left for
Japan, taking with him dozens of works by local artists.5 Burliuk lived in Japan for
two years, from 1920 to 1922, and managed to organize several exhibitions there.
It may be tempting to pass over these interludes as they were for Burliuk only
temporary stopping points on his way to another destination, the USA, where he
settled in 1922. However, Burliuk was in fact involved in local artistic life in the
Russian Far East and Japan with unusual seriousness and tremendous energy,
leaving behind an undisputable legacy which remains visible to this day. Without
him as an intermediary, an important original series of linocut designs by Pavel
Liubarskii (now in a private collection in Tokyo) would not have been brought to
Japan, and the technique might not have had the considerable impact on young
radical groups in the 1920s that it did.
Elena Turchinskaia, the author of Vanguard in the Far East: “Green Cat”,
Burliuk and Others, has worked on modern art in the Russian Far East for many
years and has published part of the extensive research she carried out as a
museum curator based in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. An early, but unfortunately
quite short article on Futurism in the Russian Far East, consisting of only a
few pages of text and three plates, appeared in the Saint-Petersburg art journal
Apollon in 1997. It is therefore regrettable that Vanguard in the Far East, which
provides a rare overview of Modernism in the Russian Far East, has appeared
with great delay and is somewhat lacking in production quality, as far as colour
and monochrome illustrations are concerned. Nevertheless, this is an important
contribution to research on the subject.
1918–1928. See the fully illustrated, bilingual catalogue in Japanese and English, Kyokutō Roshia
no modanizumu 1919–1928-ten zuroku.
5 In Japan, art historical research into the legacy of Burliuk’s short stay began in 1978, when
some examples of his paintings were found in Kobe by a curator during his research for an ex-
hibition on local artists. For a list of Japanese collections of Burliuk’s and Viktor Palmov’s work,
see Kyoji Takizawa’s essay, “Bururyūku to Parimofu: Rainichi no haikei to sakuhin.” [Burliuk and
Palmov: Their Trip to Japan, Its Background and Works].
552 Toshiharu Omuka
Detailed research on Russian Futurism around the time of the revolution of

1917, completed well before this publication, can be found in the painstaking and
extensive three-volume work of Andrei Krusanov, Russkii avangard, 1907–1932.
The first section of volume 2 is particularly relevant to the present topic, due to its
fastidious description of various art events. This has been followed by the recent
publication of Elena Kirillova’s Dal’nevostochnaia gavan’ russkogo futurizma (The
Far-Eastern Harbour of Russian Futurism, 2011). Krusanov, however, focusses on
the literary aspects and chronology of the Futurist and Modernist movements
with a 30-odd page discussion of Vladivostok and only two-pages on Khabarovsk
with no illustrations. While Kirillova’s book has some reproductions, there are no
substantially new insights into particular works of art.
Previous research into Modernist art in the Russian Far East – for example
the anti-formalism of the Soviet era – has been rather limited. As Turchinskaia
points out in her introduction, it was only in the 1970s that the compilation of
historical material on art in the Russian Far East really began, with Kandyba’s
pioneering, although modest and restrained, evaluation of Zelenaia koshka or
Green cat, a major Modernist group in Khabarovsk. Turchinskaia also mentions
two other resources: an important 1972 exhibition of early Soviet artists in Vladi
vostok, Khudozhniki Vladivostoka pervykh let Sovetskoi vlasti (Artists of Vladi
vostok during the First Years of Soviet Power), which was held in collaboration
with Pavel Ivanov, an artist active in the city after the revolution of 1917, and a
short booklet on the distinctive development of art in the Primorskii Krai in the
1920s and 30s. Published by Marina Kulikova of the Primorskaia Art Gallery, this
is accompanied by a few rare reproductions of paintings in the museum col-
lection by major artists such as Vatslav Vatslavich Panovskii (1889–1937), Ivan
Mikhailovich Vidin (1894?–1920) and Pavel Vasil’evich Liubarskii (1891–1968).6
Turchinskaia’s book consists of three chapters with 110 illustrations, some
in colour, a chronology of the art scene in the Russian Far East 1917–1928, and
bio-bibliographical notes on artists of the 1910s and 1920s. The first chapter,
“Khudozhestvannye obedineniia Dal’nego Vostoka Rossii 1910-kh – 1920-kh gg.”
(Artists’ Association of the Russian Far East, 1910s to 1920s) offers a survey that
focusses on two prominent groups which independently, but contemporaneously,
were at the forefront of the art scene in the region; the Zelenaia koshka (Green Cat)
group in Khabarovsk and LKhO (Literaturno-khudozhestvenno obedinenie or
Society of Literature and Art) in Vladivostok. Membership of the society included
three remarkable characters who would later become active in Chita and Moscow:
6 The brochure itself is not dated, but Turchinskaia gives a publication date ‘1989’ on page 95
of her book.
Fig. 1. Cover of the literary magazine Tvorchestvo (Creative Work) in 1920.
Nikolai Aseev, Nikolai Chuzhak and Sergei Tretiakov. Together, they started an
important literary magazine, Tvorchestvo (Creative Work), which included illus-
trations by radical artists such as David Burliuk in 1919 and also collaborated
closely with the Balaganchik theatre7 and the Futurist cabaret Bi-Ba-Bo in Vladi
vostok. Fleeing the volatile situation in Vladivostock in 1920, Aseev, Chuzhak and
7 Balaganchik was a fairground puppet booth. Its anti-illusionist appearance caused Alexan-
der Blok to write a drama featuring Harlequin, Pierrot, and Columbine, Balaganchik (The Little
Showbooth, 1905), staged by Meierkhol’d in 1906 in an influential theatricalist production. Aseev
554 Toshiharu Omuka
Tretiakov moved to Chita, capital city of the newly established Dalnevostochnaia

Respublika (Far-Eastern Republic), and continued the publication there of the
Tvorchestvo magazine until 1922, when they relocated again, this time to Moscow,
where the three signed the founding manifestoes in the first issue of the LEF
magazine, together with Mayakovsky and others.
Being aware of the significance of the multi-disciplinary and dynamic prac-
tice of LKhO, Turchinskaia pays considerable attention to the Khabarovsk group
Zelenaia koshka which, to date, has yet to receive close attention. To some extent,
the book as a whole almost seems dedicated to the Khabarovsk artists of Zelenaia
koshka; for example, 16 pages of linocut prints from the group are reproduced on
textured brown paper, which is strongly reminiscent of the original linocut-print
anthologies Tetrad ofortov (Print Collection, 1919) and Troe (The Three, 1919–
1920). Linocut seems to have been an important technique for the group which,
as the author points out, had a strong affinity with German Expressionism.
The second chapter, “Osnovnye tendentsii iskusstva 1910–1920-kh gg. v
tvorchestve vedushchikh khudozhnikov Dal’nevostochnogo avangarda” (Major
Artistic Trends of the 1910s and 1920s in the Works of Leading Artists of the Far
Eastern Avant-garde) deals with important members of the Zelenaia koshka: Petr
L’vov (1882–1944), Zhan Plasse (Jānis Plase, 1892–1929), Pavel Liubarskii (1891–
1968), and Niktopoleon Naumov (1891–1928). L’vov, the oldest, had received a
formal art school education in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, as had Liubarskii in
Moscow. With personal connections and professional experience, it should be no
surprise that the two led the group: L’vov did so earlier on, after which, gradually,
Liubarskii came to the fore. The group disbanded after a brief existence, and the
members left Khabarovsk. L’vov returned to Leningrad in 1923 and taught at art
schools there and in Moscow, where he became an established painter. Due to the
military actions of the White Russians, the Red Army and the Japanese in the Far
East,8 Liubarskii, the most talented among the group members, also relocated to
Vladivostok, contributing to the magazine Tvorchestvo amongst other things, and
then moved on to Moscow in 1928. Unfortunately, his estate, which was kept by
his friend Pavel Ivanov, was destroyed by fire. Liubarskii certainly had his share
of bad luck and is hence practically unknown today.
founded in 1922 a literary society in Vladivostok, called ‘Balaganchik’, which then developed
into a theatre company.
8 The Far Eastern Army of the White Russian leader Alexander Kolchak held Chita with the sup-
port of the Japanese Army, but in November 1920 the Red Army conquered Transbaikalia. The
Japanese had plans to annex the Amur Krai, but were repelled by the Bolshevik forces. On 25 Oc-
tober 1922, Vladivostok fell to the Red Army, the Provisional Priamur Government was abolished
and the Bolsheviks assumed control over the Russian Far East.
The third chapter, “Khudozhestvennye osobennosti Dal’nevostochnogo is

kusstva 1910–1920-kh gg.” (Artistic Features of the Far Eastern Art in the 1910s
and 1920s) discusses specific aspects of art in the Russian Far East from differ-
ent points of view. First giving an historical background of the region, the author
analyses stylistic aspects of art in Zelenaia koshka, and secondly discusses the
significance of two of the main springboards for artistic development: Primitiv-
ism and Expressionism. Lastly Turchinskaia attempts to define Futurism in the
Russian Far East in the broader context of other early twentieth-century artistic
movements, both in Russia and Europe, and particularly the Russian avant-garde
as a whole.
Fig. 2. The Zelenaia koshka manifesto of 1919.

556 Toshiharu Omuka
In conclusion, the author attempts to refute the established view that the avant-
garde in the Russian Far East originated with the arrival of David Burliuk and
other artists in the region, and the propagation of Futurist ideas. Turchinskaia
asserts that it started much earlier, through Zelenaia koshka, which was essen-
tially the first avant-garde group in the region. When this group was formed, in
late 1918, in Khabarovsk, only Aseev was active in Vladivostok. However, if we
look at the chronological table of 1919–1920, we cannot but notice that the LKhO,
with some involvement from Zelenaia koshka, organized dynamic and transna-
tional events with great frequency in theatres, cabarets and so on. This occurred
against the chaotic background of a harbour city which, for a few years, provided
a means of escaping social and political turmoil, but for others was only a dead-
end. The precariousness of life in Vladivostok no doubt fed the avant-garde move-
ment in a way that was distinct from other cities in the region such as Khabarovsk
and Chita. The rather forlorn plain cover design of Tvorchestvo magazine issued
in Chita (no. 7, April – June 1921) in contrast to previous numbers, which were
beautifully decorated, attests to this.
It is a pity that Turchinskaia does not explore more deeply the agitprop activ-
ities of avant-garde artists in Chita and other areas. Naumov designed many strik-
ing political posters and caricatures for magazines, and Liubarskii also did an
impressive poster for Lenin in a Constructivist idiom in 1924. Of special interest
is also Ivan Vidin, who created a remarkable œuvre for such a short life (he died
in 1925), such as the Mural of the Lenin Library at the Communist Party Club in
Vladivostok in 1923 (now lost). As a visual source, this book still lags behind the
2002 Modernism in the Russian Far East exhibition catalogue, which has many
colour reproductions in a larger format. However, it should be noted that Tur-
chiskaia’s book includes a few crucial images, such as the catalogue of Zelenaia
koshka’s first exhibition in 1919 (Fig. 1)9 and the cover of the print collection of
Liubarskii’s Prostitutka (Prostitute, 1919) which has been reproduced properly for
the first time (Fig. 3).10
The last part of this book, bio-bibliographical notes on various artists active
in the period, is undoubtedly useful for further study. It is hoped that with contin-
uing research the book can be revised and enlarged in the future.
9 This invaluable catalogue, which includes the group’s manifesto, unexpectedly surfaced in
the collection of a Japanese collector, when the 2002 exhibition was touring Japan.
10 Although this cover has been reproduced in the 2002 exhibition catalogue, it is only as a
small black-and-white illustration to a text, not in colour, as in Turchinskaia’s book.
Bibliography
Aseev, Nikolai Nikolaevich, et al.: “Za chto boretsia Lef?” Lef: Zhurnal levogo fronta iskusstv 1:1
(March 1923): 1–7.
—: “V kogo vgryzaetsia Lef?” Lef: Zhurnal levogo fronta iskusstv 1:1 (March 1923): 8–9.
—: “Kogo predosteregaet Lef?” Lef: Zhurnal levogo fronta iskusstv 1:1 (March 1923): 10–11.
Kandyba, Vitalii Il’ich: Istoriia stanovleniia i razvitiia khudozhestovennoi zhizni Dal’nego
Vostoka, 1858–1938 gg. Vladivostok: Izdatel’stvo Dal’nevostochnogo universiteta, 1985.
Kirillova, Elena Olegovna: Dal’nevostochnaia gavan’ russkogo futurizma: Modernisticheskie
techeniia v literature Dal’nego Vostoka Rossii 1917–1922 gg. Poeticheskie imena,
ideino-khudozhestvennye iskaniia. Vladivostok: Izdatel’stvo Dal’nevostochnogo
federal’nogo universiteta, 2011.
Kovtun, Evgenii Fedorovich, et al.: Avangard, ostanovlennyi na begu. Leningrad: Avrora, 1989.
Krusanov, Andrei Vasil’evich: Russkii avangard, 1907–1932: Istoricheskii obzor v trekh tomakh.
Sankt-Peterburg: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2003–2010.
Kulikova, Marina Eduardovna: Iskusstvo primor’ia 1920–1930-kh godov v sobranii Primorskoi
kartinnoi galerei. Vladivostok: Krasnoe znamia, 1989.
Melikhov, Georgii Vasilievich: Belyi Kharbin: Seredina 20-kh. Moskva: Russkii put, 2003.
Omuka, Toshiharu, et al., eds.: Kyokutō Roshia no modanizumu 1919–1928-ten zuroku: Roshia
avangyarudo to deatta Nihon = Modernism in the Russian Far East and Japan, 1918–1928.
Exhibition catalogue. Machida: Machida shiritsu kokusai hanga bijutsukan, 6 April –
19 May 2002; Utsunomiya: Utsunomiya Bijutsukan, 26 May – 7 July 2002; Hakodate:
Hokkaidōritsu Hakodate bijutsukan, 16 July – 1 September 2002. Tōkyō: Tōkyō shinbun,
Kyokutō Roshia no modanizumu ten kaisai jikkō iinkai, 2002.
Takizawa, Kyōji: “Bururyūku to Parimofu: Rainichi no haikei to sakuhin.” Toshiharu Omuka, ed.:
Hōkokusho: Nihon ni okeru miraiha hyakunen kinen shinpojiumu = Proceedings: 100th
Anniversary of Futurism in Japan: International Symposium. Tsukuba: Tsukuba Daigaku
Geijutsukei, 2013. 62–65.
Tates, Sophie, ed.: Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-Garde: Featuring Selections from
the Khardziev and Costakis Collections. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 19 oktober 2013 –
2 februari 2014. Bonn: Bundeskunsthalle, 12. März – 21. Juni 2014. London: Tate Modern,
17 July – 26 October 2014. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2013.
Teruyuki, Hara: Urajiosutoku monogatari: Roshia to Ajia ga majiwaru machi. Tōkyō: Sanseido,
1998.
Turchinskaia, Elena Iur’evna: “‘Midori no neko’.” Kyokutō Roshia no modanizumu
1919–1928-ten zuroku: Roshia avangyarudo to deatta Nihon. Tōkyō: Tōkyō Shinbun:
Kyokutō Roshia no modanizumuten Kaisai Jikkō Iinkai, 2002. 186–193.
—: “Futurizm na Dalnem Vostoke.” Almanakh “Apollon”: Biulletin Obshchestvo Liubitelei
Muzyki i Iskusstv “Apollon” 1 (1997): 88–93.
Section 6: Bibliography
A Bibliography of Publications on Futurism,
2012–2014
Compiled by Günter Berghaus
1. Exhibition catalogues
“A Game in Hell”: The Great War in Russia. Ed. by John E. Bowlt, and Nicoletta
Misler. London: GRAD Gallery for Russian Art and Design, 27 September –
30 October 2014. London: GRAD Publishing, 2014.
Almada por contar. Coordenação Sara Afonso Ferreira, Sílvia Laureano Costa e
Simão Palmeirim Costa. Lisboa: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, 27 junho –
5 outubro 2013. Lisboa: Babel, 2013.
Antonio Sant’Elia e i compagni del tempo futurista, Milano 1911–1915. A cura
di Nicoletta Colombo. Caglio (Como): Sala Civica di Caglio, 4 agosto – 1
settembre 2013. Oggiono (Lecco): Cattaneo, 2013.
Colombo, Nicoletta: “Milano tra genio e utopia: Sant’Elia e gli amici artisti (1911–1915).”
5–20.
Dulio, Roberto: “Prima di Sant’Elia: Arata, Mancini e Sommaruga.” 21–26.
Avangard i aviatsia = Avant-garde & Aviation. Kurator Aleksandra Selivanova.
Moskva: Evreiskii muzei i tsentre tolerantnosti, 11 iiunya – 10 avgusta 2014.
Avantgarde! Die Welt von Gestern. Deutschland und die Moderne 1890–1914.
Worte in Freiheit. Rebellion der Avantgarde 1909–1918. Hg. von Anita
Kühnel, Michael Lailach, and Jutta Weber. Berlin: Sonderausstellungshallen,
Kulturforum, 6. Juni – 12. Oktober 2014. Dortmund: Kettler, 2014.
Body Stages: The Metamorphosis of Loïe Fuller. Ed. by Aurora Herrera Gómez.
Madrid: La Casa Encendida, 6 February – 4 May 2014. Milano: Skira 2014.
Herrera Gómez, Aurora: “Loïe Fuller: Art in Movement.” 11–28.
Lista Giovanni: “Loïe Fuller and Her Serpentine Dance between Photography and
Cinematography.” 29–41.
Pinet, Hélène: “Loïe Fuller and Auguste Rodin: Dancer and Impresario.” 55–74.
Sánchez Ron, José Manuel: “Loie Fuller: Dance as Science.” 75–94.
Casado, Santos: “Living Fluxes: Insects and Metamorphosis in Science, Culture and the
Popular Imagination.” 95–108.
Pérez Wilson, Simón: “Hybrid Bodies, Technological Bodies, Natural Bodies: Loie Fuller –
Isadora Duncan. Notes and Reflections on a Field.” 109.
Fuller, Loïe: “My Life and Dance.” 109–126.
La Ribot [Gonzalez Ribot, Maria José]: “Beware of Imitations! Carlos Santos’ Film for
‘Escenarios del cuerpo: La métamorfósis de Loie Fuller’.” 127–128.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0038
Dal futurismo ai percorsi contemporanei = From Futurism to the Contemporary

= Od futurizma do savremene umjetnosti. A cura di Maurizio Scudiero.
Izložbu organizuje galerija Diomadea Art International, kulturno udruženje
M.I.C.RO, Porto Montenegro i Narodni muzej sa Cetinja. Tivat: Zbirka
pomorskog nasljeđa, 5. jula – 15. avgusta 2013. Tivat: Porto Montenegro
Naval Heritage Museum, 5 luglio – 15 agosto 2013. Roma: Lantana, 2013.
Depero futurista (1913–1950). Madrid: Fundación Juan March, 10 de octubre de
2014 – 18 de enero de 2015.
Fundación Juan March: “Presentación.” 7–9.
Fontán del Junco, Manuel: “Sobre esta exposición: Un ‘Portafortuna’ para Fortunato
Depero.” 19–21.
“Obras en exposición.”
“I. De la abstracción al Futurismo 1909–1916.” 24–59.
“II. El teatro y la vanguardia 1916–1918.” 60–103.
“II. La ‘casa de arte futurista’ y el arte de la publicidad 1919–1928.” 104–179.
“IV. Un futurista en Nueva York, y de vuelta en Italia 1929–1950.” 180–243.
Scudiero, Maurizio: “Pensamientos en libertad sobre Depero y su arte.” 251–265.
Poldi, Gianluca: “La técnica pictorica de Deporo: Un estudio científico.” 267–279.
Gómez Menéndez, Llanos María: “Conjuntos plásticos y acciones mecánicas: El organismo
plástico, treatral y viviente de Depero.” 280–285.
Fernández Castrillo, Carolina: “Depero y la fotoperformance.” 286–291.
Echaurren, Pablo: “¡Dep, Dep, Hurrah! Los libros y revistas de Depero.” 293–297.
Ghignoli, Alessandro “La escritura de Depero: Una transducción poética.” 299–303.
Salaris, Claudia: “El ‘libro atornillado’ de Depero, o El bólido tipografico.” 304–307.
Ginex, Giovanna “¡No sólo Campari! Depero y la publicidad.” 309–317.
Sánchez Albarrán, Belén: “Depero: ‘El arte del futuro será potentemente publicitario’.”
319–326.
Bedarida, Raffaele.” ‘Haré pedazos los Alpes del Atlántico’: Depero y el americanismo.”
329–337.
Lista, Giovanni: “Futuro-Fascismo.” 339–345.
Belloni, Favio: “La fortuna crítica y la receptión artística de Depero.” 347–353.
“Depero y el futurismo: Una antología (1909–1951).” 356–430.
Capa, Aida, and Marta Suárez-Infiesta: “Fortunato Depero (1892–1960): Una cronología.”
437–440.
Depero futurista (1913–1950). Madrid: Fundación Juan March, 10 October 2014 –
18 January 2015.
Fundación Juan March: “Preface.” 7–9.
Fontán del Junco, Manuel: “About this Exhibition: A Portafortuna for Fortunato Depero.”
19–21.
“Works on Display.”
“I. From Abstraction to Futurism 1909–1916.” 24–59.
“II. Theater and the Avant-garde 1916–1918.” 60–103.
“II. The ‘Futurist House of Art’ and the Art of Advertising 1919–1928.” 104–179.
“IV. A Futurist in New York, and Back in Italy 1929–1950.” 180–243.
Scudiero, Maurizio: “Thoughts in Freedom: About Depero and His Art.” 251–265.
Poldi, Gianluca: “The Painting Technique of Deporo: A Technical Study.” 267–279.

Gómez Menéndez, Llanos María: “Plastic Complexes and Mechanical Actions: The Visual-
Theatrical Living Organism of Depero.” 280–285.
Fernández Castrillo, Carolina: “Depero and Photo-Performance.” 286–291.
Echaurren, Pablo: “Dep, Dep, Hurrah! Books and Journals by Depero.” 293–297.
Ghignoli, Alessandro “The Writing of Depero: A Poetic Transduction.” 299–303.
Salaris, Claudia: “The ‘Bolted Book’ by Depero, or The Typographical Racing Car.”
304–307.
Ginex, Giovanna “Not Just Campari: Depero and Advertising.” 309–317.
Sánchez Albarrán, Belén: “Depero: ‘The Art of the Future Will be Largely Advertising’.”
319–326.
Bedarida, Raffaele.” ‘I Will Smash the Alps of the Atlantic’: Depero and Americanism.”
329–337.
Lista, Giovanni: “Futuro-Fascismo.” 339–345.
Belloni, Favio: “The Critical Fortune and Artistic Recognition of the Work of Depero.”
347–353.
“Depero and Futurism: An Anthology (1909–1951).” 356–430.
Capa, Aida, and Marta Suárez-Infiesta: “Fortunato Depero (1892–1960): A Chronology.”
437–440.
Depero i la reconstrucció futurista de l’univers. Comissariat Antonio Pizza.
Barcelona: Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, 17 de setembre de 2013 – 12 de
gener de 2014.
Depero y la reconstrucción futurista del universo. Comissariat Antonio Pizza.
Barcelona: Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, 17 de septiembre de 2013 – 12
de enero de 2014. 22–35.
Boschiero, Nicoletta: “La tradición futurista.” 13–22.
Lista, Giovanni: “Las ‘artes del tiempo’ en el futurismo: Teatro, musica, cine, danza.”
23–35.
Pizza, Antonio: “Depero y la reconstrucción futurista del universo.” 37–64.
Balla, Giacomo, and Fortunato Depero: “Manifiesto ‘Reconstrucción futurista del
universo’.” 65–71.
Gerardo Dottori: Brani di futurismo del maestro dell’aeropittura. A cura di
Mssimo Duranti. Roma: Galleria Russo, 6 febbraio – 8 marzo 2014. Roma:
Palombi, 2013.
Gerardo Dottori: L’interpretazione futurista della città e del paesaggio. A cura
di Massimo Duranti, Andrea Baffoni e Francesca Duranti. San Gemini (TR):
Palazzo Vecchio (Sala culturale) e Stazione di Posta (Sala dei priori), 27
settembre – 12 ottobre 2014.
Duranti, Massimo: “Dottori, la città e il paesaggio.” 15–24.
Baffoni, Andrea: “Dalla torre al grattacielo: La città contemporanea secondo Dottori.”
25–31.
Gerardo Dottori, Santo Francesco. A cura di Massimo Duranti e Saul Tambini.
Assisi: Museo della Porziuncola, 3 maggio – 31 agosto 2014. Santa Maria
degli Angeli: Opera della Porziuncola onlus, 2014.
Gerardo Dottori: The Futurist View. Ed. by Massimo Duranti. London: Estorick
Collection of Modern Italian Art, 9 July – 7 September 2014. Perugia: Effe,
2014.
Duranti, Massimo: “Dottori: The Futurist of Dynamic Nature and the Avant-garde
Landscape = Dottori, il futurista della natura dinamica e del vedutismo
d’avanguardia.” 7–24.
Baffoni, Andrea: “A ‘Singular and Interesting Painting’: The Donation of ‘Explosion of Red
on Green’ to the Tate Gallery. New Perspectives on Unpublished Correspondence
Between Gerardo Dottori and Ronald Alley = Un dipinto ‘singolare ed interessante’:
La donazione di ‘Esplosione di rosso sul verde’ alla Tate Gallery: Nuovi contributi
dall’inedito carteggio fra Gerardo Dottori e Ronald Alley.” 25–31.
Rosi, Francesca, Mattia Patti, et al.: “Designs and Colors: Gerardo Dottori through Non
Invasive Investigations = Progetti e colori: Gerardo Dottori attraverso le indagini non
invasive.” 33–45.
Il mago: Paolo Ventura. Rovereto: Casa d’Arte Futurista Depero, 22 giugno – 13
ottobre 2013. Ravenna: Montanari, 2013.
Il pittore futurista: Paolo Ventura. Rovereto: Casa d’Arte Futurista Depero, 22
giugno – 13 ottobre 2013. Ravenna: Montanari, 2013.
Italian Futurism 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe. Ed. by Vivien Greene.
New York: Guggenheim Museum, 21 February – 1 September 2014. New
York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2014.
Salaris, Claudia: “The Invention of the Programmatic Avant-garde.” 22–49.
Crispolti, Enrico: “The Dynamics of Futurism’s Historiography.” 50–57.
Lyttelton, Adrian: “Futurism, Politics, and Society.” 58–76.
Fraquelli, Simonetta: “Modified Divisionism: Futurist Painting in 1910.” 79–82.
Berghaus, Günter: “Futurist ‘serate’ and Gallery Performances.” 90–93.
Braun, Marta: “Giacomo Balla, Anton Giulio Bragaglia, and Etienne-Jules Marey.” 95–98.
Benzi, Fabio: “Giacomo Balla: The Conquest of Speed.” 102–106.
Lista, Giovanni: Futurist Music.” 116–119.
Fonti, Daniela: “The Lacerba Show in Florence and Futurism’s Exhibition Strategy.” 120–123.
Fergonzi, Flavio: “The Question of ‘Unique Forms’: Theory and Works.” 127–130.
Isgro, Marina: “‘A Futurism Of Place’: Futurist Travel and the European Avant-Garde,
1910–1914.” 136–139.
Da Costa Meyer, Ester: “Drawn into the Future: Urban Visions by Mario Chiattone and
Antonio Sant’Elia.” 141–144.
Schnapp, Jeffrey T.: “On ‘Zang Tumb Tuuum’.” 156–158.
Gentile, Emilio: “The Reign of the Man Whose Roots Are Cut: Dehumanism and
Anti-Christianity in the Futurist Revolution.” 170–172.
Adamson, Walter L.: “Futurism and Italian Intervention in World War I.” 175–177.
Re, Lucia: “Rosa Rosà and the Question of Gender in Wartime Futurism.” 184–186.
Belli, Gabriella: “Gilbert Clavel, Fortunato Depero, and ‘Balli Plastici’: Rome and Capri,
1917–1918.” 191–194.
Greene, Vivien: “The Opera d’Arte Totale.” 211–213.
Sabatino, Michelangelo: “Capri as the Epicenter of ‘Slow’ Futurism.” 221–224.
Veroli, Patrizia: “Futurism and Dance.” 227–230.
Poggi, Christine: “Ivo Pannaggi: Meccano-Futurista, Constructivist, Proletarian.” 235–239.
Thompson, Susan: “Futurism, Fascism, and Mino Somenzi’s Journals of the 1930s:
‘Futurismo’, ‘Sant’Elia’, and ‘Artecrazia’.” 256–259.
Duranti, Massimo: “Gerardo Dottori, the Umbrian Futurists, and Regional Futurism.”
261–264.
Braun, Emily: “Shock and Awe: Futurist Aeropittura and the Theories of Giulio Douhet.”
269–273.
Barisone, Silvia: “Futurist Ceramics.” 287–290.
Pelizzari, Maria Antonella: “Futurist Photography: Tato and the 1930s.” 295–299.
Fochessati, Matteo: “Terminal for a Civilian Airport: The Pavilion of the Futurist Movement
at the Triennial.” 309–311.
Golan, Romy: “Slow Time: Futurist Murals.” 317–320.
Panzera, Lisa: Celestial Futurism and the ‘Parasurreal’.” 326–329.
Kasimir Malewitsch und die russische Avantgarde, mit Werken aus den
Sammlungen Chardschijew und Costakis. Herausgegeben von Geurt Imanse.
Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,
8. März – 22. Juni 2014. Bielefeld: Kerber, 2014.
Kazimir Malevich and the Russian Avant-garde: Featuring Selections from
the Khardzhiev and Costakis Collections. Ed. by Linda S. Boersma et al.
Amsterdam: Stedlijk Museum, 19 October 2013 – 2 February 2014. Köln:
Buchhandlung Walther König, 2013.
Kazimir Malevich: De jaren van figuratie. Assen: Drents Museum, 23 november
2014 – 16 maart 2015. Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2014.
Kazimir Malevich: Do i posle kvadrata. Sostavlenie i nauchnyi redaktsiia
Evgeniia N. Petrova et al. Sankt-Peterburg: Gosudarstvennyi russkii muzei,
5 dekabria 2013 – fevral’ 2014. Sankt-Peterburg: Palace Editions, 2013.
KinoFotoLiudogus’: Maiakovskii i mirovoi khudozhestvennyyi avangard v
dokumentakh i kinomaterialakh. Gosudarstvennyi tsentr sovremennogo
sovremennogo iskusstva, 16 maia – 18 iiunia 2013 goda. Moskva:
Gosudarstvennyi muzei V. V. Maiakovskogo, 2013.
La città nuova oltre Sant’Elia: Cento anni di visioni urbane, 1913–2013. A cura
di Marco De Michelis. Como: Pinacoteca Civica, 24 marzo – 14 luglio 2013.
Cinisello Balsamo (MI): Silvana, 2013.
L’avanguardia russa, la Siberia e l’Oriente. A cura di John E. Bowlt, Nicoletta
Misler e Evgenija Petrova. Firenze: Palazzo Strozzi, 21 settembre 2013 –
19 gennaio 2014. Milano: Skira, 2013.
Legami e corrispondenze: Immagini e parole attraverso il 900 romano. A cura
di Federica Pirani e Gloria Raimondi. Roma: Galleria d’Arte Moderna, 28
febbraio – 29 settembre 2013. Roma: Palombi, 2013.
“Marinetti e i futuristi.” 85–130.
Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis. Ed. by Anna Vallye. Philadelphia/PA:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 14 October 2013 – 5 January 2014. New Haven/
CT: Yale University Press, 2014.
Leve Majakovski!: Een selectie uit de LS Collectie Van Abbemuseum. Ontwerp,

tekst en foto’s Albert Lemmens em Serge-Aljosja Stommels. Eindhoven: Van
Abbemuseum, 11 juni – 31 juli 2013.
L’urlo dell’immagine: La grafica dell’espressionismo italiano. A cura di Marzia
Ratti e Alessandra Belluomini Pucci. La Spezia: Sistema Musei, Palazzina
delle Arti, Museo Lia, 15 marzo – 13 luglio 2014; Viareggio: GAMC Galleria
d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea “Lorenzo Viani”, 26 luglio – 28 dicembre
2014. Torino: Allemandi, 2014.
Barilli, Renato: “Un urlo affidato alla forza della grafica.” 13–18.
Belluomini Pucci, Alessandra: “‘Impronte terribili’: Xilografie di Lorenzo Viani.” 19–24.
Borgogelli, Alessandra: “Espressionismo e primitivismo in Toscana.” 25–32.
Ratti, Marzia: “‘L’Eroica’ e i vari volti dell’espressionismo grafico mediterraneo.”
33–40.
Stringa, Nico: “Matrice d’espressione: A proposito della grafica giovanile di Arturo
Martini.” 41–46.
Virelli, Giuseppe: “I primitivi di una nuova sensibilità tra espressionismo e futurismo.”
47–51.
Mario Sironi: Pittura, illustrazione, grande decorazione = Mario Sironi: Painting,
Illustrations, Grand Decoration. A cura di Claudio Spadoni, Estemio Serri e
Gino Fienga. Sorrento: Villa Fiorentino, 22 febbraio – 20 aprile 2014. Meta
(NA): Con-fine, 2014.
Maiakovskii – khudozhnik: Fond izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva. Sostavitel’ Evgeniia
I. In’shakova. Moskva: Gosudarstvennyi muzei V. V. Maiakovskogo, 2013.
Maiakovskii i ego sovremenniki: Fond foto-, kino- i audiodokumentov. Sostavitel’
Ekatarina A. Snegireva. Moskva: Gosudarstvennyi muzei V. V. Maiakovskogo,
2013.
Maiakovskii – Manifest. Katalog-gazeta k vystavke. Sostavitel’ Mikhail Karasik.
Moskva: Galereia “Proun”, Tsentr sovremennogo iskusstva “Vinzavod”,
dekabr’ 2013 – ianvar’ 2014. Sankt-Peterburg: Markova, 2013.
Maiakovskii – Manifest. Katalog vystavki. Sostavitel’ Mikhail Karasik. Moskva:
Galereia “Proun”, Tsentr sovremennogo iskusstva “Vinzavod”, dekabr’ 2013
– ianvar’ 2014. Sankt-Peterburg: Markova, 2013.
Maiakovskii ot “I” do I: Ochen’ lichnye mestoimeniia: Rukopisno-dokumental’nyi
fond. Sostaviteli Galina A. Antipova, Nadezhda G. Morozova. Moskva:
Malevich. Ed. by Achim Borchardt-Hume. London: Tate Modern, 16 July –
26 October 2014. London: Tate Publishing, 2014.
Natal’ia Goncharova: Mezhdu Vostokom i Zapadom. Otvetstvennyi redaktor
Lidia I. Iovleva; sostaviteli kataloga Irina A. Vakar, Evgeniia A. Iliukhina.
Moskva: Gosudarstvennaia Tret’iakovskaia Galereia, 16 oktiabria 2013 –
16 fevralia 2014. English edn Natal’ia Goncharova: Between East and West.
Editor in Chief Lidia Iovleva. Moscow: State Tretyakov Gallery, 16 October

2013 – 16 February 2014.
Pablo Echaurren, Iconoclast. London: Estorick Collection, 19 March – 18 May
2014. Cinisello Balsamo (MI): Silvana, 2014.
Prima e dopo la secessione romana: Pittura in Italia, 1900–1935. A cura di
Nicoletta Colombo, Ada Masoero e Susanna Ragionieri. Viareggio (LU):
Fondazione Centro Matteucci, 20 luglio – 3 novembre 2013.
Colombo, Nicoletta: “Bisogno di forma: Pittura italiana dalla crisi del futurismo ai primi
anni Trenta.” 35–46.
Colombo, Nicoletta: “Le opere dal 1914 al 1934: Crisi del futurismo, ritorno all’ordine e
primi espressionismi.” 89–110.
Russian Avant-garde Theatre: War Revolution and Design 1913 – 1933. Ed. by
John E. Bowlt in collaboration with the A.A.Bakhrushin State Central Theatre
Museum, Moscow. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 18 October 2014 –
25 January 2015. London: Nick Hern Books, 2014.
Segno + Ritmo + Scrittura: Da Marinetti a Boccioni, da Palazzeschi a Depero. Carte
e libri futuristi della Biblioteca Arcari di Tirano. A cura di Paolo Sacchini. Tirano:
Palazzo Foppoli, 5 maggio – 24 giugno 2012. Tirano: Comune di Tirano, 2012.
Sem’ia Maiakovskikh: Memoreal’nyi fond. Sostavitel’ I. V. Golodniuk. Moskva:
Sironi e la Grande Guerra: L’arte e la prima guerra mondiale dai futuristi a Grosz
e Dix. A cura di Elena Pontiggia. Chieti: Palazzo de’ Mayo, 22 febbraio al 24
maggio 2014. Torino: Allemandi, 2014.
Tullio Crali, vertigini e visioni. A cura di Enrica Bruni e Stefano Papetti.
Civitanova Marche: Pinacoteca civica Marco Moretti, 12 luglio – 3 novembre
2013. Civitanova Marche Alta: Edizioni Civitanovarte, 2013.
Zubravskaya, Viktoria, ed.: Russian Avant-gardes: Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall,
Rodchenko, Tatlin and the others. Roma: Museo dell’Ara Pacis, 5 April –
2 September 2012. Cinisello Balsamo (MI): Silvana, 2012.
Salaris, Claudia: “Caffeine and Vodka. Italy and Russia: Futurisms Compared.” 20–32.
Sola, Valeria: “Kazimir Malevich: From Cubo-Futurism to Suprematism.” 34–41.
Sola, Valeria: “Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova.” 52–61.
Sola, Valeria: “Cubo-Futurism.” 78–87.
2. Special issues of journals and periodicals

Telondefondo: Revista de teoría y crítica teatral 9:18 (December 2013).
“DOSSIER: Futurismo ruso.” 180–228.
Iván García Sala: “El libreto de ‘Victoria sobre el sol’.” 180–206.
A. Kruchónyj y M. Matiushin (Trad. de Ricardo San Vicente e Iván García): “Victoria sobre el
sol.” 207–228.
California Italian Studies 4 (2013). Special section on Futurism.

Boyd, Harriet: “Futurism in Venice, Crisis and ‘la musica dell’avvenire’, 1924.” 1–31.
Daly, Selena: “Futurist War Noises: Confronting and Coping with the First World War.” 1–15.
Gangale, Daniela: “Il suono dei futuristi: la musica in ‘Lacerba’ e altre polemiche musicali
(1913–1915).” 1–30.
Callegari, Danielle: “The Politics of Pasta: La cucina futurista and the Italian Cookbook in
History.” 1–15.
3. Monographs: Edited volumes of conference proceedings

Barenghi, Mario, Giuseppe Langella, and Gianni Turchetta, eds.: La città e
l’esperienza del moderno. XII Convegno Internazionale di Studi della
Società Italiana per lo Studio della Modernità Letteraria. Centro di ricerca
“Letteratura e Cultura dell’Italia Unita”. Milano: Università degli Studi di
Milano, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Università Cattolica del
Sacro Cuore, 15–18 giugno 2010.
Vol. 1. Pisa: ETS, 2012.
Saccone, Antonio: “Il moderno e le nuove percezioni dello spazio e del tempo: La città dei
futuristi.” 89–104.
Tomasello, Giovanna: “L’avventura notturna de ‘Gli indomabili’ di Marinetti nella città
industriale.” 497–502
Caltagirone, Giovanna: “A Milano il futurismo era già il passato: Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, La grande Milano tradizionale e futurista.” 503–512
Ottieri, Alessandra: “‘La terra dei vivi’ (1933): La Spezia città futurista.” 513–522
Miretti, Lorenza: “La Metropoli parolibera di Michele Leskovic.” 523–536.
Pugliese, Isabella: Immagini della città di Palazzeschi: Il ‘topos’ della passeggiata.”
677–684.
Musella, Mario: “Partenope pseudo-futurista: La mancata realtà urbana di Napoli
nell’immaginario futurista.” 287–298.
Carpi, Giancarlo, Maria Lettiero, and Miriam Polli, eds.: Confini: Testo – Arti –
Metodologia – Ricerca. Atti del Convegno Interdisciplinare. Roma: Università
degli Studi “Tor Vergata”, 4–6 giugno 2012. Roma: Edicampus, 2013.
Sciarretta, Roberta: “Compenetrazione di mare e di cielo: ‘Infinito’ di Bruno Giordano
Sanzin.” 51–58.
Catanese, Rossella: “Un ballo meccanico tra cinema e pittura.” 59–66.
Giorgini, Marina: “Il polimaterismo di Rùzena Zàtkovà.” 221–226.
Polli, Miriam: “‘Sconfinamento’ del teatro di varietà nel teatro futurista sintetico.”
255–260.
Collani, Tania, and Noëlle Cuny, eds.: Poétiques scientifiques dans les revues
europénnes de la modernité (1900–1940). Actes du colloque, Mulhouse:
Université de Haute-Alsace, 16–18 juin 2011. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013.
Lemaire, Gerard-Georges: “Le Futurisme italien: Les machines contre la science.” 87–100.
Milan, Serge: “‘Savants devancés par les poètes’: Les sciences dans les revues de
l’avant-garde futuriste.” 101–116.
Margaillan, Cathy: “L’Italia futurista (1916–1918) entre tradition occultiste et modernité
des recherches psychologiques et scientifiques.” 227–240.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso: “La Mathématique futuriste imaginative (1941).” 437–442.
Delaperrière, Maria, ed.: Alexander Wat sur tous les fronts. Textes présentés au
colloque organisé les 25–26 mars 2011 par la Société Historique et Littéraire
Polonaise. Paris: Institut d’Études Slaves, Société Historique et Littéraire
Polonaise, 2013.
Jaccard, Jean-Philippe, and Annik Morard, eds.: 1913. “Slovo kak takovoe”: K
iubileinomu godu russkogo futurizma. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi
konferentsii (Zheneva, 10–12 aprelia 2013 g.) Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo
Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2015.
Kruchenykh, Aleksei, and Nikolai Kul’bin: “Deklaratsiia slova, kak takovogo. Faksimile
listovki, vypushchennoi v aprele 1913 g.” 11–14.
Kruchenykh, Aleksei, and Velimir Khlebnikov: “Slovo kak takovoe. Faksimile broshiury,
izdannoi v sentiabre 1913 g.” 15–32.
Lann, Zhan-Klod (Lanne, Jean-Claude): “‘Slovo kak takovoe.” 33–45.
Gur’anova, Nina: “Rabota zaumi.” 46–58
Bobrinskaia, Ekaterina: “Zaumnyi iazyk, bespredmetnost’ i ‘opyt tolpy’.” 59–71.
Khanzen-Love, Oge A. (Hansen-Löve, Aage Ansgar): “‘V nachale bylo Clovo…’: Iazykovoe
myshlenie mezhdu onomatopoetikoi i imiaslaviem.” 72–86.
Geller, Leonid (Heller, Leonid): “Telo i slovo, skachebnaia para: Zamechaniia ob utopii
erosa, libertinstve, futurizme.” 87–102.
Sakhno, Irina: “O palimpseste zaumnogo slova.” 103–112.
Vroon, Ronal’d (Vroon, Ronald): “Arkhaizm i futurizm: Zametki k teme (Kamenskii,
Kruchenykh, Khlebnikov).” 113–130.
Podoroga, Iuliia: “K voprosu o poetizme zaumi: Opyt iazyka u Velimira Khlebnikova.”
131–143.
Iurgenson, Liuba (Jurgenson, Luba): “Khlebnikov – Ochevidets: Zozdanie
mifo-dokumenta.” 144–159.
Zhakkar, Zhan-Filipp (Jaccard, Jean-Philippe): “K komu obrashcheno ‘slovo kak takovoe’?
Ob odnoi neizvestnoi rukopisi Daniila Kharmsa.” 160–172.
Niva, Zhorzh (Nivat, Georges): “Ustalost’ Rossii i simvolizma.” 173–180.
Spivak, Monika: “Andrei Belyi v 1913 godu: V poiskakh al’ternativy slovu.” 181–193.
Lekmanov,
Oleg: “Akmeizm vs. futurizm v 1913 godu: Po materialam rossiiskoi pressy.” 194–203.
Galushkin, Aleksandr: “Viktor Shklovskii v 1913 godu.” 204–211.
Morar, Annik (Morard, Annik): “Goriashchie slova poeta-kuznetsa Maiakovskogo.” 212–221.
Loshchilov, Igor’: “Petr Potemkin i futuristy: Pritiazhenie i ottalkivanie.” 222–235.
Nikol’skaia, Tat’iana: “Chuzhoe slovo v kompanii ‘41°’: Zametki k teme.” 236–244.
Dviniatina, Tat’iana: “Metamorfozy avangardnogo soznaniia v sovetskoi deistvitel’nosti
1920–1930-kh godov: Sluchai A. V. Tufanova.” 245–358.
Kobrinskii, Aleksandr: “Neizdannyi sbornik stikhov K. Olimpova ‘Ty’: K probleme
eksperimentov s avtorskoi rechevoi maskoi v pozdnem avangarde.” 259–270.
Zlydneva, Nataliia: “Izobrazhenie kak takovoe: Zhivopis’ / grafika russkogo kubofuturizma

i znaki predpis’mennosti.” 271–285.
Obermayr, Brigitte: “‘Kak sdelano’ vs. ‘Kogda sdelano’: 1913 god kak data v estetike.”
286–301.
Rossomakhin, Andrei: “K ikonografii russkogo avangarda: Ego-kubo-luche-oslo-khvosto-
futuristy.” 302–313.
Boult, Dzhon E. (Bowlt, John-Ellis): “David Kakabadze i nerazreshennaia septima.”
314–324.
Glants, Tomash (Glanc, Tomáš): “‘Baran-taran’, rybki i kletka dlia kanareiki cheshskoi (ne)
futuristki Ruzheny Zatkovoy.” 325–338.
Terekhina, Vera: “Teatr ‘Budetlianin’: Dva puti russkogo futurizma.” 339–354.
Burenina-Petrova, Ol’ga: “Futurizm i ‘faktura’ triuka.” 355–367.
Sirotkina, Irina: “Penie, plesk, pliaska: Chem byl tanets dlia futuristov?” 368–382.
Kukui, Il’ia: “‘Komu futurizm?’ Teoriia i praktika avangarda na stranitsakh gazety
‘Iskusstvo kommuny’.” 383–394.
Ichin, Korneliia: “Konstruktivistskie printsipy poezii Ivana Aksenova.” 395–409.
Giunter, Khans (Günther, Hans): “Andrei Platonov i estetika LEFa.” 410–420.
Obatnina, Elena: “Ob odnoi ‘tenevoi figure’ russkogo Berlina: K istorii zhurnala ‘Veshch’’.”
421–432.
Nikolaiev, Dmitrii: “Avantiurnaia model’ v interpretatsii futuristov: Roman V. V.
Kamenskogo ‘27 prikliuchenii Khorta Dzhois’.” 433–445.
Kheteni, Zhuzha (Hetényi, Zhuzha): “Vzor i uzory prozy: Dva tipa interpretatsii v
semantizatsii bukv i kletochnye anagrammy: Nabokov i predshestvenniki.”
446–460.
Tsiv’ian, Tat’iana: “Poeticheskie klishe khotel by ia byt’, esli by ia byl, pochemu ia ne...:
Ikh variatsii i prelomlenie v stikhotvorenii A. Vvedenskogo ‘Mne zhalko chto ia ne
zver’…’ (‘Kover-Gortenziia’).” 461–468.
Tokarev, Dmitrii: “‘Vot shtuka-to’: Ob otsutstvii Kazimira Malevicha v stikhotvorenii Daniila
Kharmsa ‘Na smert’ Kazimira Malevicha’.” 469–485.
Ogarkova, Tetiana: “‘Slovo kak takovoe’ russkogo futurizma i ‘liricheskoe esperanto’ Anri
Misho.” 486–496.
Sazhin, Valerii: “Aleksandr Kondratov: Zapozdalyi sovetskii futurist.” 497–511.
Kazarnovskii, Petr: “Strategii istoricheskogo avangarda v poezii V. Erlia.” 512–525.
Lecci, Leo, and Manuela Manfredini, eds.: Prima e dopo il 1909: Riflessioni
sul futurismo. Atti della giornata di studi, Università di Genova, Facoltà di
lettere e filosofia, Aula magna, 23 febbraio 2010. Roma: Aracne, 2014.
Giordanelli, Stefano: “Filippo Tommaso Marinetti e Mario Maria Martini.” 15–25.
Manfredini, Manuela: “Lucini e Marinetti al vaglio della cronologia.” 27–47.
Bacigalupo, Massimo: “Vorticismo e futurismo, 1914–1915.” 49–70.
Sborgi, Anna Viola: “‘Italian Pictures’: Il percorso futurista di Mina Loy.” 71–83.
Milan, Serge: “Farfa, pupo e sovrano futurista.” 85–101.
Zanoner, Federico: “Incroci di tubi e di ‘tuberie’: Vicende del futurismo in Liguria negli
archivi del MART.” 103–118.
Ferro, Pier Luigi: “Indagine su Lo Duca.” 119–142.
Ricaldone, Sandro: “Derive manifestane: Dal futurismo ai gruppi artistici italiani del
secondo dopoguerra.” 143–152.
Poli, Diego, and Laura Melosi, eds.: I linguaggi del futurismo. Atti del convegno
internazionale di studi, Macerata, 15–17 dicembre 2010. Macerata: Edizioni
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Poli, Diego: “Il futurismo, ovvero, il dinamismo nei linguaggi: Scomposizione della realtà
ricomposizione nella letteratura.” 15–68.
Costa, Simona: “Due iconoclasti conservatori: Marinetti e d’Annunzio.” 71–84
Gentili, Sandro: “Il futurismo in Umbria, 1913–1920.” 85–111.
Marchi, Marco: “Palazzeschi, la voce dell’immoralismo.” 113–131.
Martellini, Luigi: “Tracce futuriste in Ungaretti, ovvero della disgregata essenzialità.”
133–145.
Geddes da Filicaia, Costanza: “Il ‘macchinista senza foco’: Suggestioni futuriste in
Campana epistolografo.” 147–156.
Manghetti, Gloria: “Dagli archivi della Fondazione Primo Conti: Per il futurismo, ma non
solo.” 157–172.
Melosi, Laura: “Futurismo e colonialismo: Tracce letterarie.” 175–188.
Frassica, Pietro: “In margine al ‘Poema del Candore Negro’.” 189–196.
Patat, Alejandro: “Traduzioni e interpretazioni del futurismo in America Latina.” 197–207.
Paniconi, Maria Elena: “Nelson Morpurgo e il ‘Movimento del futurismo Egiziano’ fra
internazionalismo cosmopolita e appartenenza coloniale.” 209–235.
Sabbatini, Marco: “‘Io e Marinetti’. Una memoria letteraria di Vasilisk Gnedov.” 237–257.
Caporaletti, Vincenzo: “Dal tattilismo all’audiotattile: Per un’interpretazione del futurismo
musicale.” 261–282.
Orioles, Vincenzo: “Tra parole chiave del futurismo e precorrimenti.” 283–288.
Schirru, Carlo: “Un autore ‘in parola’: Preliminari fisico-acustici sulla voce di Marinetti.”
289–322.
Pierucci, Maria Laura: “L’avventura della de-strutturazione.” 323–330.
Bianchi, Angela: “Parole in libertà nell’ipertesto futurista.” 331–345.
Cresti, Roberto: “Le ali della materia: Enrico Prampolini, il futurismo e la rivista ‘Noi’
(1917–1925).” 349–384.
Luzi, Alfredo: “‘L’uomo che passa’ di Leonardo Castellani: Un futurista in provincia tra
icona e parola.” 385–400.
Angelucci Cominazzini, Massimo: “Stati d’animo polimaterici: Leandra Angelucci
Cominazzini futurista.” 401–421.
Ercolino, Nunzia: “Il rumore del mondo che cambia.” 423–446.
Pulsoni, Enrico: “Il linguaggio futurista della scenografia.” 447–450.
Tvorchestvo V.V. Maiakovskogo. Vol. 2. Problemy tekstologii i biografii. Materialy
mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, Moskva: Institut mirovoi literatury
imeni A.M. Gor’kogo, iiune 2009 goda. Moskva: Institut mirovoi literatury
imeni A.M. Gor’kogo, Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk, 2014.
Ushakov, Aleksandr Mironovich: “Ob osnovnykh tekstologicheskikh printsipakh
podgotovki polnogo akademicheskogo sobraniia proizvedenii V.V. Maiakovskogo v
20-ti tomakh.” 8–39.
Diadichev, Vladimir Nikolaevich: “Poema Maiakovskogo ‘Rabochim Kurska, dobyvshim
pervuiu rudu’: Istoriia sozdaniia i vospriiatiia.” 40–59.
Terekhina, Vera Nikolaevna: “Maiakovskii i nemetskii ekspressionizm: Problemy
retseptsii.” 60–79.
Arenzon, Evgenii Ruvimovich: “Lirika posle LEFa: K istolkovaniiu tvorcheskoi istorii

poslednikh stikhotvorenii Vladimira Maiakovskogo o liubvi.” 80–100.
Tiurina, Elena Aleksandrovna: “Novye printsipy tekstologicheskoi podgotovki vystuplenii
V.V. Maiakovskogo v stenograficheskoi zapisi.” 101–117.
Koroleva, Nina Valerianovna: “Novatorstvo futurista i opora na ‘star’e’ v rannei dramaturgii
Maiakovskogo.” 118–148.
Alforova, Svetlana Viktorovna: “Tragediia ‘Vladimir Maiakovskii’ i opera A. Kruchenykh
‘Pobeda nad solntsem’: Opyt sopostavleniia.” 149–163.
Ivanova, Evgeniia Viktorovna: “Chukovskii i Maiakovskii.” 164–197.
Shubnikova-Guseva, Natal’ia Igorevna: “Maiakovskii i Esenin: Dialog poetov.” 198–222.
Nikul’tseva, Viktoriia Valer’evna: “Neoleksikon Vladimira Maiakovskogo i Sergeia Esenina:
Obshchee i razlichnoe.” 223–249.
Malygina, Nina Mikhailovna: “Andrei Platonov: Diaiug s Maiakovskim.” 250–278.
Moskovskaia, Dar’ia Sergeevna: “‘Neschastnyi sluchai na proizvodstve’: Vladimir
Maiakovskii v sobytiiakh i obrazakh p’esy Andreia Platonova ‘Vysokoe napriazhenie’.”
279–301.
Shokal’skii, Ezhi: “Maiakovskii i Charents: Roman(s) ne bez liubvi.” 302–318.
D’iachkova, Ekaterina Vasil’evna: “Neskol’ko zamechanii k probleme Maiakovskii –
detiam.” 319–328
Orlitskii, Iurii Borisovich: “Proza Maiakovskogo kak ‘proza poeta’.” 329–338.
Zaitsev, Vladislav Alekseevich: “O vospriiatii zhizni i tvorchestva V.V. Maiakovskogo v
nachale XXI veka.” 339–351.
Primochkina, Natal’ia Nikolaevna: “M. Gor’kii i russkie futuristy.” 352–362
Vorontsova, Galina Nikolaevna: “‘My – semena novogo chelovechestva!’: Futurizm i
futuristy v romane A.N. Tolstogo ‘Khozhdenie po mukam’.” 363–375
Antipova, Galina Aleksandrovna: “Tipologiia tekstov i tipologiia knigi Maiakovskogo.”
376–384
Grazhiia Bobilevich: “Telefon kak obekt i sredstvo kommunikatsii v iskusstve XX veka i v
tvorchestve Maiakovskogo.” 385–397.
Katsis, Leonid Fridovich: “El’-Lisitskii vs Malevich: Ot suprematizma k
konstruktivizmu (‘Skaz pro dva kvadrata’; ‘Dlia golosa’; ‘Pobeda nad solntsem’;
Elektromekhanicheskoe shou’; ‘Chetyre arifmeticheskikh deistviia’).” 398–425.
In’shakova, Evgeniia Iur’evna: “Sovetskii chelovek 1920-kh godov skvoz’ prizmu
konstruktivistskogo plakata.” 426–433.
Alekseeva, O.I.: “V.P. Polonskii i ‘Novyi LEF’: Po materialam periodicheskoi pechati.”
434–443.
Alekseeva, Larisa Konstantinovna: “Vystavka ‘20 let raboty Maiakovskogo’ kak gipertekst:
Problema sovremennogo prochteniia.” 444–459.
Maiakovskii, Vladimir: “Stenogrammy vystuplenii Maiakovskogo na Sobranii deiatelei
iskusstva vsekh otraslei 12 marta 1917 goda i na obshchem sobranii Federatsii
obedinenii sovetskikh pisatelei 26 oktiabria 1929 goda. Podgotovka teksta i
publikatsiia E.L. Tiurinoi.” 460–486
Lavinskii, Anton Mikhailovich: “Vospominaniia o Maiakovskom. Publikatsiia V.V.
Patenkova.” 487–498.
Subbotin, Sergei Ivanovich: “Maiakovskii: Neizvestnye arkhivnye materially.” 499–507.
Diadichev, Vladimir Nikolaevich: “Mikhail Osorgin ob ital’ianskom futurizme.” 508–519.
Osorgin, Mikhail Andreevich: “Stat’i i ocherki 1910-kh gg.” 520–570.
Kolesnikova, Larisa Efremovna: “Istoriia odnogo avtografa Maiakovskogo.” 571–580.

Valiuzhennch, Anatolii Vasil’evich: “‘Radostneishaia data’ v kalendare 1915 goda.” 581–588.
Kolesnikova, Larisa Efremovna: “Maiakovskii i Gorozhanin.” 589–603.
Van den Bossche, Bart, and Sarah Bonciarelli, ed.: La collaborazione artistica
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Saccoccio, Antonio: “La visione globale e poliespressiva del futurismo italiano: Verso il
superamento della figura dell’artista.” 15–24.
Viglino, Sylvie: Viglino, Sylvie: “La Grande Guerra di Marinetti o la sinergia delle arti in
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Biasolo, Monica: “Il Gesamtkunstwerk futurista: L’esempio di Paolo Buzzi.” 41–52.
Larcati, Arturo: “La fortuna del futurismo italiano nell’Austria di inizio secolo: La rivista
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Fava Guzzetta, Lia: “Pirandello tra futurismo e musical.” 111–120.
4. Monographs: Edited volumes

Anatol’ Petryts’kyi: Teatral’ni stroi ta dekoratsii zi zbirky Muzeiu teatral’noho,
muzychnoho ta kinomystetstva Ukrainy. Uporiadnyk Taras Lozyns’kyi,
Tetiana Rudenko. Kyiv & L’viv: Maister Knyh, 2012.
Baran, Henryk, et al., eds.: Avangard i ostal’noe: Sbornik statei k 75-letiiu
Aleksandra Efimovicha Parnisa. Moskva: Tri Kvadrata, 2013.
Krusanov, Andrei Vasil’evich, ed.: “‘Ia vse eto staraius’ piramidno uvekovechit’...’: Pis’mo
D.D. Burliuka M.N. Livshitsu.” 99–107.
Arskaia, Irina: “Obshchestvo khudozhnikov ‘Soiuz molodezhi’: Iz perepiski 1912–1914
godov.” 109–147.
Krusanov, Andrei Vasil’evich, ed.: “Pis’ma A.E. Kruchenykh M.V. Matiushinu. 148–193.
Iunggren, Magnus: “Ianko Lavrin: Panslavist i drug futuristov.” 193–209.
Starkina, Sof’ia Viacheslavovna: “Velimir Khlebnikov v Peterburge – Petrograde.”
210–229.
Lanne, Jean-Claude (Lann, Zhan-Klod): “Khlebnikov-budetlianin.” 230–239.
Baran, Henryk (Baran, Khenrik): “Byl li Khlebnikov Kassandroi? Ob odnom predskazanii
glavy budetlian.” 254–275.
Shargorodskii, Sergei: “Bezumstvo khrabrykh: Russkii futurizm i diskurs vyrozhdeniia.
Vokrug ‘Futurizma i bezumiia’ E. Radina.” 283–312.
Basner, Elena Veniaminovna: “Mikhail Larionov, Il’ia Zdanevich i drugiie: ‘Akefaly’ i
‘dekakeratisty’ v 1913 godu.” 313–330.
Goriacheva, Tat’iana Vadimovna: “‘Soediniaet nas mezhdousobnaia liubov’…’: K.
Zdanevich, A. Kruchenykh i K. Bal’mont. Ob odnom tiflisskom risunke K. Zdanevicha.”
331–357.
Uspenskii, Pavel Fedorovich: “Neizvestnyi otzyv o futuristicheskoi poezii Benedikta
Livshitsa.” 358–365.
Bowlt, John Ellis [Boult, Dzhon E.]: “Svet i t’ma: Solnechnoe zatmenie kak
kubofuturistskaia metafora.” 623–638.
Vakar, Irina: “O rannikh portretakh N.S. Goncharovoi.” 658–690.
Bužinska, Irēna (Buzhinska, Irena): “V poiskakh iskusstva budushchego: Diskurs istorii

iskusstva v teoreticheskikh sochineniiakh Voldemara Matveia (Vladimira Markova).”
738–757.
Bertozzi, Gabriel-Aldo, ed.: Viaggio nell’alchimia letteraria: Avanguardie e altri
percorsi. Raccolta di saggi. A cura di François Proïa; con una nota sulla
bibliografia dell’autore di Gabriella Giansante. Lanciano (CH): Carabba,
2014.
“Il parossismo: ‘École poétique’: Dal simbolismo a Dada.” 87–176.
“Futurismo e avanguardismo: F. T. Marinetti e Lionello Fiumi.” 197–214.
“F. T. Marinetti: ‘Les Dieux s’en vont, D’Annunzio reste’.” 215–224.
“Influenza del futurismo su Dada e surrealismo: Invenzione dell’avanguardia.” 225–238.
“Primo Conti: Le prime poesie futuriste.” 239–252.
Capelli, Pierpaolo, ed.: Primo Novecento: La stagione culturale delle riviste
d’autore: “Lacerba” (anni 1913/1914/1915). Percorsi tematici. Roma:
Segretariato Generale della Presidenza della Repubblica, Biblioteca
Quirinale, 2012.
Diadichev, Vladimir Nikolaevich, ed.: V. V. Maiakovskii: Pro et contra: Lichnost’
i tvorchestvo Vladimira Maiakovskogo v otsenke sovremennikov i
issledovatelei. Antologiia. Vol. 2. Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkoi
khristianskoi gumanitarnoi akademii, 2013.
Diadichev, Vladimir Nikolaevich: “Maiakovskii: Put’ v bessmertie.” 7–14.
Gorlov, Nikolai: “Futurizm i revoliutsiia: Poeziia futuristov.” 15–73.
Furmanov, Dmitrii Andreevich: “Chistka poetov.” 74–77.
Terent’ev, Igor’ Gerasimovich: “Kto Lef, kto Praf: Stat’ia diskussionnaia.” 78–81.
Aikhenval’d, Iulii Isaevich: “V. Maiakovskii: Veshchi etogo goda. Izdanie ‘Nakanune’.” 82–83.
Mochul’skii, Konstantin Vasil’evich: “V. Maiakovskii: Veshchi etogo goda do 1-go avgusta
1923 g. Izdaniye Akts. O-va ‘Nakanune’. Berlin.” 84–85.
Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich: “Promezhutok: O poezii.” 86–100.
Brik, Osip Maksimovich: “Reklama stikhom.” 101–105.
Krasil’nikov, Viktor Aleksandrovich: “N. Aseev. Za ryadom ryad. Izd. ‘Moskovskii rabochii’,
1925 g.” 106–107.
Grinberg, Anna Filippovna: “V. Maiakovskii: Skazka o Pete tolstom rebenke i o Sime,
kotoryi tonkii. Izdatel’stvo ‘Moskovskii rabochii’. 1925 g.” 108–111.
Sviatopolk-Mirskii, Dmitrii Petrovich: “Nachalo futurizma: Maiakovskii – Drugie poety
LEFa. Iz knigi ‘Sovremennaia russkaia literatura’, 1881–1925.” 112–118.
Sviatopolk-Mirskii, Dmitrii Petrovich: “Poety i Rossiia.” 119–124.
Sen’kin, Sergei Iakovlevich: “Lenin v kommune Vkhutemas.” 125–131.
Zelinskii, Kornelii Liutsianovich: “Poema Maiakovskogo o Lenine.” 132.
Rodov, Semen Abramovich: “V. Maiakovskii: Vladimir Il’ich Lenin.” 133.
Krasil’nikov, Viktor Aleksandrovich: “Vladimir Maiakovskii: ‘Vladimir Il’ich Lenin’, poema.”
134–136.
Lelevich, G.: “V. Maiakovskii: “‘Vladimir Il’ich Lenin’.” 137–139.
Mendel’son, Moris Osipovich: “Maiakovskii i Sendberg.” 140–145.
Mendel’son, Moris Osipovich: “Dve vstrechi: Fragment.” 145–151.
Shafir, Iakov Moiseevich: “Maiakovskii ob Amerike.” 152–154.
Shibanov, V.: “Vladimir Maiakovskii: Moe otkrytie Ameriki.” 155–158.

Danilov, Mikhail Khristoforovich: “Dva poeta.” 159–162.
Polonskii, Viacheslav Pavlovich: “Blef prodolzhaetsia: O nashikh literaturnykh nravakh,
o bogeme, o V. V. Maiakovskom, o Poprishchine i Ferdinande VII, a takzhe o
dzhaz-bande, gotoviashchemsia k obshche-sovetskomu vystupleniiu.” 163–186.
Shengeli, Georgii Arkad’evich: “Maiakovskii vo ves’ rost.” 187–238.
Zhits, Fedor Arnol’dovich: “Retsenziia: Georgii Shengeli – ‘Maiakovskii vo ves’ rost’. Izd.
VSP.” 239.
Mashbits-Verov, Iosif Markovich: “Novyi Maiakovskii: K vykhodu 5 toma sobraniia
sochinenii. Izd. GIZ. 1927.” 240–242.
Fish, Gennadii Semenovich: “Retsenziia: Vl. Maiakovskii. T. V. GIZ. 1927.” 243–244.
Berkovskii, Naum Iakovlevich: “V tom Maiakovskogo.” 245–247.
Khodasevich, Vladislav Felitsianovich: “Dekol’tirovannaia loshad’.” 248–255.
Paley, Abram Ruvimovich: “Literaturnyy bloknot: ‘Novyi Lef’.” 256–257.
Dukor, Il’ia Shalimovich: “Maiakovskii – gazetchik.” 258–281.
Iuzovskii, Iurii: “Kartonnaia poema: Otzyv chitatelia o poeme Maiakovskogo ‘Khorosho’.”
282–284.
Krasil’nikov, Viktor Aleksandrovich: “Vladimir Maiakovskii: ‘Khorosho’, Oktiabr’skaia
poema. GIZ. 1927 g.” 285–290.
Bespalov, Ivan Mikhailovich: “V. Maiakovskii: Khorosho. Oktiabr’skaia poema. Gosizdat.”
291–292.
Bekker, Mikhail Iosifovich: “Khorosho li ‘Khorosho’?” 293–302.
Afonin, Mikhail Efimovich: “Khorosho!: Retsenziia: Vladimir Maiakovskii. ‘Khorosho!
Oktyabr’skaia poema.’ Gosizdat. M. 1927 g.” 303–307.
Lezhnev, A.: “Dve poemy: V. Maiakovskii ‘Khorosho’; N. Aseev ‘Semen Proskakov’.”
308–320.
Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich: “O starinnykh traditsiiakh i sovremennom kul’turnom
stroitel’stve: Mysli vslukh.” 321–329.
Zelinskii, Kornelii Liutsianovich: “Idti li nam s Maiakovskim?” 330–339.
Polonskii, Viacheslav Pavlovich: “Listki iz bloknota: Fragmenty.” 340–342.
Polonskii, Viacheslav Pavlovich: “Dnevnik 1927–1930 gg.: Fragmenty.” 343–346.
Si-Eks: “Maiakovskii.” 347–351.
Tal’nikov, David Lazarevich: “Literaturnye zametki.” 352–378.
Druzin, Valerii Pavlovich: “Poety Lefa seichas: V. Maiakovskii i N. Aseev.” 379–382.
Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna: “Maiakovskomu.” 383.
Pokrovskii, Vladimir Konstantinovich: “Dialog Esenina s Maiakovskim.” 384–391.
Oksenov, Innokentii Aleksandrovich: “V. V. Maiakovskii: No. S. Novye stikhi. Izd.
‘Federatsiia’. M., 1928.” 392–393.
Postupal’skii, Igor’ Stefanovich: “V. V. Maiakovskii: No. S. Novye stikhi. Izd. ‘Federatsiia’.
M., 1928.” 394–396.
Druzin, Valerii Pavlovich: “Retsenziia: V. Maiakovskii. Sobranie sochinenii. T. 1 i 2.
Gosizdat. L.-M. 1928 g.” 397–400.
Beskin, Osip Martynovich: “‘Klop’ Maiakovskogo.” 401–408.
Oksenov, Innokentii Aleksandrovich: “Retsenziia: V. Maiakovskii. ‘Klop: Feericheskaia
komediia’. GIZ. 1929.” 409.
Zonin, Aleksandr Il’ich: “V. Maiakovskii: Sobranie sochinenii, t. I-V. GIZ. M.-L., 1929.”
410–419.
Kashintsev, A.: Retsenziia: V. Maiakovskii. ‘Slony v komsomole’. Stikhi. Molodaia gvardiia.

1929.” 420.
Pil’skii, Petr Moiseevich: “Vl. Maiakovskii.” 421–424.
Berkovskii, Naum Iakovlevich: “Zametki o dramaturgakh: Maiakovskii.” 425–431.
Rykova, Nadezhda Ianuar’evna: “Tvorcheskii put’ V. Maiakovskogo.” 432–436.
Bukhshtab, Boris Iakovlevich: “V. Maiakovskii: Slony v komsomole. M. Molodaia gvardiia.
1929.” 437–439.
V.: “‘Tuda i obratno’: V. Maiakovskii. Sbornik stikhov ‘Tuda i obratno’. Izd. Federatsii. 1930
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Fevral’skii, Aleksandr Vil’iamovich: “‘Bania’ Vl. Maiakovskogo.” 441–442.
Kostrov, Taras: “‘Bania’ v teatre Meierkhol’da.” 443–446.
Popov-Dubovskoi, Veniamin Serafimovich: “V poiskakh putei: V. Maiakovskii i N. Aseev.”
447–454.
Samoubiistvo, V.: “V. Maiakovskogo: Moskva (po telefonu).” 455–456.
“Proletarskii poet.” 457.
“Pamiati druga.” 458–459.
Bednyi, Dem’ian: “Chudovishchno. Neponiatno.” 460.
Burliuk, David Davidovich: “Na smert’ Vladimira Vladimirovicha Maiakovskogo.” 461–463.
Sekretariata RAPP: “14 aprelia, v 10 ch. 15 m. utra, pokonchil zhizn’ samoubiistvom poet
Vladimir Maiakovskii.” 464–466.
“Moskva gorit: Posmertnoe proizvedenie Maiakovskogo.” 467.
Zonin, Aleksandr Il’ich: “Dovol’no groshovykh istin.” 468–471.
Kol’tsov, Mikhail Efimovich: “Chto sluchilos’?” 472–474.
Bespalov, Ivan Mikhailovich: “Put’ Maiakovskogo.” 475–478.
Tret’iakov, Sergei Mikhailovich: “Byt’ na strazhe.” 479.
Osorgin, Mikhail Andreevich: “Vladimir Maiakovskii.” 480–481.
Zaslavskii, David Iosifovich: “Likvidatsiia proryva.” 482–483.
Lunacharskii, Anatolii Vasil’evich: “Zhizn’ i smert’: O Maiakovskom.” 484–490.
Kamenskii, Vasilii Vasil’evich: “Pis’mo Davidu Burliuku.” 491–493.
Gorbachev, Georgii Efimovich: “Na barrikady!” 494–495.
Lavrenev, Boris Andreevich: “O Maiakovskom.” 496–497.
Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich: “O Maiakovskom.” 498.
Fish, Gennadii Semenovich: “O Maiakovskom.” 499–500.
Saianov, Vissarion Mikhailovich: “Sluchainye vstrechi.” 501–503.
Likharev, Boris Mikhailovich: “V Moskve.” 504–506.
Astakhov, Leonid: “Zlaia smert’.” 507–508.
V TSK VKP(b) “Tov. tov. Stalinu i Molotovu. Kopiia tov. Stetskomu.” 509–512.
Kushner, Boris Anisimovich: “Vladimir Maiakovskii.” 513–516.
El’bert, Lev Giliarovich: “Kratkie dannye.” 517–520.
Malkin, Boris Fedorovich: “Pamiati V. V. Maiakovskogo.” 521–522.
Ermilov, Vladimir Vladimirovich: “Chernorabochii velikoi revoliutsii.” 523–526.
Averbakh, Leopol’d Leonidovich: “Pamiati Maiakovskogo.” 527–539.
Trotskii, Lev Davydovich: “Samoubiistvo V. Maiakovskogo.” 540–544.
Pokrovskaia, Anna Konstantinovna: “Maiakovskii kak detskii pisatel’.” 545–553.
Aseev, Nikolai Nikolaevich: “Zhelezki strok.” 554–561.
Oksenov, Innokentii Aleksandrovich: “Maiakovskii v dorevoliutsionnoi literature.”
562–566.
Lunacharskii, Anatolii Vasil’evich: “Vl. Maiakovskii – novator.” 567–581.

Polonskii, Viacheslav: “Dnevnik 1931 g.” 582–591.
Iakubinskii, Lev Petrovich: “Velichaishii poet.” 592–593.
Iakobson, Roman Osipovich: “O pokolenii, rastrativshem svoikh poetov.” 594–619.
Sviatopolk-Mirskii, Dmitrii Petrovich: “Dve smerti: 1837–1930.” 620–632.
Bem, Al’fred Liudvigovich: “Spor o Maiakovskom.” 633–637.
Sharshun, Sergei Ivanovich: “Genezis poslednego perioda zhizni i tvorchestva
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Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich: “Valerii Briusov i Vladimir Maiakovskii: Skorbnye mysli.”
643–650.
Tsvetaeva, Marina Ivanovna: “Epos i lirika sovremennoi Rossii: Vladimir Maiakovskii i Boris
Pasternak.” 651–673.
Belyi, Andrei: “Masterstvo Gogolia: Issledovanie. Gogol’ i Maiakovskii.” 674–679.
Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich: “Poeziia, poetika i zadachi poeticheskogo tvorchestva v
SSSR: Fragmenty.” 680–686.
Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovich: “Maiakovskii byl i ostaetsia.” 687.
Ichin, Korneliia, ed.: Dada po-russki. Belgrad: Izdatel’stvo Filologicheskogo
fakul’teta v Belgrade, 2013.
“Iliazd. Ilia Zdanevitch. Tbilissi, 1894 – Paris, 1975.” 5–15.
“Biographie du poète et éditeur Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevitch).” 16–21
“Iliazd e le Degré quarante et un (41°): Livres, publications, éditions.” 22–28.
Bobrinskaia, Ekaterina: “Futurizm i vsechestvo v teoreticheskikh rabotakh Il’i Zdanevicha.”
29–38
Magarotto, Luidzhi: “Il’ia Zdanevich: Ot ital’anskogo futurizma do dramaticheskoi
pentalogii.” 39–48.
Gerchuk, Iurii: “Tipograficheskie opyt Il’i Zdanevicha i nabornaia grafika russkikh
futuristov i konstruktivistov.” 49–31.
Burenina-Petrova, Ol’ga: “Tsirkovaia ulichnaia afisha v knigotvorchestve Il’i Zdanevicha.”
32–61.
Chikhradze, Mzia: “Tbilisi Avant-Garde and Il’ia Zdanevich.” 62–75.
Nikol’skaia, Tat’iana: “Gruzinskie realii v proze Il’i Zdanevicha.” 76–80.
Kaiurnovski, Petr: “Roman kak svidetel’stvo ochevidtsa iskusstva iz tupika, ili
‘perevernutyi’ sposob kak konstruktivnyi podkhod Il’iazda.” 81–95.
Katsis, Leonid: “Roman Il’i Zdanevicha ‘Filosofiia’ kak Filosofiia: A. V. Kartashev, o. Sergii
Bulgakov, A. F. Losev i dr.” 96–122.
Katsis, Leonid, and Mikhail Odesskii: “ Avangard v kontekste balkanskogo i karpatskogo
voprosov: P’esa ‘Ianko krUl’ albAnskai’ (1916–1918) i roman ‘Filosofiia’ (1930) Il’i
Zdanevicha.” 123–155.
Ichin, Korneliia: “Il’ia Zdanevich: Adresat stikhov Borisa Poplavskogo.” 156–170.
Faber, Vera: “Iskusstvo vo vtoroi stepeni: K voprosu intertekstual’nogo prisutstviia Il’i
Zdanevicha i Alekseia Kruchenykh v tvorchestve Igoria Terent’eva.” 171–188.
Grechko, Valerii: “K lingvistiko-psikhologicheskoi kharakteristike zaumi Il’i Zdanevicha.”
189–203.
Feshchenko, Vladimir: “Grafolaliia Zdanevicha-Il’iazda kak khudozhestvennyi
eksperiment: Po materialam rukopisei i vystuplenii 1910–1920-kh gg.” 204–212.
Meilakh, Mikhail: “‘asnOva pis’mA slukhavAia’: Ob orfografii Il’iazda: ‘aslaablIch’ia.
pitErka dEystf’.” 213–222.
Preobrazhenskii, Sergei: “Rol’ lichnosti v istorii sotsiolekta: Olbanskaia kanonizatsiia

krulia albanskogo – prodolzheniie sleduet.” 223–228.
Imanse, Geurt, and Frank van Lamoened, eds.: Russian Avant-Garde: The Khard
zhiev Collection at the Stedlijk Museum Amsterdam. Rotterdam: nai010, 2013.
Krikunenko, Vitalii Grigorovich, ed.: Kost’ Burevii: Grani zhizni i tvorchestva.
K 125-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Kostya Bureviia (nastoiashchie Konstantin
Stepanovych Sopliakov), urozhentsa Rossii, ukrainskogo poeta, publitsista,
dramaturga, teatroveda, rossiiskogo i ukrainskogo obshchestvennogo
deiatelia (1888–1934). Moskva: Biblioteka ukrainskoi literatury, 2013.
Lo Presti, Aldo, ed.: Orvieto...: Segni e cronache d’arte del Novecento. Orvieto
(Terni): Intermedia, 2012.
“Orvieto e l’avanguardia futurista.” 11–42.
“Pericle Perali ed il futurismo.” 43–62.
“Osio Lazzero pittore ‘medioeval-futuristeggiante’.” 95–108.
“Bizzarri, ‘futurista’ da camera.” 109–116.
“Echi futuristi sulla Rupe.” 117–124.
“Il contagio futurista.” 125–140.
“Dottori al Premio Orvieto.” 141–148.
“Eliseo Stella, pittore ‘futurista’.” 173–182.
“Dal futurismo al presentismo.” 211–218.
Ponti, Paola, ed.: Letteratura e oltre: Studi in onore di Giorgio Baroni. Pisa:
Serra, 2012.
Esposito, Edoardo: “La poesia futurista e l’immagine.” 290–293.
Fontanella, Luigi: “Aldo Pazzeschi e il futurismo fiorentino.” 304–307.
Rampazzo, Elena: “Quando il futurismo invocò Cesare: Inediti buzziani tra lealismo alla
corona e tentazioni bonapartiste.” 328–332.
Saccoccio, Antonio, and Roberto Guerra, eds.: Marinetti 70: Sintesi della critica
futurista Roma: Armando, 2014.
Crispolti, Enrico: “Rileggere Marinetti: Arte, critica, comunicazione, politica.” 11–16.
Valesio, Paolo: “Sbilanciamento.” 17–22.
Cigliana, Simona: “‘Tutto dovete sperare dall’avvenire’: Marinetti e il mondo del futuro, tra
profezia e fantascienza.” 23–32.
Berghaus, Günter: “Marinetti’s Technological Imagination.” 33–38.
Saccoccio, Antonio: “Marinetti vivo: Trisintesi.” 39–46.
Agnese, Gino: “Marinetti e McLuhan: Un dialogo a distanza.” 47–50.
Guerri, Giordano Bruno: “ Marinetti: Un genio rivoluzionario.” 51–54.
Di Genova, Giorgio: “A proposito di Marinetti e del futurismo.” 55–58.
Campa, Riccardo: “Compagno Marinetti.” 59–64.
Bruni, Pierfranco: “Marinetti, il futurismo e l’arte di pensare e agire.” 65–68.
Conte, Vitaldo: “Marinetti/poesia visiva: I rumore azione arte-vita.” 69–74.
Prampolini, Massimo: “‘NOI’, Marinetti e Prampolini.” 75–86.
Ceccagnoli, Patrizio: “Anniversari, date e alfabeto in libertà: Marinetti 70 anni dopo.” 87–90.
Carpi, Giancarlo: “Marinetti è il palombaro dello spazio.” 91–96.
Tallarico, Luigi: “Marinetti: Rivoluzione futurista e ricostruzione dell’universo.” 97–104.
Hajek, Miroslava: “Marinetti e Bruno Munari.” 105–110.

Antonucci, Giovanni: “Marinetti scrittore del futuro: Teatro e dintorni.” 111–115.
Duranti, Mssimo: “Dal cielo al cosmo: Il futurismo con e dopo Marinetti.” 116–118.
Guerra, Roberto: “Marinetti e il futurismo, 1944–2014.” 119–123.
Barbi Marinetti, Francesca: “Nonno Marinetti.” 123–124.
Schiaffini, Ilaria, and Claudio Zambianchi, eds.: Contemporanea: Scritti di storia
dell’arte per Jolanda Nigro Covre. Roma: Campisano, 2013.
Carrera, Manuel: “Otto Greiner pittore: Una fonte per Sartorio e Boccioni.” 91–98.
Coen, Ester: “Un’ospitalità fraternal: Umberto Boccioni a Giovanni Prini e Orazia Belsito.”
139–146.
Bartorelli, Guido: “II futurista pensa al passato: Uno specchietto storico negli scritti di
Boccioni e il posto che vi occupa Rembrandt. Breve traccia.” 147–154.
Benzi, Fabio: “Giacomo Balla: Compenetrazioni iridescenti e velocità astratte. Un percorso
verso l’astrazione futurista.” 155–166.
Nigro, Alessandro: “Roma, aprile 1917: Le due serate di Giacomo Balla al Costanzi.
Qualche precisazione sulla scenografia plastica per ‘Feu d’artifice’.” 167–174.
Mitrano, Ida: “Modello femminile e ideologia futurista: Contraddizioni e avanguardismi.”
167–182.
Giorgini, Marina: “Ruzena Zàtkovà: Un’artista boema fra tradizione e avanguardia.”
183–192.
Schiaffini, Ilaria: “Scambi nell’avanguardia europea degli anni Venti: Vinicio Paladini,
Karel Teige e il fotomontaggio.” 193–202.
Scudiero, Maurizio, ed.: Fortunato Depero: Arte vita: Libri, immagini, documenti
originali. Gussago (BS): Edizioni dell’Arengario, 2013.
Semenova, Elizaveta Petrovna, ed.: Russkie sovetskie pisateli: Poety.
Biobibliograficheskii ukazatel’. Vol. 28. Velimir Khlebnikov. Moskva: Kniga,
2014.
Sideri, Maria, ed.: It Comes in Waves. London: Bridge and Company, 2014.
Sideri, Maria: “Vibrations Lust Matter.” 8–18.
Sideri, Maria: “Dialogue between Myself and Saint Point. Part 2.” 19–30.
Burns, Laura: “Hand Straight Make a Line a Shape. Poem.” 31.
Athey, Ron: “Mirage Oriental: An Invocation to Rawhiya Nour el-Deen (Valentine de Saint
Point).” 34–37.
5. Monographs: Studies
Ajres, Alessandro: Avanguardie in movimento: Polonia 1917–1923. Melfi (PZ):
Libria, 2013
“Il futurismo polacco.” 111–154.
Benzi, Fabio: Arte in Italia tra le due guerre. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013.
“Il futurismo nel primo dopoguerra.” 104–121.
“L’arte meccanica futurista e il mito della macchina.” 122–132.
“Il futurismo negli anni Trenta.” 213–228.
Appendice. Antologia di testi teorici

Dudreville, Leonardo, Achille Funi, Luigi Russolo e Mario Sironi: “Contro tutti i ritorni in
pittura: Manifesto futurista (1920).” 281–284
Severini, Gino: “Dal cubismo al classicismo (1921).” 285–286.
Prampolini, Enrico, Ivo Pannaggi e Vinicio Paladini: “Arte meccanica: Manifesto futurista
(1923).” 287–290.
Severini, Gino: “La pittura murale: La sua estetica e i suoi mezzi (1927).” 309–310.
Balla, Giacomo, Benedetta, Fortunato Depero, Gerardo Dottori, Fillia, Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti, Enrico Prampolini, Mino Somenzi e Tato: “Manifesto dell’aeropittura
(1931).” 316–319.
Prampolini, Enrico: “Aeropittura e superamento terrestre (1931).” 320
Berardi, Franco, and Giuseppe Maio: Después del futuro: Desde el futurismo al
cyberpunk. El agotamiento de la modernidad. Madrid: Enclave de Libros,
2014.
Boschetti, Anna: Ismes: Du réalisme au postmodernisme. Paris: Éditions du
CNRS, 2014.
“Pratiques et représentations de l’ ‘avant-garde’ du futurisme au surréalisme.” 107–112.
“Position et stratégie de Marinetti.” 113–128.
“L’Impact international du futurisme.” 128–155.
“Les Transformations de la notion d’avant-garde.” 156–171.
Buksha, Kseniia: Kazimir Malevich. Moskva: Molodaia gvardiia, 2013.
Buscaroli Fabbri, Beatrice: Futurismo a Bologna: 20 marzo 1914, Bologna
Baglioni = Futurism in Bologna: 20 marzo 1914, Bologna Baglioni. Bologna:
Minerva, 2013.
Capello, Francesco: Città specchio: Soggettività e spazio urbano in Palazzeschi,
Govoni e Boine. Milano: Angeli, 2013.
Cavallucci, Giulio: Le “case d’arte” futuriste: Laboratori di arti applicate
nell’Italia tra le due guerre. Tesi di laurea. Relatore Fabio Benzi. Chieti-
Pescara: Università degli Studi “G. D’Annunzio”, Facoltà di lettere e filosofia,
2011. Reissued as online publication “Le ‘case d’arte’ futuriste: Laboratori
di arti applicate nell’Italia tra le due guerre.” Sull’aria: Rivista di musica
allargata 10:25 (November 2012): 8–22; 11:26 (June 2013): 23–37; 12:27
(January 2014): 37–54; 13:28 (July 2014): 55–70.
Curtin, Adrian: Avant-Garde Theatre Sound: Staging Sonic Modernity. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
“‘This is all a lot of garble’: Khlebnikov’s ‘Zangezi’.” 131–143.
“The Stage and the Street.” 151–165.
“Explosive Poetry: Marinetti and Huelsenbeck.” 165–186.
“Sonic Revolt: Avraamov’s ‘The Symphony of Sirens’.” 186–198.
Fameli, Pasquale: Il corpo risonante: Vocalità e gestualità nel Novecento. Pasian
di Prato (Udine): Campanotto, 2013
2. “Corporalità e decostruzione del linguaggio nelle avanguardie storiche.” 15–42.
2.1. “La declamazione dinamica e sinottica di Marinetti e Cangiullo.” 15–18.
2.2. “Balla, Depero e la ricostruzione rumorista dell’universo.” 18–20.

2.3. “Zaum’: Il linguaggio transmentale dei futuristi russi.” 20–24.
3. “Le forme della poesia sonora.” 43–66.
3.7. “Il revival futurista di Arrigo Lora Totino.” 57–59.
Frisone, Daniela: Sicilia, l’avanguardia. Firenze: Cesati, 2013.
“Futurismo siracusano, tra slanci e opposizioni.” 9–28.
“‘La vampa letteraria’: Storia di una rivista controcorrente.” 29–45.
“I ‘Balocchi’ di Antonio Bruno.” 97–116.
“II salotto letterario di ‘Haschisch’.” 117–138.
“Enrico Cardile: Oltre il ‘Cenacolo simbolista’.” 139–175.
“‘La balza futurista: Dietro le quinte.” 176–192.
“Salvatore Quasimodo avanguardista.” 193–218.
Garavaglia, Valentina: Bruno Munari: Il gioco del teatro. Milano: UNICOPLI, 2013.
Gardini, Ashley: The Legacy of Antonio Sant’Elia: An Analysis of Sant’Elia’s
Posthumous Role in the Development of Italian Futurism during the Fascist
Era. M.A. Dissertation. San Jose/CA: San Jose State University, 2014.
Glišić, Iva: Designing a Communist Consciousness: Ideological Evolution within
Russian Futurism between 1905 and 1930. PhD. Dissertation. Crawley/WA:
The University of Western Australia, 2013.
Gybina, Mariia Mikhailovna: Gradostroitel’nye kontseptsii ital’ianskogo
futurizma. Avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata
arkhitektury. Moskva: Moskovskii arkhitekturnyi institut (Gosudarstvennaia
akademiia), 2013.
Gybina, Mariia Mikhailovna: Gradostroitel’nye kontseptsii ital’ianskogo
futurizma. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2014.
Hass, Juliana: Fumaça! Fumaça! Fumaça!: O código de Perelá. A leveza do
romance futurista de Aldo Palazzeschi. Dissertação de Mestrado. Orientador
Roberta Barni. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. Faculdade de
Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Língua, Literatura e Cultura Italianas,
2012.
Heinrich, Gisela: Kasimir Malewitsch: Architektonische Modelle für Utopia und
ihr Nachwirken in der Kunst der Gegenwart. Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank
für Geisteswissenschaften, 2012.
Hjartarson, Benedikt: Visionen des Neuen: Eine diskurshistorische Analyse des
frühen avantgardistischen Manifests. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter,
2013.
3 “Der Bruch mit dem Symbolismus: Der italienische Futurismus als ‘neue Formel der
Kunst-Aktion’.” 105–126.
3.4 “Zur Bildtheorie des Symbolismus und des Futurismus.” 119–123.
3.5 “Vom ‘freien Vers’ zum futuristischen Manifest.” 124–126.
4.2 “‘Fremdling, wisse, in welches Land du gekommen bist’: Marinetti und die
Kubo-Futuristen.” 131–139.
4.5 “Das Manifest als Medium zur Offenbarung einer höheren Erkenntnis: Chlebnikov und
der Einzug der Marsianer.” 153–163.
5 “‘Sprengt die gefahrbringenden Ketten!’: Ljubomir Micić’ zenitistisches Projekt der
Barbarisierung Europas.” 173–199.
6.3 “Der Avantgardebegriff in Marinettis Schriften.” 218–226.
6.4” Das futuristische Manifest und die Manifeste des italienischen Nationalismus.”
226–230.
6.5 “Vom subversiven zum futuristischen Manifest.” 231–232.
7 “Wider den ‘déterminisme sceptique’: Das futuristische Manifest und die Tradition des
Antideterminismus.” 233–251.
7.2 “‘Ästhetischer Lamarckismus’: Marinettis Auseinandersetzung mit der Tradition des
biologischen Determinismus.” 239–242.
7.4 “Marinettis Kritik am marxschen Geschichtsmodell.” 245–250.
7.5 “Das futuristische Manifest als Medium zur Entfaltung schöpferischer Energie.”
250–251
8.2 “Zu den futuristischen Programmschriften Papinis.” 271–276.
8.5 “Die ‘futuristische Wende’ Papinis und das Manifest.” 288–291.
9.3 “‘L’esprit de l’homme est un ovaire inexercé...’: Marinettis ‘Mafarka le futuriste’ und
die Tradition der Alchemie.” 302–307.
10.1 “Der ‘unsichtbare Arm’ des Willens: Zum ästhetischen Voluntarismus Marinettis.”
322–328.
10.2 “‘L’homme multiplié’: Okkultistische Implikationen einer futuristischen Denkfigur.”
328–332.
10.3 “Vom kosmischen zum selbstbestimmten Willen: Marinetti und Jules Bois.” 332–338.
10.4 “Vom zersplitterten Subjekt der literarischen Dekadenz zum vervielfachten Menschen
des italienischen Futurismus.” 338–341.
10.5 “Das futuristische Manifest als chirurgisch-magisches Sprachmedium.” 341–342.
Ishida, Satoko: La poetica der ridere nella cultura italiana del Novecento:
Tre riflessioni sulle fisionomie del riso secondo Aldo Palazzeschi, Achille
Campanile, Cesare Zavattini. Ph.D. Disertation. Tokyo: University of Foreign
Studies; Bologna: Università di Bologna, 2012.
Kovtun, Evgenii Fedorovich: Russkaia futuristicheskaia kniga. 2nd edn. Moskva:
Kniga, 2014.
Kunichika, Michael: “Our Native Antiquity”: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the
Culture of Russian Modernism. Brighton/MA: Academic Studies Press, 2014.
Lista, Giovanni: Enrico Prampolini, futurista europeo. Roma: Carocci, 2013.
Marchi, Marco: Per Palazzeschi. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2013.
Mannaioli, Deanna, and Giovanna Brenci: La pittura murale di Gerardo Dottori
nel territorio di Marsciano. Perugia: La Rocca, 2013.
McKever, Rosalind S.: Futurism and the Past: Temporalities, Avant-gardism and
Tradition in Italian Art and Its Histories, 1909–1919. Ph.D. Dissertation.
London: Kingston University, 2012.
Meazzi, Barbara: Avant-gardes, futurisme, poétiques du XXe siècle. Thèse de
habilitation. Directeur François Livi. Université de Paris IV, 2012.
Montefoschi, Paola: Il mare al di là delle colline: Il viaggio nel Novecento

letterario italiano. Roma: Carocci, 2012.
“Viaggio a Cartagine: Gli itinerari tunisini di Marinetti, Comisso, Consolo.” 15–60.
“Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: ‘Scipione l’Africano’, ‘Salammbò’ e l’ ‘Aeropoema di
Cartagine’.” 38–46.
“Carte inedite: Abbozzo dell’aeropoema ‘Roma Cartagine’ di Marinetti e prove di scrittura
del ‘Ciau Masino’ di Pavese.” 229–241.
Mosco, Marilena: Artisti in coppia: Passione, complicità, competizione. Firenze:
Nicomp, 2013.
“Robert Delaunay e Sonia Terk: La forza dell’unione.” 59–70.
“Filippo Tommaso Marinetti e Benedetta Cappa: Futur coppia.” 71–84.
“Michail Larionov e Natalija Goncarova: Amore e folclore.” 85–98.
Palmer, Helen: Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense. London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2014.
Pizza, Antonio: Las ciudades del futurismo italiano: Vida y arte moderno,
Milán, París, Berlín. Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de
Barcelona, 2014.
Preludios modernos en una ciudad de provincias 11–22.
Simbolismos artísticos y nuevas configuraciones urbanas 23–34.
“La ville qui monte” 35–44.
Viajes y literatura 45–58.
El arte como conflicto 59–70.
Nacimiento de una estética futurista 71–89.
Representaciones del tiempo 91–101.
La arquitectura como meta 103–117.
“La cittá nuova” 119–136.
En las capitales del arte: París y Berlín 137–158.
Las disputas con el cubismo 159–171.
“Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo” 173–185.
Anexo documental 187–203.
Ponte, Max: Artecrazia: Arte e politica nel futurismo italiano. Tesi di laura.
Torino: Università di Torino, 2012.
Railing, Patricia: Malevich Paints, 1911–1920: The Seeing Eye. London: Artists
Bookworks, 2013.
Rocco, Renata Dias Ferraretto Moura: Para além do futurismo: Poéticas de Gino
Severini no Acervo do MAC USP. Dissertação de Mestrado. Orientador
Ana Gonçalves Magalhães. São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da
Universidade de São Paulo, Programa de Pós-graduação Interunidades em
Estética e História da Arte – Escola de Comunicação e Artes, Faculdade de
Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Faculdade de Filosofia Ciências e Letras Humanas,
2013.
Rossomakhin [Romakhin], Andrei Anatol’evich: Vzaimootnoshenie verbal’nogo
i vizual’nogo na oblozhkakh knig Vladimira Maiakovskogo: Skrytyi smysl
avangardnogo teksta. Ph.D. Dissertation. Amsterdam: Universiteit van

Amsterdam, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, 2014.
Salvati, Giulio: Die Bedeutung des Futurismus für den italienischen Faschismus:
Wie konnte sich geschichtlich und kunsthistorisch eine Kunstform
etablieren, die auf das politische Menschenbild des Faschismus Einfluss
nahm und inwiefern? BA Thesis. München: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität,
2013.
Schutten, Jan Paul: Kazimir Malevich: President van de ruimte. Zwolle: WBOOKS,
2014.
Sadlovs’kyi, Iurii Ivanovych: Slovnyk futuryzmu. Kyiv: Instytut literatury
imeni T.H. Shevchenka. Natsional’na akademiia nauk Ukrainy; Ternopil’:
Navchal’na knyha – Bohdan, 2013.
Shavlovs’ka, Liubov V’iacheslavivna: Poetyka avanhardnoho myslennia
u tvorchosti Mykhailia Semenka. Dyplomna robota. Odesa: Odes’kyi
Nacional’nyi Universytet imeni I. I. Mechnykova, Filolohichnyi fakul’tet,
Kafedra ukrains’koi literatury, 2014.
Tanaka, Jun: Meifu no kenchikuka: Jirubēru kuraveruden = Gilbert Clavel:
Architekt des Chthonischen. Tōkyō: Misuzu Shobō, 2012.
Vidal, Ricarda: Death and Desire in Car Crash Culture: A Century of Romantic
Futurisms. Oxford: Lang, 2013.
“Three Hundred Electric Moons: The Futurists’ Defiance of Death and Romantic Nature.”
23–46.
“Systematic Chaos: Fordism as a Practical Realization of Futurism.” 47–60.
Weld, Sara Pankenier: Voiceless Vanguard: The Infantilist Aesthetic of the
Russian Avant-Garde. Chicago/IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013.
“Infant Art: Mikhail Larionov, Children’s Drawings, and Neo-primitivist Art.” 19–61.
“Infant Word: Aleksei Kruchenykh, Children’s Language, and Cubo-futurist Poetics.”
62–102.
Zelaschi, Anna: Prassede Cassolo Bracchi. Varzi: Guardamagna, 2010.
Yokota, Sayaka: La danza nel futurismo: Giannina Censi e la danza moderna.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Tokyo: University of Foreign Studies, 2013.
6. Editions
Baj, Enrico: Manifesto per un futurismo statico. Milano: Beyle, 2013.
Caramel, Luciano, Alberto Longatti, and Maria Letizia Casati, eds.: Antonio
Sant’Elia: La collezione civica di Como. Cinisello Balsamo (MI): Silvana,
2013.
Carli, Mario: Con D’Annunzio a Fiume. Milano: AGA, 2013.
Cavadini, Luigi, ed.: Antonio Sant’Elia: I disegni delle collezioni civiche di Como.
Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2012.
Huttunen, Tomi, ed.: Venäläisen avantgarden manifestit. Helsinki: Poesia, 2014.
“Korvapuusti yleiselle maulle.” [Burliuk D., Kruchenykh A., Maiakovskii V., Khlebnikov V.:
Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu] 21–22.
“Manifesti kokoelmasta Tuomariloukku II.” [Burliuk, D., Guro Ye., Burliuk, N., Maiakovskii,
V., Nizen, E., Khlebnikov, V., Lifshits, B., Kruchenykh, A.: Sadok sudei II] 23–24.
“Sana sellaisenaan.” [Kruchenykh, A., Khlebnikov, V.: Slovo kak takovoe] 25–28.
“Sanan ylösnousemus.” [Shklovskii, V.: Voskreshenie slova] 29–38.
“Kirjoituksesta ‘Meidän perustamme’.” [Khlebnikov, V.: Nasha osnova] 39–43.
“Zaum-kielen julistus.” [Kruchenykh, A.: Deklaratsiia zaumnogo iazyka] 44–45.
“Egofuturismin prologi.” [Severianin, I.: Prolog] 50–54.
“Egofuturismin epilogi.” [Mariengof, A.: Buian-ostrov] 55–57.
“Laintaulut.” [Mariengof, A., Shershenevich, V., Erdman, N., Ivnev, R., Esenin, S.: Vosem’
punktov] 58.
“Intuitiivinen koulu.” [Severianin, I.: Intuitivnaia shkola] 59
“Deplomi.” [Ignat’ev, I., Shirokov, P., Gnedov, V., Kryuchkov, D.: Gramata: Listovka] 60.
“Turbopaiaani.” [Bobrov, S.: Turbopean’] 63–64.
“Kirjelmä.” [Aseev, N., Bobrov, S., Zdanevich, P., Pasternak, B.: Gramota] 65–66.
“Läimäytys kubofiituristien naamaan.” [Rossiianskii, M.: Perchatka kubofuturistam]
69–72.
“Kaksi viimeistä sanaa.” [Shershenevich, V.: Dva poslednikh slova] 73–75.
“41°-ryhmän manifesti.” [Zdanevich, I., Kruchenykh, A., Terent’ev, I., Cherniavskii, N.: 41°]
99.
“Ympyriäinen reitti.” [Terent’ev, I.: Marshrut sharizny] 100–102.
“17 tyhjänpäiväistä työkalua.” [Terent’ev, I.: 17 erundovykh orudii] 103–126.
“Traktaatti pelkästä säädyttömyydestä.” [Terent’ev, I.: Traktat o sploshnom neprilichii]
127–142.
“Minkä puolesta LEF taistelee?” Keneen LEF pureutuu? Ketä LEF pelottelee? [Aseev, N.,
Arbatov, B., Brik, O., Kushner, B., Maiakovskii, V., Tret’iakov, S., Chuzhak, N.: Za chto
boretsia LEF? V kogo vgryzaetsia LEF? Kogo predosteregaet LEF?] 179–189.
Igor’ Terent’ev: Dva tipograficheskikh shedevra. Faksimil’noe izdanie. Stat’i.
Kommentarii. Sostavlenie i nauchnyi redaktsiia Andrei A. Rossomakhin.
Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge,
2014.
Karasik, Mikhail: “17 tipografskikh orudii Igoria Terent’eva.” 7–22.
Bogomolov, Nikolai: “Traktat ob ezotericheskom neprilichii.” 23–44.
Tsvigun, Tat’iana, and Aleksei Cherniakov: “Teoriia poezii i poeziia teorii: O ‘17
eRUndovykh oRUdiiakh’ Igoria Terent’eva.” 45–64.
Orlitskiy, Iurii: “Sploshnoe neprilichie kak printsip organizatsii literaturnoi formy.” 65–74.
Karpov, Dmitrii, and Andrei Rossomakhin: “Kommentarii k traktatam.” 75–100.
Rossomakhin, Andrei: “Bibliografiia prizhiznennykh izdanii I. G. Terent’eva.” 101–108.
Il’iazd [Il’ia Zdanevich]: Poeticheskie knigi 1940–1971. Predislovie i kommentarii
R. Geiro, pod obshchei redaktsiei S. Kudriavtseva. Moskva: Gileia, 2014.
Afet 41–118.
Rahel 119–122.
Brigadnyi 123–161.
Pis’mo 163–195.
Boustrophédon au miroir 195–206.
Khlebnikov, Velimir: Truba Marsian: Faksimil’noe izdaniie. Stat’i S. V.
Starkinoy, kommentarii A. A. Rossomakhina. Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo
Starkina, Sofiia: “‘Truba Marsian’ v kontekste tvorcheskoi biografii Velimira Khlebnikova.”
8–45.
Rossomakhin, Andrei: “‘Truba Marsian: Kommentarii i konteksty.” 46–86.
Bibliograficheskaia spravka 87
Summary 90
Kruchenykh, Alexei, Velimir Khlebnikov, and Mikhail Matiushin: Overwinning
op de zon = Pobeda nad solntsem. Vertaling uit het Russisch en inleiding
Willem G. Weststeijn. Amsterdam: Pegasus 2013.
Maassen, Henry: La Poésie paroxyste: Nicolas Beauduin. [Hamburg-
Norderstedt]: Books on Demand, 2013.
Maiakovskii, Vladimir: “Fleita-pozvonochnik” Vladimira Maiakovskogo:
Kommentirovannoe izdanie. Stat’i. Faksimile. Sostavlenie i nauchnyi
redaktsiia Anna Sergeeva-Kliatis, Andrei A. Rossomakhin. Sankt-Peterburg:
Izdatel’stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2015.
Maiakovskii, Vladimir Vladimirovich: Polnoe sobranie proizvedenii v
dvadtsati tomakh. Redakusionnaia kollegiia, T.M. Goriaeva et al. Vol. 1.
Stikhotvoreniia 1912–1923. Vol. 2. Stikhotvoreniia 1924–1926. Moskva:
Nauka, 2013.Vol. 3. Stikhotvoreniia. 1927 – pervaia polovina 1928 g.
Moskva: Nauka, 2014.
Maiakovskii, Vladimir: Pro eto: Faksimil’noe izdanie. Stat’i, kommentarii.
Sostavlenie i nauchnyi redaktsiia Andrei A. Rossomakhin. Sankt-Peterburg:
Izdatel’stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2014.
Rossomakhin, Andrei: “‘Pro eto’: Vizualizatsiia ekzistentsial’nogo.” 7–44.
Lavrent’ev, Aleksandr: “‘Pro eto: Maiakovskii – Rodchenko.” 45–66.
Lobkov, Evgenii: “Nezaplanirovannaia glavnaia kniga.” 67–86.
Orlitskii, Iurii: “Ob osobennostiakh stikhovoi prirody poemy ‘Pro eto’.” 87–94.
Maliaeva, Tat’iana, and Andrei Rossomakhin: “Kommentarii k poeme ‘Pro eto’.” 95–110.
Rodchenko, Aleksandr: “13 tsvetnykh fotomontazhei k poeme ‘Pro eto’ (1923).”
Semenova, Elena: “K risunku ‘Pro eto’: Iz vospominanii o Maiakovskom.” 111–123.
Prampolini, Enrico: I taccuini capresi, 1946–1948. A cura di Gianluca Riccio; con
uno scritto di Francesco Durante. Capri: La Conchiglia, 2013.
Rozhkov, Iurii: Fotomontazhnyi tsikl k poeme Vladimira Maiakovskogo
“Rabochim Kurska, dobyvshim pervuiu rudu...”: Rekonstruktsiia neizdannoi
knigi 1924 goda. Stat’i. Kommentarii. Sostavitel’ Kira Matissen, pod
obshchei redaktsiei Andreia Rossomakhina. Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo

Shkurupii, Heo: Vybrani tvory. Uporiadnyky Ol’ha Punina, Oleh Solovey. Kyiv:
Smoloskyp, 2013.
Sofii Giorgievne Melnikovoi: Fantasticheskii Kabachek. Tbilisi: Sakartvelos
Giorgi Leonidzis sakhelobis kartuli literaturis saxelmwifo muzeumi,
2012.
Svanoni, Gino: Mussolini e gli arditi. Prefazione di S. E. Marinetti dell’Accademia
d’Italia. Cusano Milanino (MI): Barbarossa, 2012.
Vakar, Irina, and Tat’iana Mikhienko, ed.: Malevich about Himself,
Contemporaries about Malevich: Letters, Documents, Memoirs, and
Criticism. Vol. 1–2. London: Tate Publishing, 2014.
Wat, Aleksander: Les Quatre Murs de ma souffrance. Édition bilingue français-
polonais. Traduit du polonais par Alice-Catherine Carls; et présenté par Jan
Zieliński. Paris: La Différence, 2013.
Zdanevich, Il’ia Mikhailovich: Futurizm i vsechestvo. Vol. 1. Vystupleniia,
stat’i, manifesty. Vol. 2. Stat’i i pis’ma. Sostavitel’, podgotovka teksta,
kommentarii Elena V. Basner, Andrei V. Krusanov i G.A. Marushina.
Obshchaia redaktsiia A.V. Krusanova. Moskva: Gileia, 2014
7. Futurism in Fiction
Cavell, Richard: Marinetti Dines with the High Command. Toronto: Guernica,
2014.
Kushner, Rachel: The Flamethrowers. New York: Scribner, 2013.
Kushner, Rachel: Los lanzallamas. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenbegt Círculo de
Lectores, 2014.
Kushner, Rachel: I lanciafiamme. Milano: Ponte alle Grazie, 2014.
Kushner, Rachel: Alev püskürtenler. İstanbul: Can Sanat Yayınları, 2014.
Szilak, Illya: Reconstructing Mayakovsky: A Novel of the Future. [s.l.]: Revolution
Nostalgia Disco Theater, 2012.
8. Futurism in Sound Recordings

Kushner, Rachel: The Flamethrowers. Grand Haven/MI: Brilliance Audio 2013. 13
digital sound discs (895 min.); 12cm.
Kushner, Rachel: The Flamethrowers. Philadelphia,/PA: Free Library of

Philadelphia, 2014. MP3 audio file.
Günther, Thomas: Piano Works During & After Russian Futurism. Vol. 1.
Düsseldorf: Cybele Records, 2009. Hybrid SACD – DSD. 66:31
Nikolai Obuchov: Invocation I+II (1916); Deux pièces: Les Astrales parlent; Reflet
sinistre (1915); Conversion I-IV (1915); Icone I-II (1915); Création de l’or I+II (1916);
Aimons-nous les uns les autres (1942); La Paix pour les réconciliés (1948); Le Temple
est mesuré (1952); Adorons Christ (1945)
Ivan Wyschnegradsky: Deux préludes pour Piano, op. 2 (1916); Étude sur le Carré Magique
Sonore, op. 40 (1957);
Sergei Protopopov: Piano Sonata no. 2, op. 5 (1924)
Günther, Thomas: Piano Works During & After Russian Futurism. Vol. 2.
Düsseldorf: Cybele Records, 2014; Albany/NY: Albany Music 2014. Hybrid
SACD – DSD. 71:39
Arthur Vincent Lourié: Cinq Préludes fragiles, op. 1 (1908–10); Deux Poèmes, op. 8 (1912);
Quatre Poèmes, op. 10 (1912); Synthèses, op. 16 (1914); Formes en l’air (1915);
Dnevnoi uzor (1915);
Sergei Protopopov: Sonate No. 3, op. 6 (1924–28)
9. Futurism in Film Recordings

Kruchenykh, Alexei, Velimir Khlebnikov, and Mikhail Matiushin: Pobeda nad
solntsem: Opera. 59 Mins Digital Video Disk + 44 pp. booklet. Russkii
muzei; Kinostudiia Tsentra Stasa Namina. Dir. Stas Namin, Maksim
Riazantsev. Set design: Grigorii Brodskii; Costumes: Students of Sankt-
Peterburgskaia Gosudarstvennaia Khudozhestvenno-Promyshlennaia
Akademiia im. A. L. Shtiglitsa, under the guidance of Olga Kalashnikova;
Choreography: Ekaterina Goriacheva; Music: Alexander Slizunov. Sankt-
Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2013.
Section 7: Back Matter
List of Illustrations and
Provenance Descriptions
Günter Berghaus: Editorial
Fig. 1. Left: One of several portfolios with visual poetry by women Futurists edited by Mirella Ben-
tivoglio, Da pagina a spazio: Futuriste italiane tra linguaggio e immagine. Bassano del Grappa:
Edizioni Galleria Dieda, 1997. Right: Feminine Futures: Performance, War, Politics and Eroti-
cism. Valentine de Saint Point. Catalogue of an exhibition in New York: Italian Cultural Institute,
3 November 2009 - 7 January 2010.
Paul-André Jaccard: Alice Bailly, Ambassador of Futurism in Switzerland

Fig. 1. Alice Bailly: Fantaisie équestre de la Dame rose (Equestrian Fantasy of the Pink Lady, 1913).
Oil on canvas, 129 x 149 cm. Lausanne, Collection BCV-Art.
Fig. 2. Alice Bailly: Le Thé (Tea Party, 1913–14). Oil on canvas, 49 x 65 cm. Aarau, Aargauer
Kunsthaus.
Fig. 3. Alice Bailly: Vol de mouettes sur la rade de Genève (Flying Seagulls over Geneva Harbour,
1915). Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 60 x 80 cm. Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts.
Fig. 4. Alice Bailly: Bel esprit Francis Picabia: Dessin-idéogramme (The Witty Spirit Francis
Picabia: Ideographic Drawing, 1919). From 391, no. 8 (Zurich), February 1919.
Selena Daly: Mary Swanzy (1882–1978): A Futurist Painter from Ireland

Fig. 1. Canal Embankment (undated). Courtesy Patrick Murphy. © Artist’s Estate.
Fig. 2. White Tower (c.1926). Courtesy Patrick Murphy. © Artist’s Estate.
Fig. 3. Propellors (1942). National Gallery of Ireland. © Artist’s Estate.
Fig. 4. Woman with White Bonnet (c.1920). Pyms Gallery, London. © Artist’s Estate.
Silvia Contarini: Valentine de Saint-Point: A Futurist Woman?

Fig. 1. Valentine de Saint-Point. Photograph by Léopold Reutlinger, c.1906. Vintage hand-tinted
gelatin silver bromide print. (Adrien Sina Collection).
Eamon McCarthy: Flirting with Futurism: Norah Borges and the Avant-Garde
Fig. 1. El circo (The Circus). Cover illustration of the first issue of Ultra (27 January 1921).
Fig. 2. Cristo apaciguando las aguas (Jesus Calming the Storm, 1918). Media unknown, 27x21cm.
Fig. 3. Juerga flamenca (A Flamenco Gathering, 1919–20). Media and dimensions unknown.
Fig. 4. Rusia (Russia), from Grecia 3:48 (1 September 1920), p. 7.
Fig. 5. El viaducto (The Viaduct). Title page of Grecia 3:44 (15 June 1920).
Fig. 6. Paisaje de Mallorca (Mallorcan Landscape), from Grecia 3:47 (1 August 1920), p. 7.
Fig. 7. Paisaje de Buenos Aires (Cityscape of Buenos Aires). Title page of Ultra 1:17 (30 October
1921).
Alena Pomajzlová: Růžena Zátková: An Un-orthodox Woman Futurist

Fig. 1. Růžena Zatkova: Photograph of Ariete / Sensibilità, rumori e forze ritmiche della macchina
pianta-palafitte (The Ram / Sensibility, Noises and Rhythmic Forces of a Pile Driver, 1916). Black
and grey leather, metal, glass, wood and cellulose, probably painted, height c. 100 cm. Original
sculpture destroyed. Photo private collection.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0039
592 List of Illustrations and Provenance Descriptions
Fig. 2. Růžena Zátková: Il pazzo (The Madman). Design of scene 3 (c.1920). Ink on paper, in a
notebook, 18,3 x 12,8 cm. Private collection. Photo by Carlo Carrà.
Fig. 3. Růžena Zátková: Untitled (Futurist drawing, c.1920). Colour pencils and wax crayon on
paper, in a notebook, 13 x 17 cm. Private collection. Photo by Carlo Carrà.
Fig. 4. Růžena Zátková: Aqua (Water, 1919–20). Metal plates, corrugated and silvery paper on
cardboard, painted, 49 x 39 cm. Private collection. Photo by Carlo Carrà.
Fig. 5. Růžena Zátková: Marinetti-Luce solare (Marinetti – Sunlight, 1921–22). Private collection.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 90 cm. Private collection. Photo by Carlo Carrà.
Fig. 6. Růžena Zátková: Galli di Bricco (Roosters from Bricco, 1921–22). Sketch, watercolour on
cardboard, 30 x 23,4 cm. Private collection. Photo by Carlo Carrà.
Natalia Budanova: Penetrating Men’s Territory: Russian Avant-garde Women, Futurism and the
First World War
Fig. 1. Ivan Puni and Vladimir Tatlin at the Tramvai V exhibition, surrounded by Olga Rozanova,
Alexandra Exter and Ksenia Boguslavskaya. Source: Golos Rusi (Petrograd) 422 (12 March 1915),
p. 4.
Fig. 2. Kazimir Malevich: Shel avstriets v Radzivily, da popal na bab’i vily (An Austrian Was March-
ing to the Town of Radzivil, but Fell onto a Peasant Woman’s Pitchfork, 1914). Chromolithography
on paper, Obiedinenie “Segodniashnii Lubok”, Moscow. Source: Private collection, Moscow.
Fig. 3. Natalia Goncharova: Misticheskie obrazi voini (Mystical Images of War, 1914). Lithographs
on paper. Left folio 10: Angeli i aeroplani (Angels and Aeroplanes); Right folio 11: Grad obrechen-
nii (Doomed City). Source: Private collection, London.
Fig. 4. Olga Rozanova: Aeroplani nad gorodom (Aeroplanes over City), folio 4 from the album
Voina (War), 1916. Collage, linocuts on paper. Source: The State Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow.
Reproduced courtesy of the GRAD Gallery, London.
Fig. 5. Maria Siniakova: Voina (War), 1916. Pencil and watercolour on paper. Source: Private col-
lection, Kiev. Reproduced courtesy of Dmitro Horbachev.
Christina Lodder: Olga Rozanova: A True Futurist

Fig. 1. Olga Rozanova: Fabrika i most (The Factory and the Bridge, 1913). Oil on canvas, 83.2 x 61.6
cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Riklis Collection of the McCrory Corporation.
Fig. 2. Olga Rozanova: Pozhar v gorode / Gorodskoi peizazh (Fire in the City / Cityscape, 1914). Oil
on tinplate, 71 x 71 cm. Regional Art Museum, Samara.
Fig. 3. Olga Rozanova: Pivnaia (Auktsion) (The Pub [The Auction], 1914). Oil on canvas, 84 x 66
cm. State Museum of Fine Arts. Kostroma.
Fig. 4. Olga Rozanova: Metronom (Metronome, 1914). Oil on canvas, 46 x 33 cm. State Tretyakov
Gallery, Moscow
Fig. 5. Olga Rozanova: Na ulitse (Teatr modern) (In the Street [The Art Nouveau Theatre], 1915). Oil
on canvas, 101 x 77 cm. Slobodskoi Regional Museum and Exhibition Centre.
Fig. 6. Olga Rozanova: “Three Poems” for Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov: Te Li Le
(Saint-Petersburg, 1914). Four-pigment colour hectograph, 21.4 x 12.3 cm.
Bela Tsipuria: Tatiana Vechorka: A Futurist Poetess in Tbilisi, Baku and Moscow
Fig. 1. Poster of the soirée of the Futurist Syndicate, Tiflis Branch, in the basement of the “Imedi”
restaurant in Tbilisi, 19 January 1918. Courtesy of Ioseb Grishashvili Library-Museum, Tbilisi.
Jordan Tobin: Alexandra Exter 1908–14: Futurist Influences from Russia and the West
Fig. 1. Alexandra Exter: Le Pont de Sèvres et les hauteurs de Meudon (The Bridge at Sèvres and
the Heights of Meudon, 1911). Courtesy of Natsional’nii khudozhnii muzei Ukrainy.
Isabel Wünsche: Elena Guro: On the Crossroads between Symbolism, Organicism and Cubo-
Futurism
Fig. 1. Elena Guro, c. 1912. Photograph by Mikhail Matyushin.
Fig. 2. Elena Guro: Zimnii Peizazh (Winter Landscape, 1910). Ink drawing, State Mayakovsky
Museum, Moscow, Inv. No. 11219.
Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj: Nina Henke-Meller and Ukrainian Futurism

Fig. 1. Cover of Zhovtnevyi zbirnyk panfuturystiv (1923).
Donatella Di Leo: Eva Amendola Kühn (Magamal): A Futurist of Lithuanian Extraction

Fig. 1. Map of Lithuania in 1919. The hatched area periodically belonged to Russia or Poland.
Fig. 2. Eva Amendola Kühn. From Vita con Giovanni Amendola. Firenze: Parenti, 1960. Courtesy
of Fondazione Amendola, Turin.
Fig. 3. Eva Amendola Kühn and the children Giorgio, Ada and Antonio. From Vita con Giovanni
Amendola. Firenze: Parenti, 1960. Courtesy of Fondazione Amendola, Turin.
Irina Subotić: Magamal in Fiction: A Novel by Mira Otašević

Fig. 1. Cover of Mira Otašević’s novel, Magamal: Ex libris, in the Geopoetika edition of 1994.
Lisa Hanstein: Edyth von Haynau: A Viennese Aristocrat in the Futurist Circles of the 1910s
Fig. 1. Edyth von Haynau: Ricevimento – thé – signore – nessun uomo (Reception – Tea – Ladies
– No Men, 1917). L’Italia futurista 2:35 (9 Dicembre 1917), p. 3.
Fig. 2. Edyth von Haynau: Danzatrice (Dancer). Cronache d’attualità, May 1921.
Fig. 3. Edyth von Haynau: “Why blame me for it? That living room had a strangely spirited atmos-
phere. That’s all.” Illustration for Bruno Corra: Sam Dunn è morto (1917), between pp. 32 and 33.
Reprinted in Madrigali e grotteschi (1919), between pp. 120 and 121.
Fig. 4. Edyth von Haynau: “A million instances of dizziness add up to a balanced lucidity.” Illus-
tration for “Attimo” in Corra: Madrigali e grotteschi (1919), between pp. 16 and 17.
Fig. 5. Edyth von Haynau: “In reality there really was the aberration of those who feel attacked
from behind by a gigantic and ignored force”. Illustration for Bruno Corra: Sam Dunn è morto
(1916), between pp. [80] and 81. Reprinted in Madrigali e grotteschi (1919), between pp. [152]
and 153.
Fig. 6. Edyth von Haynau: “Conflagrazione geometrica” (Geometric Conflagration, 1917). From
L’Italia futurista 2:30 (7 October 1917), p. 1.
Fig. 7. Edyth von Haynau: Mona Vanna (early 1920s). Source: Rudolf Neumeister: Auktion Jugend-
stil – angewandte Kunst und Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts. 19th November 1994. p. 56.
Allison Carey: “The Pleasure of Being at the Wheel”: The Mechanical Aesthetics of Gertrude
Stein and F.T. Marinetti
Fig. 1. Marinetti at the wheel of his Fiat, before the crash of 15 October 1908.
Fig. 2. Stein at the wheel of ‘Auntie’, her first Ford, in the service of the American Fund for French
Wounded, 1916 or 1917. Source: General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University.
594 List of Illustrations and Provenance Descriptions
Fig. 3. Francis Picabia’s Portrait of a Young American Girl in a State of Nudity (1915). Francis
Picabia: © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Fig. 4. A bracelet charm in the shape of a spark plug, from the author’s collection. Stein’s charm
was glass rather than metal. Photo by Hannah Kittle.
Fig. 5. The aftermath of Marinetti’s car crash of 15 October 1908. From Sant’Elia – Futurismo –
Aerovita. Supplement to Futurismo 2:5 (1 March 1934), p. 7.
Tim Klähn: Rea Nikonova and the Legacy of Russian Futurism

Fig. 1. Rea Nikonova: Artists’ Books Book-Hat and Book-Flute. Source: Transponans Nos. 32–33.
Research Centre for East European Studies (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa), University of Bremen,
Germany, F. 66 (MANI).
Fig. 2. Announcement “Marking Aleksei Kruchenykh’s Centenary” in Transponans No. 30.
Research Centre for East European Studies (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa), University of Bremen,
Germany, F. 30.56 (Al’chuk).
Matteo D’Ambrosio: Matilde Serao’s Battle with the Futurists in Naples

Senio [Giuseppe Sciti]: Caricature of Matilde Serao and Umberto Boccioni in Monsignor Perrelli
48 (21 April 1910): 3.
Andrei Rossomakhin: The Ego-Kubo-Rayo-Donkey-Tail-Futurists: About a Russian Cartoon of 1913

A. Melnikov caricature depicting a group of Futurist artists getting ready for a stroll. From the
humorous magazine Budil’nik (Alarm Clock) 39 (October 1913).
Rosa Sarabia: Giménez Caballero’s “carteles” of Norah Borges

Ernesto Giménez Caballero (Gecé)’s “cartel literario” (literary poster) of Guillermo de Torre,
c.1926.
Marta Sironi: Art and Anarchy: Futurists and Suffragettes in London, 1910–1915
Charles Sykes: “Futurism Spreads to Fashion.” The Bystander, 1 January 1913.
Denis Beznosov: The International Academy of Zaum

Fig. 1. A performance in memory of Tristan Tzara (Bucharest, 2013). Denis Beznosov (left) und
Sergei Biryukov (right). Foto: Leo Butnaru.
Barbara Meazzi: Women Futurists in Italy

Fig. 1.: A selection of books on Italian Women Futurists.
Willem Weststeijn: Serge Segay (1947–2014) and Rea Nikonova (1942–2014)

Fig. 1. Serge Segay (1947–2014) and Ry (Rea) Nikonova (1942–2014), c.2006.
Fig. 2. Left: Serge Segay: Springtime for Kruchenykh (1979); Right: A Study of Lenin’s Brain: A
Manifesto (1969).
Ekaterina Lazareva: Futurism and War: A Conference in Zagreb (28–29 June 2014)
Fig. 1. Fedja Vukić speaking on The First World War and Visual Communication. Photo Günter
Berghaus.
Fig. 2. Futurist manifestos and newspapers at the Exhibition of the Sudac Collection. Photo
Günter Berghaus.
Natalia Budanova and Helen Higgins: The Jack of Diamonds Disputes at the Courtauld Institute,
London (24 October and 7 November 2014)
Fig. 1. Face painting at the Courtauld Institute of Art Café, 24 October 2014. Photo Helen Higgins.
Fig. 2. Konstantin Akinsha as the Russian Futurist David Burliuk. Photo Helen Higgins.
Fig. 3. Left: Prof John Milner and Jordan Tobin. The Courtauld Institute Café, 24 October 2014.
Photo Helen Higgins. Right: Photograph of Natalia Goncharova with her face painted. From Teatr
v karikaturakh, 21 September 1913, p. 9.
Fig. 4. From left to right: Jack Hartnell as Velimir, King of Time, Prof. John Milner as Mikhail Lari-
onov and Chris Knight as Velimir’s second incarnation. Photo Helen Higgins.
Adriana Baranello: (Re)Constructing the Futurist Universe: Toward a More Careful and Complete
Historiography
Fig. 1. Entrance hall of the Futurism exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 2014. Photo Günter
Berghaus.
Fig. 2. The Rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum with the Futurism exhibition of 2014. Photo
Günter Berghaus.
Rosalind McKever: Gerardo Dottori at the Estorick Collection

Fig. 1. Gerardo Dottori: Left: Autoritratto (Self Portrait, 1928). Oil on board, 79 x 73 cm. Comune
di Perugia. Right: Ritmi astrali (Astral Rhythms, 1916). Tempera on board. 52 x 68 cm. Private
collection, Foligno. Courtesy of Estorick Collection.
Irene Chytraeus-Auerbach and Lisa Hanstein: The Russian Avant-garde and Its Eastern Roots
Fig. 1. Natalia Goncharova (Nagaevo 1881-Paris 1962): Statues of Salt, c.1910. Oil on canvas;
80.5 x 95.5 cm. Originally in Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery, inv. Zh-1579. Shown in the exhibi-
tion L’avanguardia russa, la Siberia e l’Oriente (Florence: Palazzo Strozzi, 2014).
Ulrike Mühlschlegel: Futurism in Latin America: An Exhibition at the Ibero-American Institute

in Berlin
Fig. 1. José Juan Tablada: “La calle donde vivo” and “Impresión de La Habana”, from Li-Po y otros
poemas (1920). Photo Markus Hertzsch.
Toshiharu Omuka: Elena Iur’evna Turchinskaia: Avangard na Dal’nem Vostoke

Fig. 1. Cover of the literary magazine Tvorchestvo (Creative Work) in 1920. Courtesy of Takizawa
Kyoji.
Fig. 2. The Zelenaia koshka manifesto of 1919. Courtesy of Takizawa Kyoji.
Notes on Contributors
Adriana Baranello graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and received her
doctorate in 2014 with a thesis on the Futurist author and artist Fillìa (Luigi Colombo, 1904–
1936). Her fields of research include Futurism, visual poetry and Arte povera, on which she has
published a number of essays and presented several conference papers. She has also published
an annotated translation of Giovanni Pascoli’s La grande proletaria s’è mossa. She is a visiting
scholar at Cornell University, pursuing research on La cucina futurista.
Günter Berghaus is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and has been Guest
Professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro and at Brown University, Providence/RI. He has
been organizer of many international conferences, amongst others on “Fascism and Theatre”
(Granada 1994), “Futurism in an International and Inter-disciplinary Perspective” (London 1995),
“Futurism and the Technological Imagination” (Helsinki 2008), “Futurism in East and Central
Europe” (Poznań, 2010), “Futurism in Northern Countries” (Helsinki, 2014). He has published
some 20 books on various aspects of theatre history, theatre anthropology and theatre poli-
tics. Amongst his publications on Futurism feature The Genesis of Futurism (1995), Futurism and
Politics (1996), Italian Futurist Theatre (1998), International Futurism in the Arts and Literature
(2000), F. T. Marinetti: Selected Writings (2006), Futurism and the Technological Imagination
(2009). He is currently completing International Futurism, 1945–2009: A Bibliographic Hand-
book, which lists c.25,000 studies on Futurism, and Handbook of International Futurism, 1909–
1945 with 55 essays on countries and artistic genres and media in which Futurism exercised a
particularly noteworthy influence.
Dennis Beznosov is a poet and critic. He graduated from Moscow Politological University and has
translated poems and plays from the English (David Gascoyne, Hugh Sykes Davies, Mark Ford,
Peter Waugh, Christopher Middleton etc.) and Spanish (José María Hinojosa, Fernando Arrabal,
Virgilio Piñera etc.) for journals such as Futurum ART, Translit, Deti Ra, Topos, Homo Legens,
Vozdukh etc.. Ediciones del Hebreo Errante in Madrid published two volumes of his poetry in
2011. He has co-edited a two-volume edition of the poems by Tikhon Churilin (Gileia, 2012) and
a Russian edition of works by Virgilio Piñera (OGI, 2014). He is winner of the International David
Burliuk Prize for experimental poetry.
Natalia Budanova is a PhD student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where she is com-
pleting her thesis on Representers and Represented: Women in Russia’s War Art and Imagery,
1914–1917. She contributed to the exhibition, Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes
1909–1929 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2010) with a translation of documents from
the Ekstrom Collection and she also acted as a consultant for the exhibition, A Game in Hell: The
Great War in Russia (Gallery for Russian Art and Design GRAD, London, September-December
2014). Her publications include “Women at Work” in Rodchenko and His Circle: Constructing the
Future through Photography (Art Sensus, London, 2011), “Utopian Sex: the Metamorphosis of
Androgynous Imagery in Russian Art” in Utopia: Russian Art and Culture 1900–1989 (Brill, Leid-
en-Boston, 2013), and “Russian Amazonki and the Great War” in A Game in Hell: The Great War in
Russia (GRAD Publishing, London, 2014). She is a member of the Cambridge Courtauld Russian
Art Centre (CCRAC) advisory board and is engaged in investigating and popularizing the collec-
tions of Russian art in British museums and private collections.
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0040
Allison Carey is Associate Professor of English at Marshall University, Huntington/WV. Her

research interests include literature of the United States, international Modernism, material
and popular cultures, digital pedagogy and young adult literature. She graduated in English
Literature from the University of Tennessee and received her doctorate in 2003 with a disser-
tation on domesticity and the modernist aesthetic. She has published and has works in press
on transmediation in pedagogy, images of food in Appalachian young adult novels, and popular
literature during the U.S. Civil War. As professor of English education she has spoken at various
conferences on the use and impact of digital tools in the teaching of literature and in the training
of teachers. Her current book project examines images in U.S. popular culture of Appalachian
border States during the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865).
Irene Chytraeus-Auerbach studied Romance Literature and received her PhD in European Eth-
nology/Cultural Studies from the Philipps-Universität Marburg. She is a freelance translator and
Research Associate at the Internationales Zentrum für Kultur- und Technikforschung (IZKT) at
the University of Stuttgart. For the IZKT she has organized several German-Italian conferences,
amongst others 100 Jahre Futurismus: Kunst, Technik, Geschwindigkeit und Innovation zu Beginn
des 20. Jahrhunderts (100 Years of Futurism: Art, Tecnology, Speed and Innovation at the Begin-
ning of the 20 Century). Her publications include Inszenierte Männerträume: Eine Untersuchung
zur politischen Selbstinszenierung der italienischen Schriftsteller Gabriele D’Annunzio und
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in der Zeit zwischen Fin-de-Siècle und Faschismus (2003); (with Georg
Maag) Die italienische Mediendemokratie: Zur Geschichte politischer Inszenierungen und insze-
nierter Politik im Medienzeitalter (2006); (with Elke Uhl) Der Aufbruch in die Moderne: Herwarth
Walden und die europäische Avantgarde (2013).
Silvia Contarini is Full Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La
Défense. She is director of the international revue, Narrativa, and co-director of CRIX (Centre de
Recherches Italiennes). Her research on literature, civilisation of contemporary Italy focusses on
Futurism, Italian neoavanguardia, gender studies, postcolonial and migrant literature, on which
she has published several books, articles and spoken about at various conferences. Among her
publications on Futurism feature the book, La Femme futuriste: Mythes, modèles et représenta-
tions de la femme dans la théorie et la littérature futuristes (2006), and various essays, such as
“Guerre maschili / guerre femminili: Corpi e corpus futuristi in azione/trasformazione” (2009),
“Contra os cabelos curtos: Le retour à l’ordre marinettien” (2011), “Il teatro della donna di Val-
entine de Saint-Point” (2012), “Uomo nuovo / donna nuova: Futuristi inconciliabili” (2012),
“How to Become a Woman of the Future: Una donna con tre anime – Un ventre di donna” (2012),
“Comment conjuguer un nouveau gender et de nouveaux genres” (2012), “Marinetti, o l’erot-
ismo/eroismo (anti)latino” (2014).
Selena Daly is a Fulbright Scholar at the Department of French and Italian, University of Califor-
nia, Santa Barbara. She is an ELEVATE Post-Doctoral Researcher, supported by the Irish Research
Council International Career Development Fellowship (co-funded by Marie Curie Actions). She
has held previous research and teaching positions at University College Dublin and Manchester
Metropolitan University. She is currently completing a monograph on Italian Futurism during the
First World War, under contract with University of Toronto Press. She has published articles on
various aspects of Futurism in journals including Modern Italy, Otto/Novecento and California
Italian Studies.
598 Notes on Contributors
Matteo D’Ambrosio has been Professor in the History of Literary Criticism at the University of
Naples “Federico II”, where he focussed on semiotics and avant-garde literature. He was a
member of the ministerial committee for the centenary of Futurism and has published six volumes
on the relationships between the Futurist movement and Neapolitan culture: Nuove verità
crudeli: Origini e primi sviluppi del futurismo a Napoli 1905–1912 (1990); Emilio Buccafusca e il
futurismo a Napoli negli anni Trenta (1990); Futurismo a Napoli: Indagini e documenti (1995); Il
futurismo a Napoli 1909–1944 (1996); Marinetti e il futurismo a Napoli (1996); I Circumvisionisti:
Un’avanguardia napoletana negli anni del fascismo (1996). He has also published Futurismo
e altre avanguardie, Le ‘Commemorazioni in avanti’ di F. T. Marinetti: Futurismo e critica letter-
aria (both 1999), and Roman Jakobson e il futurismo italiano (2009). He edited three volumes
dedicated to the methodologies of literary studies, entitled Il testo, l’analisi, l’interpretazione
(Liguori 1995, 2002 and 2009). He is currently preparing a collection of some 850 Futurist mani-
festos for the Nuovi archivi del futurismo (De Luca, 2015).
Katy Deepwell is the founder and editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, started
in 1998. She is Professor of Contemporary Art, Theory and Criticism in the School of Art and
Design, Middlesex University. Her books include a major study of women artists living and
working in Britain, 1918–1945, Women Artists Between the Wars: ‘A Fair Field and No Favour’
(2010) and Dialogues: Women Artists from Ireland (2005). She edited The Gender, Theory and Art
Anthology: 1970–2000 (with Mila Bredikhina, 2005); Women Artists and Modernism (1998); Art
Criticism and Africa (1997) and New Feminist Art Criticism: Critical Strategies (1995). She has also
contributed to many exhibition catalogues, art journals and collaborative books, e.g. “Women
War Artists in the First World War in Britain” in Agency and Mediation amongst Women Artists
between the Wars (ed. by Karen Brown, 2008).
Donatella Di Leo is a Research Fellow in Slavic Studies and Lecturer of Russian Language at the
University of Naples “L’Orientale”. She has also been a Lecturer in Russian Culture and Litera-
ture at the Department of Humanities, Languages, Arts, Italian and Comparative Studies at the
University of Bari “Aldo Moro” (2006–2014). Her research and publications have focussed on the
reception of Faustian motifs in twenty-century Russian literature, on which she has published
several articles. Currently she is researching Russian writers’ contacts with the Neapolitan terri-
tory, cultures and traditions. She has translated from Russian into Italian Lunatscharsky’s drama
Faust and the City (1916).
Lisa Hanstein is Academic Assistant at the library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
– Max-Planck-Institut and a student at the University of Frankfurt, where she is preparing her
Ph.D. on The Spirit of the Modern Age: Spirituality and Spiritism in Italian Futurism. Her Master’s
thesis was on Italian Futurism Exceeding the Limits of the Paper: The ‘Pittura degli stati d’animo’,
in which she analysed the Futurist concept of ‘States of Mind’ and how it was influenced by
psychology, spiritism and science. She has co-organized a conference on the rôle of Italian Futur-
ism within the broader context of international avant-garde movements, edited (together with
Antonella Francini) the conference proceedings, Altri futurismi (Florence 2010), and curated the
Futurist online exhibition, ZANG TUMB TUUM...: 100 Werke des Futurismus. Her last publications
were the articles “Lichterglanz und Klangkulisse futuristischer Großstadtvisionen” in Großstadt:
Motor der Künste in der Moderne (Berlin 2010) and “Unseen Spirits? Occult Tradition in Italian
Futurist Art and Theory” in Charming Intentions: Occultism, Magic and the History of Art (London
2013).
Miranda Hickman is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montréal, Canada,

where she teaches in Modernism and modern poetry. Her research focusses on transatlantic
Modernisms, cultural criticism of the twentieth century, gender studies, textual scholarship and
periodical studies. Her latest publications include an essay on the women painters of Vorticism
in Vorticism: New Perspectives (2013), and Rereading the New Criticism (2012), a volume of
essays co-edited with John D. McIntyre. She is also editor of One Must Not Go Altogether with the
Tide: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Stanley Nott (2011) and author of The Geometry of Modernism
(2005). Recently she has contributed articles to the Blackwell Companion to Modernist Poetry
(2014), the Cambridge Companion to H.D. (2012), and the Cambridge Companion to Modernist
Women Poets (2010). She is currently at work on a project on H.D.’s translations, as well a book-
length study on women involved in cultural criticism in interwar Britain.
Helen Higgins is an art historian, curator and practicing artist. Having worked at the Hayward
Gallery, Tate Modern and Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, she is now Gallery Educator at
the Courtauld Gallery and Cataloguer at the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust. Helen
also holds an MA in Russian Art from The Courtauld Institute.
Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj is editor of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies and Professor of Ukrainian

Culture, Language and Literature at the University of Alberta’s Department of Modern Languages
and Cultural Studies. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is the author of Ukrain-
ian Futurism, 1914–1930: An Historical and Critical Study (1997) as well as articles on Ukrainian
Modernism. Among his publications (co-authored with Natalia Pylypiuk and Serhii Kozakov) is
the online Concordance to the Complete Works of Hryhorii Skovoroda (Edmonton: University of
Alberta, 2009), available at http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/skovoroda/. He is currently working
on a book about Nikolai Gogol’ / Mykola Hohol’.
Paul-André Jaccard is an art historian and was until 2013 Head of the Office of the Swiss Institute
for Art Research, affiliated with the University of Lausanne. His research is focussed on Swiss
art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially Cubism, Futurism and Dadaism. He
published several books and essays on the history of sculpture in Switzerland (1992), on the
emergence and development of the art market in Switzerland (2002, 2006, 2011), on the training
of Swiss artists at the end of the nineteenth century (1999). He has recently managed a research
project on Swiss artists training in Paris, 1793–1863 (2014). He curated a number of exhibitions,
among others Alice Bailly: Werke 1908–1923 (1985) and Alice Bailly: La fête étrange (2005). He
is currently preparing an exhibition and a monograph on a Swiss avant-garde artist inspired by
Futurism and later Purism, Gustave Buchet (1888–1963).
Tim Klähn holds an M.A. in Russian Studies from the Humboldt-University, Berlin, with a thesis
on Russian avant-garde poetry and book-art. He is working on his Ph.D. in the field of contempo-
rary Russian literature and has been a doctoral fellow of the Research Training Group “Notational
Iconicity” at the Free University, Berlin, supported by the German Research Foundation. He is
currently working as a research assistant on the project “Imagining the Underground: Soviet
Dissidence Today” at the University of Toronto.
Ekaterina Lazareva is a Senior Research Fellow at the State Institute of Art Studies, Moscow, and
an Assistant Professor at the Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow. She received her
doctorate in 2011 with a thesis on The Evolution of Futurism in Italy and Russia after 1915. Her
fields of research include Italian Futurism, Russian Avant-garde art, international Modernism
and contemporary art, Modernist utopias and theories of the avant-garde. She was an editor of
Moscow Art Magazine (2002–2007) and Openspace.ru (2010–2012) and she is the chief curator
of the website Futurism.ru. Her independent curatorial projects include Moscow Mayakovsky Fes-
tival (2002), Visibility Zones (2010) and Photographing Future (2013–2014). She is also an artist
and has participated in group shows such as Dada Moscow (2011), Kino-foto-Lyudogus (2013)
and Komentatorki (2014). Currently she is editing an anthology of Italian Futurist manifestos,
partly translated by her.
Christina Lodder is an honorary professor in the History of Art at the University of Kent, Presi-
dent of the Malevich Society, and co-editor of Brill’s Russian History and Culture series. She is
an expert on Russian art of the early twentieth century and has written numerous articles and
several books. Among her most notable publications are Russian Constructivism (1983); Con-
structing Modernity: The Art and Career of Naum Gabo (co-author, 2000); Gabo on Gabo: Texts
and Interviews (co-editor, 2000); Constructive Strands in Russian Art (2005); Rethinking Malevich
(co-editor); Utopian Reality: Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond (co-ed-
itor, 2013); and Aleksei Gan’s Constructivism (translator, editor, author of introduction, 2013).
She has occasionally been involved in the organization of exhibitions as an advisor or curator,
most notably with Modernism: Designing a New World 1914–1939 (Victoria and Albert Museum,
London 2006) and most recently Malevich; Revolutionary of Russian Art (Tate Modern, London,
2014).
Eamon McCarthy is a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at University of Glasgow. His research on the
historical avant-garde started with his doctoral thesis, Gender in the Works of Jorge Luis and
Norah Borges. Since then, it has extended to include women artists of the Spanish and Latin
American avant-gardes and twentieth-century Argentine culture. He published “Recuerdos de
la prisión: The Politics of Being Norah Borges” in Hispanic Research Journal and is currently
working on a monograph on Norah Borges.
Rosalind McKever is an independent art historian researching twentieth-century Italian art.

She has taught at the University of Sussex and Kingston University, London. Her doctoral thesis
addressed Futurism’s relationship with the past, time and the Italian artistic tradition between
1909 and 1919. She has collaborated with the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art on the
virtual exhibition, Futurism and the Past (2012–13). Her recently published articles have com-
pared Futurism and Vorticism’s temporalities, addressed Futurism’s interest in African primitiv-
ism and considered the juxtaposition of historic and contemporary art at the Tate Britain. Her
forthcoming publications investigates the Futurist movement’s sculptural classicism, its rela-
tionship with the present and interest in the primitive, the Byzantine, and cyclical models of
history. She is currently developing a book project on Umberto Boccioni’s sculptures and will be
taking up a position of research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 2015.
Barbara Meazzi is Full Professor of Italian Studies at the University Nice Sophia Antipolis. She is
vice-director of the Centre de la Méditerranée Moderne et Contemporaine (CMMC) and president
of the Société des Italianistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SIES). She works mostly on Futur-
ism and the avant-gardes (see the collection, Plurilinguisme et Avant-gardes, jointly edited with
Franca Bruera in 2011 and the special issue 24/2013 of Les Cahiers de Narratologie [http://narra-
tologie.revues.org/6656], jointly with Isabelle Krzywkowski and dedicated to the novel and the
avant-gardes). She has dedicated a volume on the reception of Futurism in France, Le Futurisme
entre l’Italie et la France 1909–1919 (2010), and, more recently, has edited the correspondence
between Ardengo Soffici, Serge Férat and Hélène d’Œttingen (2013). She is currently working on
book publications concerned with the Futurist novel and with Ardengo Soffici.
Ulrike Mühlschlegel graduated in Spanish and Portuguese Philology from the University of Trier
and received her doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1999 with a thesis on dictionaries
in the 17th and 18th century. Since 2001, she has worked at the Ibero-American Institute, cur-
rently as Head of the Department of Reader’s Services and Head of Collection for Spain, Mexico,
Uruguay and the Caribbean. She has taught Linguistics at the University of São Paulo and is
also Visiting Lecturer for Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics at the University of Göttingen.
Her research and publications focus on sociolinguistics, new media, and the cultural relations
between Germany, Spain and Latin America. Among her latest publications features the book,
Sonidos y hombres libres: Música nueva de América Latina en los siglos XX y XXI (2014), co-ed-
ited with Hanns-Werner Heister.
Toshiharu Omuka is Professor of Art History in the Faculty of Art & Design, University of Tsukuba,
Japan. He recently organized the international symposium, 100th Anniversary of Futurism in
Japan (November 2012, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Contemporary Art). His research focusses
on modern art in Japan from an international perspective, on which he has published many arti-
cles and books and read papers at various conferences, for example “Male Bodies in Prewar
Japanese Avant-Garde Art and Exhibition Spaces” (Annual Conference of AAS, 2014); “Painter
with a Camera: A Japanese Modernist’s Tour to Yungang Grottoes in the late 30s” (International
workshop: Tōyō Shumi (Oriental taste) in Imperial Japan, Sainsbury Institute for the Japanese
Arts and Cultures, Norwich, 2013); “Futurism in Japan, 1909–1920” in G. Berghaus, ed., Interna-
tional Futurism in Arts and Literature (2000); “Tada = Dada (Devotedly Dada) for the Stage: The
Japanese Dada Movement 1920–1925” in G. Janecek and T. Omuka, eds., The Eastern Dada Orbit:
Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Central Europe and Japan (1998).
Alena Pomajzlová is an Associate Professor of Modern Art History at Masaryk University, Brno,
Czech Republic. Her research is concerned with modern and avant-garde European and Czech art.
She has curated a large number of exhibitions and published many articles and books on Czech
modern art: e.g. a bilingual Czech/English volume on primitivism, Josef Čapek, The Humblest
Art (2004), and on modern typography Seeing the Book: The Book Design of Josef Čapek (2010).
She took part in the international project Košice Modernism: Košice Art in the Nineteen-Twenties
(2013). Recently, she has been researching the connections between Italian Futurism and Czech
Art (Růžena. Story of the Painter Růžena Zátková, 2011; Rhythm + Movement + Light. Futurist
Impulses in Czech Art, 2012). She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics.
Andrey Rossomakhin is a philologist and art historian with a PhD from the Universiteit van Amster-
dam and an instigator of the “Russian Bear” cultural project. As series editor of the ‘Avant-Garde’
series at the European University of Saint Petersburg Publishing House (http://www.eupress.
ru/books/index/view/series/13) he has issued several facsimile editions with commentary,
amongst others Velimir Khlebnikov’s Truba Marsian (2013; with Sofia Starkina); Iuri Rozhkov’s
Fotomontazhnyi tsikl k poeme Vladimira Maiakovskogo “Rabochim Kurska, dobyvshim pervuiu
rudu...” (2014, with Kira Matissen), Igor’ Terent’ev: Dva tipograficheskikh shedevra (2014) and
Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Pro eto (2014). He is also author of 11 books on Khlebnikov, Kharms,
Zabolotsky and Mayakovsky and of many articles published in Russia, Holland, Poland, Switzer-
land, Latvia, Germany, Italy and the USA.
Rosa Sarabia is Full Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University
of Toronto, Canada, where she teaches Latin American literature and culture. She is the author
of Poetas de la palabra hablada: Un estudio de la poesía hispanoamericana contemporánea
(1997), and La poética visual de Vicente Huidobro (2007). She has published many articles and
chapters of books on visual poetry, Hispanic avant-gardes, art and literature, film, and women in
Latin America. Her current research is focussed on artist León Ferrari’s writings and on contem-
porary Cuban detective fiction.
Marta Sironi is a researcher at APICE (Archivi della Parola, dell’Immagine e della Comunicazione
Editoriale / Words, Images and Publishing Communication Archives), a research centre of Milan
University. Her work focusses on illustration and graphic design in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Among her latest publications are a volume on the relationship between art and satire
in European satirical periodicals, Ridere dell’arte (Mimesis, 2012), and a monograph on an Amer-
ican illustrator and designer: John Alcorn: Evolution by Design (Moleskine, 2014).
Irina Subotić is an art historian, professor emeritus, formerly curator at the Museum of Contem-
porary Art (1965–1979) and National Museum in Belgrade (1979–1995), professor at the Faculty
of Architecture in Belgrade (1991–2001) and at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad (1995–2008), and
now a teacher of postgraduate studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade. She has organized a
large number of exhibitions and has lectured at various universities. She is recipient of several
awards, including the Golden Pen (by AITT for her monograph Miodrag Tabački) and a Chevalier
dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. Major publications include
Zenit i avangarda dvadesetih godina (1983), Likovni krog revije “Zenit” 1921–1926 (1995), Zenit
1921–1926 (with reprint edition of the review Zenit, edited with V. Golubović) (2008).
Jordan Tobin received her BA from the College of Wooster in Ohio, USA in 2008, and earned her
MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute in 2010. She is currently writing up her Ph.D.
thesis at the Courtauld on the subject of the relationship between Italian Futurism and Russian
Futurism, and their influence on the birth of Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist movement.
Bela Tsipuria took her Ph.D. in Georgian Literature in 1993 from Tbilisi State University, where
subsequently she worked as an Associate Professor until 2005. She has been a Visiting Scholar
at Lund University and Pennsylvania State University. She specializes in twentieth-century Geor-
gian literature and comparative literature, with a focus on interculturalism, modernist and avant-
garde movements, Soviet ideological influences and postcolonialism. She has written textbooks
of Georgian literature for the use in Georgian high schools and some forty research papers, some
of them also available in English. After a four-year stint as Deputy Minister of Education and
Science of Georgia she has returned to academia and is now director of the Institute of Compar-
ative Literature at Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia.
Willem G. Weststeijn is professor emeritus of Slavic literature at Amsterdam University. He wrote

his dissertation on the Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov (Velimir Chlebnikov and the Devel-
opment of Poetical Language in Russian Symbolism and Futurism, Amsterdam, 1983) and pub-
lished a large number of articles on Russian literature, particularly the historical avant-garde. He
is the editor-in-chief of the journal Russian Literature and one of the editors of Avant-Garde Crit-
ical Studies. As co-editor (and translator) he published a Dutch-language anthology of Russian
poetry (Spiegel van de Russische poëzie, Amsterdam, 2000) and is now translating the works of
Khlebnikov into Dutch.
Isabel Wünsche is Professor of Art and Art History at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany.
Her research interests are European Modernism and the historical avant-garde, particularly
the Russian avant-garde, German Expressionism and the Bauhaus. Her book publications
include Harmonie und Synthese: Die russische Moderne zwischen universellem Anspruch und
nationaler kultureller Identität (2008), Kunst & Leben: Michail Matjuschin und die russische
Avantgarde in St. Petersburg (2012) and The Organic School of the Russian Avant-Garde: Nature’s
Creative Principles (forthcoming). She also co-edited the volumes Kursschwankungen: Russi
sche Kunst im Wertesystem der europäischen Moderne (with Ada Raev, 2007), Biocentrism and
Modernism (with Oliver A. I. Botar, 2011), and Meanings of Abstract Art: Between Nature and
Theory (with Paul Crowther, 2012).
Name Index
Abbot, Berenice, 331 Anonymous, Maître Pathelin (La Farce de
Abramowicz, Maurice, 115 Maistre Pierre Pathelin, The Farce of
Adeney, Bernard, 26 Master Pierre Pathelin, 1456–60), 293
Aissa, see Ekster, Aleksandra Antici, Ilena, 88
Akhmatova, Anna (pseud. of Anna Andreevna Antliff, Mark, 23, 44, 47, 48, 59, 60
Gorenko), 230 Antonovskaya, Anna (Anna Arnol'dovna
Akinsha, Konstantin, 296–297 Antonovskaia, née Venzher), 234, 245
Aksakov, Aleksander Nikolaevich, Animizm i —, Velikii Mouravi (The Great Mouravi, 1939),
spiritizm (Animism and Spiritism, 1893), 234
347 Apollinaire, Guillaume (pseud. of Guglielmo
Alcalá, May Lorenzo, 113, 114, 119 Alberto Wladimiro Alessandro Apollinare
Al'chuk, Anna (pseudonym of Anna de Kostrowitzky), 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 95,
Mikhal'chuk), 395, 406 178, 180, 257, 260, 330, 369, 451, 452,
Aldington, Richard, 31 57 535
Aleksić, Dragan, 484 —, Calligrammes (Calligrammes, 1918),
Alexander II (Alexandr Nikolaevich Romanov; 452
Tsar of Russia), 175 —, L'antitradizione futurista: Manifes-
Aliagrov (pseud.), see Iakobson, Roman to-sintesi (Futurist Anti-Tradition:
Osipovich Manifesto-Synthesis, 1913), 451
Altenberg, Peter, 271n Aragon, Louis (pseud. of Louis-Marie
Altomare, Libero (pseud. of Remo Mannoni), Andrieux), 331, 540
Incontri con Marinetti e il futurismo Arben'ev, Evgenii, 402, 467
(Meetings with Marinetti and Futurism, Arbus, Diane, 331
1954), 310, 427, 428 Archipenko, Alexander (Olexandr Porfyrovych
Amazons (Mythological figures), X, XI, 100, Arkhipenko), 12, 179, 257, 262
174, 433, 453 Arnaldi, Edyth, see Rosà, Rosa (pseud.)
Amendola, Ada, 304 Arnaldi, Ulrico, 338
Amendola, Antonio, 304 Arp, Jean (Hans), 15, 18, 408n
Amendola, Giorgio, 300, 306, 307 Artaud, Antonin, 330, 408n, 544
Amendola, Giovanni, 297, 300, 302–305, Artundo, Patricia, 113, 114
307–308, 311 Arufbek (Master Arufbek), 528
Amendola, Pietro, 305 Aseev, Nikolai Nikolaevich, 191, 192, 484,
Amendola-Kühn, Eva, see Kühn, Eva 553, 556
Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 329 —, Zor (1914), 191
Andryczuk, Hartmut, 447 Aspasia, 236
Annenskii, Innokentii Fedorovich, Famira Atkinson, Lawrence, 26, 31, 45, 57n
Kifared (Thamira Khytharedes / Tamira of Avraamov, Arsenii Mikhailovich, Simfoniia
the Cittern, 1906), 293 gudkov (Symphony of Sirens, 1922), 493
Anisfel'd, Boris Izrailevich, Oformlenie stseny Ayers, David, 486, 487
dlia baleta Miliia Balakireva “Islamei” Aygi, Gennady (Gennadii Nikolaevich Aigi),
(Stage design for Milii Balakirev’s ballet 407, 445
“Islamei: Oriental Fantasy, Op. 18 [1869]”, Ayrton, Michael, 26
1911), 525 Azari, Fedele, 330, 479
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0041
606 Name Index
Babino, María Elena, 113 Barbarus, Johannes (pseud. of Johannes

Bajac, Vladislav, 331 Vares), 488
Bakhterev, Igor' Vladimirovich, 395, 400, 406, Barradas, Rafael, 116, 436
407, 470 Barsky, Vilen (Vilen Isaakovich Barskii), 445
Bakradze, Elene, 231 Baudelaire, Charles, 28, 247, 271, 273, 328n
Bakst, Léon (Lev Samoilovich Bakst), 142, Baur, Sergio, 118
200, 267, 524 Bayer, Konrad, 408n
Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich, 478, 480 Bazhan, Nik (Mykola), 294
—, Die Reaction in Deutschland (The Bazhbeuk-Melikov, Aleksander Alexandrovich,
Reaction in Germany, 1842), 480 240
Balakirev, Milii Alekseevich, Islamei (Islamei: Beauduin, Nicolas, 489
Oriental Fantasy, op. 18 [1869]), 525 Beckett, Samuel, 331
Balla, Giacomo, 8, 11, 14, 60n, 77, 78, 79, 103, Becquerel, Henry, 344
130n, 136, 138, 141, 142, 144, 146, 149, Bell, Vanessa, 38, 40, 56
154, 155, 156, 304, 310, 314, 319n, 338, Bello Minciacchi, Cecilia, Spirale di dolcezza
339–340, 343n, 359, 505, 511, 517 + serpe di fascino (Spiral of Sweetness +
—, Interior Design: Casa d’Arte Bragaglia Snake Charm, 2008), 452–453
(1921), 319n Bely (Belyi), Andrei (pseud. of Boris
—, Paintings: Dinamismo della sera + Stato Nikolaevich Bugaev), 245, 267, 271, 279,
d’animo (Dynamism in the Evening + 396
State of Mind, 1914), 146 —, Peterburg (Petersburg, 1913), 273
—, —, Mercurio passa davanti al sole Benditskii, Lev Semenovich, 238
(Mercury Passes Before the Sun, Benditsky, Naoum (Naum Benditskii), 238
1914), 122 Benedetta (pseud. of Benedetta Marinetti,
—, —, Paesaggio (Landscape, 1913), 79 née Cappa), XII, XIIIn, XIX, 141, 150, 156,
—, —, Pessimismo e ottimismo (Pessimism 305, 359, 451, 453, 457–458, 460
and Optimism, 1923), 358 —, Murals: Sintesi delle comunicazioni aeree
—, —, Ritmo + rumore + velocità (Synthesis of Aerial Communications,
d’automobile (Rhythm + Noise + 1933–34), 506
Speed of Car, 1913), 144 —, Writings: Le forze umane: Romanzo
—, —, Velocità + Stato d’animo (Speed + astratto con sintesi grafiche (Human
State of Mind, 1914), 146 Forces: Abstract Novel with Graphic
—, Sculptures: Complessi plastici (Sculptural Syntheses, 1924), 359, 452n
Aggregations, 1914), 146, 548 Benjamin, Walter, 383, 539
—, Stage designs: Feu d’artifice (Fireworks, —, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner
1917), 505 technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The
Balla, Giacomo, and Fortunato Depero, La Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
ricostruzione futurista del'universo (The Reproduction (1936), 383
Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe, Benois, Alexandre (Alexandr Nikolaevich
1915), 144, 154, 511 Benua), 177n, 524
Balla, Luce, XVIII Benois, Nicolas (Nikolai Aleksandrovich
Ballardin, Barbara, 88, 458–459 Benua), Pered Buddoy (Before the
Ballatore, Carlo, 339 Buddha, 1915), 525
Bal'mont, Konstantin Dmitrievich, 235n, 303 Bentivoglio, Mirella, XII, XIII, 335
Baltrušaitis, Jurgis, 303 Bentivoglio, Mirella, and Franca Zoccoli,
Balzac, Honoré de, 429 Women Artists of Italian Futurism: Almost
Barbara (pseud. of Olga Biglieri Scurto), 455 Lost to History (1997), 455
Name Index 607
Berdyaev, Nikolai (Nikolai Alexandrovich Birolli, Zeno, 459

Berdaev), 168–169, 172n, 204, 267 Bisi Fabbri, Adriana, 457
—, Krisis iskusstva (Crisis in Art, 1917), Blanche, Jacques, 37
168–169 Blavatsky, Helena (Elena Petrovna Blavatskii,
Berghaus, Günter, 382, 450 née Helena Petrovna von Hahn), 300, 537
—, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Block, Friedrich, 447
Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, Blok, Alexander (Alexandr Alexandrovich
1909–1944 (1996), 461 Blok), 227, 235, 244, 267, 271, 417, 553n
—, Handbook of International Futurism, —, Balaganchik (The Little Showbooth,
1945–2015, 75, 462 1905), 553n
—, International Futurism, 1945–2015: A Bobrov, Sergei Pavlovich, 189, 433
Bibliographic Reference Shelf, 462 Boccioni, Umberto, 30, 77, 95, 103, 117n, 126,
Bergson, Henri, 59–60, 213, 278–279, 328, 130n, 136, 138, 141, 142, 146, 147, 158,
368, 382, 389, 537 179, 201, 202, 212, 261, 311n, 312n, 313,
—, Essai sur les données immédiates de la 320, 330, 333, 338n, 357, 426–428, 459,
conscience (Time and Free Will, 1888), 417, 542
278n —, Paintings: Costruzione orizzontale
—, L'Évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution, (Horizontal Construction, 1912), 77,
1907), 278n 83–84
Berners, Gerald Lord, see Tyrwhitt-Wilson, —, —, Elasticità (Elasticity, 1912 ), 11
Gerald Hugh —, —, Forme plastiche di un cavallo (Plastic
Berthelot, Philippe, 95n Forms of a Horse, 1913–14), 263
Besant, Annie Wood, 146, 297, 300–302, 307, —, —, Idolo moderno (Modern Idol, 1911),
328, 358 517
Besant, Annie, and Charles Webster —, —, La cittá che sale (The City Rises,
Leadbeater, Thought-Forms (1901), 146, 1910), 123, 124
358 —, —, La strada entra nella casa (The Street
Bestuzhev, Alexandr Alexandrovich (pseud. Enters the House, 1911), 124
Alexandr Marlinskii), 248 —, —, Le forze di una strada (The Forces of a
Beznosov, Denis Dmitrievich, 445–449 Street, 1911), 124, 126
Bičiūnas, Vytautas, 488 —, —, Materia (Matter, 1912), 83
Biglieri Scurto, Olga, see Barbara (pseud.) —, —, Officine a Porta Romana (Workshops
Binkis, Kazys, 488 at Porta Romana, 1909), 126
Biryukov, Sergey (Sergej Birjukov, Sergei —, —, Rissa in galleria (Riot in the Gallery,
Evgen'evich Biriukov), 445–449 1910), 508
—, Jaja, Dada oder Die Abschaffung des —, —, Stati d’animo (States of Mind,
Artikels (YesYes, DaDa, or The Abolition of 1911–12), 77, 146, 212
the Article, 2004), 447 —, Sculptures: Cavallo + Case. Dinamismo
—, Poeziia russkogo avangarda (Russian plastico (Horse + Houses. Plastic
Avant-garde Poetry, 2001), 445 Dynamism, 1915), 144
—, Roku ukor: Poeticheskie nachala —, Writings: Fondamento plastico della
(Reproach to Destiny: The Beginnings of scultura e pittura futurista (The Plastic
Poetry, 2003), 445 Foundations of Futurist Sculpture and
—, Zevgma: Russkaia poeziia ot man'erizma Painting, 1913), 78–79, 213n
do postmodernizma (Zeugma: —, —, Manifesto tecnico della scultura
Russian Poetry from Mannerism to futurista (Technical Manifesto of
Postmodernism, 1994), 445 Futurist Sculpture, 1912), 61n, 144
608 Name Index
—, —, La pittura futurista (Futurist Painting, Saint of Valldemossa, 1919–20),

1911), 141, 146, 314 121–122
—, —, Pittura scultura futuriste: Dinamismo —, —, La Verónica (1918), 113
plastico (Futurist Painting and —, —, Paisaje de Buenos Aires (Cityscape of
Sculpture: Dynamism in Space, 1914), Buenos Aires, 1921), 127–128
11n, 147, 355–356, 478, 479, 490, —, —, Paisaje de Mallorca (Mallorcan
504–505 Landscape, 1920), 126–127
Boever, Jan de, 403n —, —, Rusia (Russia, 1920), 123
Boguslavskaia, Ksenia (Xenia Boguslavskaja, —, Writings: Un cuadro sinóptico de la
Ksenia Boguslavskaya), 178, 183–184, pintura (An Overview on Painting, 1927),
194 132
Bohm, Max, 38, 59 Borghino, Elisa, 88, 450n, 459
Böhme, Jacob (Jakob), 278 —, Des voix en voie (Voices on the March,
Bohr, Niels, 344 2012), 88, 459
Boine, Giovanni, 305 Boschetti, Anna, Ismes: Du réalisme au
Bois, Jules, 537, 538 postmodernisme (Ismes: From Realism to
Boldyrev, Dmitrii Vasil'evich, 279 Postmodernism, 2014), 456
Bolshakov, Anatolii, 200 —, La Poésie partout (Poetry Everywhere,
Bolshakov, Konstantin Aristarkhovich, 433 2001), 456n
Bomberg, David, 26, 31 Bosio, Gherardo, Masterplan for Gonda,
Bonheur, Flora, 453, 459 Dessié and Jimma (1937), 490
Bønnelycke, Emil, 486 Bourdieu, Pierre, 456
Bonnet, Marie-Jo, Les Femmes artistes dans Bowlt, John Ellis, 523–529
les avant-gardes (Women Artists in the Bozhidar (pseud. of Bogdan Gordeev),
Avant-Gardes, 2006), 456n 191–192
Bonnier, Gaston, 278 —, Buben (The Tambourine, 1914), 191
—, L'enchaînement des organismes (Links in Bragaglia, Anton Giulio, 137, 154–158, 304,
Living Nature, 1906), 278 319–320, 345–346
Bontempelli, Massimo, 489 Brahe, Tycho (Tyge Ottesen Brahe), 355n
Borges Acevedo, Leonor Fanny, see Borges, Braque, Georges, 6, 47, 78, 113, 125, 178,
Norah 260, 369
Borges de Torre, Nora Leonor, see Borges, —, Maisons à l’Estaque (Houses at
Norah L'Estaque, 1908), 78
Borges, Jorge Luis, 111–112, 115, 123–124, Brecht, Bertolt (Eugen Berthold Brecht), 331
127n, 436, 534 Breton, André, 408n, 458, 537, 540
Borges, Norah (pseud. of Leonor Fanny —, Le Monde au temps des surrealists (The
Borges Acevedo), 111–135, 434–437 World at the Time of the Surrealists,
—, Prints: Cristo apaciguando las aguas 1929), 70
(Jesus Calming the Storm, 1918), 120 Brezzi, Francesca, Quando il futurismo è
—, —, El circo (The Circus, 1921), 116 donna: Barbara dei colori (When Futurism
—, —, El pomar (The Orchard, 1920), 113 is Woman: Barbara of the Colours, 2009),
—, —, El viaducto (The Viaduct 1920), 455
125–127, 131 Broby-Johansen, Rudolf, 486
—, —, Juerga flamenca (A Flamenco Brooks, Crispin, 400n
Gathering, 1919–20), 121–122 Bruera, Franca, and Cathy Margaillan, Le
—, —, La fiesta de la Santa Patrona de Troisième Sexe des avant-gardes (The
Valldemosa (The Feast of the Patron Third Sex of the Avant-Gardes, 2014), 458
Name Index 609
Brunas (pseud. of Bruna Pestagalli Somenzi), Carabba, Rocco, 307

XVIII, 460n Carli, Mario, 31n, 317, 458
Bruschetti, Alessandro, Sintesi fascista —, Notti filtrate (Filtered Nights, 1918), 334,
(Fascist Synthesis, 1935), 507 347
Bryusov, Valery (Valerii Iakovlevich Briusov), Carpi, Giancarlo, Futuriste: Letteratura, arte,
245, 271, 303, 304 vita (Futurist Women: Literature, Art, Life,
Bubnova, Varvara Dmitrievna, 270n 2009), 450, 451–454
Budanova, Natalia, XIX, 168–198, 495–501 Carrà, Carlo Dalmazzo, 77, 103, 142, 261n,
Buka, Feofan (pseud.), see Khardzhiev, Nikolai 313, 435, 517
Bulatov, Dmitry (Dmitrii Khametovich —, Paintings: Ciò che mi ha detto il tram
Bulatov), 447 (What the Tram Told Me, 1911), 124
Bulgakov, Sergei (Sergei Nikolaevich —, —, I funerali dell’anarchico Galli (The
Bulgakov), 267 Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1913),
Burenina, Olga, 480 508
Bürger, Peter, 191, 538 —, —, Il movimento del chiaro di luna
Burliuk, David Davidovich, 170, 177, 178, 191, (The Movement of the Moonlight,
201, 232, 233, 252, 253, 270, 273, 274, 1910–11), 122
411, 412, 432, 496–467, 524, 525, 551, —, —, La strada dei balconi (Street with
553, 556 Balconies, 1911), 124
Burliuk, Vladimir Davidovich, 191, 252, 270, —, —, Ritratto della Marchesa Casati
524 (Portrait of the Marchesa Casati,
Butterwick, James, 497 1912), 307n
Buzzi, Paolo, 202, 311, 311n, 312, 313, 545 —, Writings: La pittura dei suoni, rumori e
—, L'elisse e la spirale (The Ellipse and the odori (The Painting of Sounds, Noises and
Spiral, 1915), 312n, 313n, 316 Smells, 1913), 144
Carrington, Leonora, 458
Cage, John, 408n Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 331
Cahun, Claude (pseud. of Lucy Schwob), 458 Casati, Luisa (Luisa Amman, Marchesa Casati
Calvesi, Maurizio, 137, 138 Stampa di Soncino), 307
Campos, Haroldo de, 408n Casella, Alfredo, 304
Cangiullo, Francesco, 142, 310, 428, 545 Catherine the Great (Ekaterina Velikaia;
—, Watercolours: Grande folla nella Piazza née Sophie Auguste Friederike von
del Popolo (Large Crowd in the Piazza del Anhalt-Zerbst; Empress of Russia), 298
Popolo, 1914), 508 Catulle-Mendès, Jane (née Jane-Primitive
—, Writings: Non c'è (Not There, 1909), Mette), XIV, 95n
428 Cecchi, Emilio, 305n
—, —, Non c'è: Roberto Bracco e Matilde Censi, Giannina, XVIII, 452, 506
Serao (Not There: Roberto Bracco and Centonze, Nené (pseud. of Antonietta Drago),
Matilde Serao, 1910 452
—, —, Piedigrotta (1916), 428 Cervi, Annunzio, Pillacchere napoletane: La
Cantarelli, Gino, Direttissimo (High-Speed spatanfiona Matilde Serao (Muckrakings
Bullet Train, 1916), 316 from Naples: Podgy Missus Serao, 1914),
Canudo, Ricciotto, 11, 88, 89, 94–95, 330 428–429
Capa, Robert, 331 Cézanne, Paul, 74
Cappa, Alberto, 305 Chachikov, Aleksandr Mikhailovich, I zakusila
Cappa, Arturo, 136, 145, 147, 148, 150 gubki (And She Bit Her Lips, s.d.), 234n,
Cappa, Benedetta, see Benedetta (pseud.) 240
610 Name Index
—, Krepkii grom (Solid Thunder, 1919), 237, 398 —, Arte dell’avvenire: Paradosso (Art of the
—, Priblizhenie k vilayetu (Approaching the Future: Paradox, 1911), 352n
Vilayet, s.d.), 237 Costantini, Vincenzo, 313
Cherepnin, Nikolai Nikolaevich, Posledniaia Crispolti, Enrico, 137, 138, 503n, 519
liubov' (Last Love, s.d.), 238 Crozier, Robin, 408n
Cherniavskii, Nikolai (Kolau) Andreevich, 232,
240 D’Alba, Auro, 310, 545
Chicherin, Aleksei Nikolaevich, 400, 401, Daly, Selena, 70–86
404, 418 D’Ambrosio, Matteo, 427–430
Chistiakov, Mikhail Borisovich, 266 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 306, 328, 429
Chukovsky, Korney (Kornei Ivanovich D’Arc, Jeanne, see Joan of Arc
Chukovskii, pseud. of Nikolai Vasil'evich Dariani, Elene (pseud. of Pavle Iashvili),
Korneichuk), Iskusstvo griadushchego 230–231
dnia: Russkiie poety-futuristy (The Art of David, King of Israel, 148–149, 159
the Coming Days: Russian Futurist Poets, Davison, Emily, 32
1913), 432 Davydova, Natalia (Nataliia Mykhailivna
Chuzhak, Nikolai Fedorovich (pseud. of Davydova), 292, 293
Nikolai Fedorovich Nasimovich), 553 De Chirico, Giorgio, 12, 304, 490
Chytraeus-Auerbach, Irene, 523–530 De Gabriak, Cherubina (pseud. of Elizaveta
Ciągliński, Jan, 267 Ivanovna Dmitrieva), 230
Cigliana, Simona, XVIII, 350, 457–458, 460 De Maria, Luciano, 451
—, Futurismo esoterico (Esoteric Futurism, Debussy, Claude, 95
2002), 340 Deepwell, Katy, 21–43
Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 23, 45 Degen, Yuri (Iurii Degen), 232, 234n,
Cocteau, Jean, 128 235–236, 237
Coen, Ester, 490 —, Etikh glaz: Stikhi (Those Eyes: Poems,
Cominazzini Angelucci, Leandra, XVIII, XIX, 1919), 236
457, 460n —, Serdtse bez nichego (Heart without
Contarini, Silvia, XVII, 87–110 Anything, 1918), 238
—, La femme futuriste (The Futurist Woman, —, Tak sini lenti (Such Blue Ribbons, 1918),
2006), 455–456 238
Cook, William, 380 Delaunay, Robert, 5, 6, 11, 117, 117n, 122, 123,
Corday, Charlotte, 100 178, 437
Cork, Richard, Vorticism and Abstract Art in —, Saint-Séverin Nos. 1–7 (1909–10), 9
the First Machine Age (1976), 24, 41, 66 Delaunay-Terk, Sonia (née Sara Il'inichna
Corneli, Franca Maria, Aeropoema futurista Shtern, adopted name Sophie Terk), 11,
dell’Umbria (Futurist Aeropoem of 88n, 117, 122n, 178, 328, 437, 451, 459
Umbria, 1943), 518 Delécluse, Auguste Joseph, 76
Corra, Bruno (pseud. of Bruno Corradini Deledda, Grazia, 428n
Ginanni), 304, 334, 458, 539 Depero, Fortunato, 130, 505
—, Madrigali e grotteschi (Madrigals and —, Architecture: Padiglione del Libro
Grotesques, 1919), 347n, 349 (Bestetti-Treves-Tumminelli Book Pavilion,
—, Sam Dunn è morto (Sam Dunn is Dead, 1927), 504
1915 /17), 302, 316, 347–350, 354 —, Illustrations: Un istituto per suicidi
Corra, Bruno, and Arnaldo Ginna, Arte (Clavel: An Institute for Suicide, 1918), 489
dell’avvenire (Art of the Future, 1910), —, Interior Design: Casa d’Arte Bragaglia
352n (1921), 319n
Name Index 611
—, Mosaics: Proclamazione e trionfo del Dottori, Gerardo, 516–522

tricolore (Proclamation and Triumph of —, Drawings: Studio per ‛Elementi
the Italian Flag, 1935), 506–507 architettonici’ (Study for ‛Architectural
—, Theatre Works: Balli plastici (Plastic Elements’, 1898), 518
Dances, 1918), 489, 505 —, —, Studio per ‛Forze ascensionali’ (Study
—, Writings: Depero Futurista Dinamo Azari for ‛Ascending Force’, 1916), 518
(Depero the Futurist – Dynamo Azari, —, —, Viso femminile (Woman's Face, 1902),
1927), 479 518
Depero, Fortunato, and Giacomo Balla, La —, Paintings: Alberi del bosco (Trees of the
ricostruzione futurista del'universo (The Wood, 1906), 516
Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe, —, —, Aurora sul Golfo (Dawn over the Gulf,
1915), 144, 154, 511 1935), 518
Depero, Rosetta (née Amadori), XVIII —, —, Autoritratto (Self Portrait, 1928),
Derain, André, 74 517–518, 519
Desideri, Giovannella, XII-XIII —, —, Ciclista (Cyclist, 1913), 518
Di Lemma, Emma, 403 —, —, Esplosione (Explosion, 1916–17), 517
Di Leo, Donatella, 297–326 —, —, Esplosione di rosso sul
D'iachenko, Valerii Fedorovich, 402 verde (Explosion of Red and Green,
Diaghilev, Serge (Sergei Pavlovich Diagilev), 1910–13), 516
141–142, 148, 180, 181, 330 —, —, Fanciulla umbra (Young Umbrian
Diasamidze, Grigol (Grigorii), 232 Girl, 1904), 516
Didžiokas, Vladas, 488 —, —, Flora (1925), 517, 519, 521
Dini, Fanny (Francesca), 452 —, —, Incendio città (City in Flames, 1926),
Dismorr Thompson, Margaret, 36n 517
Dismorr, Jessie, 21–29, 32, 35–41 —, —, La virata (The Change of Direction,
—, Drawings: Edinburgh Castle (c.1914–15), 1931), 521
63 —, —, Lago umbro (Umbrian Lake, 1942),
—, —, Isadora Duncan Dancing (1912), 38 521
—, —, Tyro II (1922), 37 —, —, Lago-alba (Lake-Dawn, 1942), 518
—, Paintings: Abstract Composition —, —, Motivo futurista (Futurist Motif, 1920),
(1914–15), 32, 63 517
Dmitrieva, Elizaveta Ivanovna, 230 —, —, Motociclista (Motorcyclist, 1914),
Dobroliubov, Alexandr Mikhailovich, 278 518
Dobushinsky, Mstislav Valerianovich —, —, Paesaggio (Landscape, 1931), 521
(Mycheslav Dobuzhinskii; Mstislavas —, —, Primavera (Spring, 1912), 517
Dobužinskis), 200, 267 —, —, Scontro di treni (Train Crash, 1919),
D’Œttingen, Hélène, see Œttingen, Hélène d’ 517
Dolgushin, Iurii Aleksandrovich, Metekhsky —, —, I superstiti (The Survivors, 1909–10),
zamok (Metekhy Castle, s.d.), 237 517
—, V nomere (In the Hotel Room, s.d.), 237 —, —, Temporale-paese (Thunderstorm-
Don Juan (literary figure), 97 Village, 1952), 518
Dorlin, Elsa, Sexe, genre et sexualités (Sex, —, —, Trittico della velocità (Triptych of
Gender and Sexualities 2008), 107 Speed, 1925–27), 520
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor (Fedor Mikhailovich —, —, Umbria primavera (Umbrian Spring,
Dostoevsky), Brat'ia Karamazovy (The 1945), 517
Brothers Karamazov, 1880), 328 —, —, Umbria vergine (Virginal Umbria,
Dotoli, Giovanni, 88, 94n 1949), 518
612 Name Index
—, Writings: Manifesto umbro dell’aer- —, Protivogazy (Gas Masks, 1924), 493

opittura (Umbrian Manifesto of Erinyes (mythological figures), 100
Aeropainting, 1941), 518 Erl', Vladimir Ibragimovich (pseud. of Vladimir
Douglas, Charlotte, 221 Ivanovich Gorbunov), 403, 406, 407n,
Dović, Marijan, 491 408n, 445, 470
Drago, Antonietta, see Centonze, Nené Etchells, Frederick, 26, 31, 45, 53, 55n, 56
(pseud.) Evangulov, Georgii, 234n
Dragomoshchenko, Aleksandr, 417 —, Intimnoe (Intimate, s.d.), 237
Drevin, Alexandr Davidovich, 194 —, Rozovy dom (Red House, s.d.), 237
Dubeneckis, Vladimiras, 488 Evola, Julius (Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola), 320
Dubois, Paul, Les Psychonévroses et leur Exter, Aleksandra, see Ekster, Aleksandra
traitement moral (The Psychic Treatment Eymery-Vallette, Marguerite, see Rachilde
of Nervous Disorders, 1904), 309 (pseud.)
Duchamp, Marcel, 331, 369, 408n
Duczynska, Irma von, 339 Fabbri, Odoardo, 306
Dudakov-Kashuro, Konstantin, 493 Fal'k, Robert Rafailovich, 497
Duncan, Ellen, 74 Fateeva, Natalia Aleksandrovna, 447
Duncan, Isadora, 38, 61n Fedeli, Ugo, 306
Dunoyer de Segonzac, André, 37 Fedotova, Nadezhda, 282
Duse, Eleonora, 354 Fedulov, Alexandr Nikolaevich, 445
Dyachenko, Valery, see D'iachenko, Valerii Fergusson, John Duncan, 37–38, 59–60
Fedorovich Ferrero Gussago, Maria, XIX, 457
Fet, Afanasii Afanas'evich, 238
Ebanoidze, Natia, 492 Fiammetta (pseud. of Margherita Keller
Eagleton, Terry, 74 Besozzi), 453
Eeden, Frederik Willem van, 309 Fidora, Alma, XVIII, 460n
Efimerova, Tat'iana Vladimirovna, see Filiou, Robert, 408n
Vechorka, Tat'iana (pseud.) Filonov, Pavel Nikolaevich, 185, 269n
Efros, Abram Markovich, 199, 208, —, Belaia kartina (White Painting, c.1919),
Egunov, Andrei Nikolaevich, 395, 406, 408 527
Ekster (Exter), Aleksandra (née Oleksandra —, Formula perioda s 1904 po iiul' 1922 goda
Oleksandrivna Hryhorovych), IX, 178–180, (Formula of the Period 1904 to July 1922,
184, 202, 225–265, 292–294, 450, 460n 1920–22), 527
—, Florentsia (Florence, 1914), 179 —, Germanskaia voina (The German War,
—, Genuia (Genoa, 1913), 179 1914–15), 177n
—, Moskva (Moscow, 1913), 179 —, Untitled Painting (1923), 527
—, Most-Sevr (The Bridge-Sèvres, 1912), 179 —, Vostok i Zapad / Zapad i Vostok (East and
—, Notr Dam i sad arkhiepiskopa (Notre West / West and East, 1912–13), 525
Dame and the Archbishop’s Gardens, Fini, Leonor, 458
1910), 179 Finlay, Ian Hamilton, 408n
Elysard, Jules (pseud.), see Bakunin, Mikhail Fjorton (pseud. of Lieven Vercauteren), 447
Ender, Boris Vladimirovich, 408, 410 Flammarion, Camille, 278–279
Engels, Friedrich, and Karl Marx, Das —, Dieu dans la nature (God in Nature,
Kommunistische Manifest (Communist 1869), 279
Manifesto, 1848), 427 Florensky, Pavel (Pavel Alexandrovich
Eisenstein, Sergey (Sergei Mikhailovich Eizen- Florenskii), 267
shtein), Mudrets (Wise Man, 1923), 493 Folgore, Luciano, 310, 545
Name Index 613
Foster, Stephen, 227 Ginanni, Bruno, see Corra, Bruno

Foucault, Michel, 527 Ginanni, Maria (née Maria Crisi), XII, XVIII,
Francis of Assisi (Giovanni di Pietro di 313, 333n, 334, 340, 453, 457, 458, 459
Bernardone; San Francesco d’Assisi), 153, Ginna, Arnaldo (pseud. of Arnaldo Ginanni
278 Corradini), 146, 304, 334, 339, 341n, 354,
—, Cantico di frate Sole (Canticle of Brother 539
Sun, 1224), 155 —, Writings: Le locomotive con le calze (The
—, Laudes Creaturarum / Cantico delle Trains that Wore Stockings, 1919), 347
creature (The Canticle of the Creatures, —, —, Pittura dell’avvenire (Painting of the
1225), 153 Future, 1917), 341, 358
Frank, Nino, 129 Ginna, Arnaldo, and Bruno Corra, Arte
—, Marinetti y el futurismo (Marinetti and dell’avvenire (Art of the Future, 1910),
Futurism, 1926), 129 352n
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este, —, Arte dell’avvenire: Paradosso (Art of the
330, 477 Future: Paradox, 1911), 352n
Freud, Sigmund, 328, 540 Giovanna (pseud. of Anna Voggi), 458
Fry, Roger, 47, 48, 62 Girondo, Oliverio, 534
—, Cantar de las ranas (Song of the Frogs,
Gaden, Elodie, Écrits littéraires de femmes en 1932), 535
Égypte francophone (Literary Writings by —, Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el
Women in Francophone Egypt, 2013), 88, tranvía (Twenty Poems to be Read on the
90n, 93 Tram, 1922), 535
Galamaga, Aleksandr, 402 Glazkov, Nikolai Ivanovich, 402
Galdikas, Adomas, 488 Gleizes, Albert, 5, 6, 78, 178, 260
Gallen-Kallela, Akseli (Axel Waldemar Gallén), —, Paintings: Paysage (Landscape, 1911), 78
280 Gleizes, Albert, and Jean Metzinger, Du
—, Illustrations: Kalevala (1922), 280n “Cubisme” (On “Cubism”, 1912), 212
Gambrell, Alice, 118 Gnedov, Vasilisk Ivanovich, 232, 395, 396n,
Gaprindashvili, Valerian, 237 400, 401n, 406, 407, 410, 411, 414–415,
García, Carlos, 121–122 418
Garrett Fawcett, Milicent, 30n —, Iu (Iu, 1913), 414
Gascoyne, David, 40 —, Poema kontsa (Poem of the End, 1913),
Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri, 22, 26, 27, 31, 44n, 400
45, 54, 57n, 58–59 —, Smert' iskusstvu (Death to Art, 1913), 414
Gauguin, Paul, 72, 74, 192 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 399
Gazzuola, Giorgia, 450n Goll, Claire (née Clara Aischmann), Xn, 88n,
Geertz, Clifford, 537 459
Genke, Nina, see Henke-Meller, Nina Gol'tsshmidt, Vladimir Robertovich, 274
Genova, Irina, 492 Golubev'-Bagrianorodnyi, Leonid Nikolaevich,
Gentile, Emilio, La nostra sfida alle stelle: Bez liubvi (Unloved, s.d.), 237
Futuristi in politica (Our Challenge to the —, Zatselovannaia (Kissed, s.d.), 237
Stars: Futurists and Politics, 2009), 461 Gómez de la Serna, Ramón, 534
George, Henry, 304, 312 Gomringer, Eugen, 401n, 447
George, Lloyd, 40 Goncharova, Natal'ia Sergeevna, 132, 136,
Giles, Catherine, 38 138, 142, 149n, 151n, 153n, 156, 157n,
Ginanni Corradini, Arnaldo, see Ginna, 161n, 168, 170, 172–178, 180–183,
Arnaldo 186–189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 203, 204,
614 Name Index
217, 240, 257, 263, 328, 408, 432–433, Greenberg, Clement, Avant-Garde and Kitsch
450, 460n, 481, 490, 496–498, 500, 524, (1939), 482
525–527, 528 Grieg, Edvard Hagerup, 280
—, Costume designs: Coq d’or (The Golden —, Sonate a-Moll für Klavier und Violoncello,
Cockerel, 1937), 132, 180 op. 36 (1883), 238
—, Illustrations: Angeli i aeroplani (Angels Grildrig (pseud.), see Cappa, Arturo
and Aeroplanes, 1914), 187–188 Gris, Juan (pseud. of José Victoriano
—, —, Chert (The Devil, 1913), 175n González-Pérez), 6, 9n, 74, 178, 535
—, —, Grad obrechennii (Doomed City, Grobman, Mikhail Iakovlevich, 480
1914), 187–188 Gudiashvili, Lado, 239, 240, 246, 247, 492
—, —, Misticheskie obrazi voini (Mystical Gudiev, Vladimir, see Gudiashvili, Lado
Images of War, 1914), 186–189, 481, Guerricchio, Rita, Il modello di donna futurista
490 (The Model of the Futurist Woman, 1976),
—, —, Novie stseni iz “Igri v ady” (New XII
Scenes from "Games in Hell"), 175 Guggenheim, Marguerite (“Peggy”), 331
—, Paintings: Angeli metaiushchie kamni v Güiraldes, Ricardo, 534
gorod (Angels Throwing Stones on the Günther, Hans, 478
Town, 1911), 188 Gurianova (Gourianova), Nina, 201, 204, 214,
—, —, Bog (The God, 1910), 174n 480, 490–491
—, —, Deva na zvere (Maiden on a Beast, Guro, Elena (pseud. of Elena Genrikhovna von
1911), 173 Notenberg), IX, 232, 266–291, 412, 450
—, —, Natiurmort so statuetkoi (Still Life —, Dramas: Don Kikhot (Don Quixote, 1911),
with Statuette, 1908), 527 285
—, —, Pustota (Emptiness, 1913), 524 —, —, Nebesnye verbliuzhata (The Baby
—, —, Sbor urozhaia (Harvest, 1911), 188 Camels of the Sky, 1914), 268, 286
—, —, Solianye stolpy (Statues of Salt, —, —, Nishchii Arlekin (Poor Harlekin,
1910), 526, 527 1909), 285
—, —, Urozhai (Harvest, 1911), 173 —, —, Osennii son (An Autumnal Dream,
—, —, Velosipedist (The Cyclist, 1913), 1912), 285
263 —, —, V zakrytoi chashe (In A Closed Bowl,
—, Writings: Pismo Filippo Tommaso 1910), 285
Marinetti (Letter to Filippo Tommaso —, Illustrations: Babushkiny skazki
Marinetti, 1914), 311n (Grandmother’s Tales, 1905), 267
Gorbachov, Dmytro, see Horbachov, Dmytro —, —, Zimnii peizazh (Winter Landscape,
Omelianovych 1910), 283–284
Gorbunov, Vladimir, see Erl' (pseud.) —, Paintings: Finliandiia (Finland, 1913), 280
Gordeev, Bogdan, see Bozhidar (pseud.) —, —, Finskaia melodiia (Finnish Melody,
Gordeev, Dmitrii Petrovich, 233, 240 c.1910), 280
Goretti, Maria, XIX, 106n, 452, 506 —, —, Kamen na beregu finskogo zaliva
Gorky, Maxim (Maksim Gor'kii, pseud. of (Stone at the Finnish Gulf Coast,
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov), 417 1910), 282
Gornon, Alexandr, 445 —, —, Rostiki: Kompozitsiia s tvetami i
Gorodetsky, Sergey (Sergei Mitrofanovich rasteniiami (Sprouts: Composition
Gorodetskii), 232, 234n, 235, 243, 245 with Flowers and Plants, 1905–06),
Govoni, Corrado, 304 281
Graham, Freda, 32 —, —, Skandinavskaia printsessa
Grant, Duncan, 26 (Scandinavian Princess, 1910), 280
Name Index 615
—, —, Utro velikanov (Morning of the Giant, Hiller, Kurt, 124

1910), 280 Hinz, Manfred, 534–540
—, Writings: Bednyi rytsar (The Poor Knight, Hirato, Renkichi, Nihon miraiha sengen
1913), 268 undō/ Mouvement Futuriste Japonais (The
—, —, Gorod (The City, 1910), 276 Japanese Futurist Movement, 1921), 492
—, —, Obeshchaite! (Promise!, 1913), 285 —, Nihon miraiha undō dai ikkai no sengen
—, —, Pered vesny (Before Spring), 275–276 (First Manifesto of Japanese Futurism,
—, —, Pesni goroda (Songs of the City), 276 1921), see Nihon miraiha sengen undō
—, —, Raniaia vesna (Early Spring, 1905), 267 Hjartarson, Benedikt, Visionen des Neuen
—, —, Sharmanka (The Hurdy-Gurdy, 1909), (Visions of the New, 2013), 534–540
267, 270 Hone, Evie, 71, 73
—, —, Tak zhizn idet (That’s Life), 276 Hood, Robin, 388
—, —, Troe (Three, 1913), 266, 270, 285, Horbachov, Dmytro Omelianovych, 294
412, 554 Howard, Jeremy, 285
Hristić, Jovan, 331
Hachette, Jeanne, 100 Hudson, Nan, 39
Hamilton, Cuthbert, 31, 45, 53, 57n Hueffer, Ford Madox, 39
Hammershoi (Hammershøi), Vilhelm, 280 Huidobro, Vicente (Vicente García-Huidobro
Hamsun, Knut (pseud. of Knud Pedersen), 280 Fernández), 532, 534, 535
Hänsgen, Sabine, 404 —, 1914 (1918), 535
Hanstein, Lisa, 333–365, 523–530 —, Hallali: Poème de guerre (Hallali: War
Härmänmaa, Marja, 486, 487 Poem, 1918), 535
Hartnell, Jack, 498–500 —, Horizon carré (Square Horizon, 1917),
Haynau, Edyth von, see Rosà, Rosa (pseud.) 535
Haynau, Ernst von, 335 —, La Salle XIV (Room 14, 1917–22), 535
Haynau, Julius von, 336 —, Manifestes (Manifestos, 1925), 535
Heine, Heinrich, Buch der Lieder (Book of —, Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower, 1918), 535
Songs, 1827), 298 Hultén, Pontus, 511
Heißenbüttel, Helmut, 401n Huyssen, Andreas, 33–34
Hemingway, Ernest, 63, 370, 381
Henke-Meller, Nina, 292–296 Iakobson (Jakobson), Roman Osipovich, 171,
Hennoste, Tiit, 488 219
Herodotus (Hērodotos), Historiai (Histories, Iashvili, Pavle, 229–232, 240, 246
c.440), 170 —, Lek'sebi, poemebi, t'argmanebi (Poetry,
Hevesy, Iván, A futurista, expresszionista és Epic Poem, Translations, 1955), 231
kubista festészet (Futurist, Expressionist Ibsen, Henrik, 280
and Cubist Painting, 1919), 484 Ignatyev, Ivan (Ivan Vasil'evich Ignat'ev,
Heym, Georg, 124 pseud. of Ivan Vasil'evich Kazanskii), 411
Hidalgo, Alberto, 532, 534 Iliazd (pseud.), see Zdanevich, Ilya
—, Arenga lírica al emperador de Alemania Ilnytzkyj, Oleh Stepan, 292–296
(Lyric Diatribe to the German Emperor, Imposti, Gabriella, 490
1916), 534 Iuon, Konstantin Fedorovich, see Yuon,
—, Choque de trenes (Train Crash, 1923), 534 Konstantin Fyodorovich
—, Química del espíritu (Chemistry of the Ivanov, Pavel Vladimirovich, 552, 554
Spirit, 1923), 534 Ivanov, Vyacheslav (Viacheslav Ivanovich
Higgins, Helen, 495–501 Ivanov), 235n, 243, 244–245, 267, 271n,
Hiir, Erni, 489 280, 303
616 Name Index
Jacob, Hans (Jean Jacques, Gian Giacomo), 342 —, Writings: Über das Geistige in der Kunst
Jacob, Max, 178 (On the Spiritual in Art, 1912), 147, 259,
Jacques, Jean (Gian Giacomo; pseud.), see 269n
Jacob, Hans Kandyba, Vitalii Il'ich, Istoriia stanovleniia
Jahl, Władysław, 116 i razvitiia khudozhestovennoi zhizni
Jakobson, Roman, see Iakobson, Roman Dal'nego Vostoka, 1858–1938 gg. (History
Osipovich of the Formation and Development of Art
James, William, 382, 537, 539 Life in the Far East, 1858–1938, 1985),
Jandl, Ernst, 401n 550, 552
Janecek, Gerald, 416n Kara-Darvish (pseud. of Hagop [Akop]
—, Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of Russian Genjian), 229, 240
Futurism (1996), 226–227 Kassák, Lajos, 484
Jankevičiūtė, Giedrė, 487 Katanian, Vasilii Abgarovich, 240
Japaridze (Dzhaparidze), Leli, 232, 237 —, Afrikanskaia zhenshchina (African
Jasieński, Bruno (pseud. of Wiktor Zysman), Woman, s.d.), 237
492 —, U tramvaia (Near the Tram, s.d.), 237
Jeanneret, Charles-Édouard, see Le Corbusier Kats, O. (musician), 237
(pseud.) Katsis, Leonid Fridovich, 480
Jellett, Mainie, 71, 73, 74 Katsuba, Elena, 445
Jelsbak, Torben, 486 Kauffman, Angelika, 25
Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), 100 Kazakov, Vladimir Vasil'evich, 407
Jobst, Welge, 489 Kazys, Šimonis, Vėjas (The Wind, 1926), 488
Jones, Bertha, 38, 59n Kedrov, Konstantin, 445
Jovanov, Svetislav, 329 Khardzhiev, Nikolai Ivanovich, 207, 242, 404,
Jovović, Tatiana, 481 406, 407, 408, 412n, 470
Joyce, James, 70, 75, 331 —, Kruchenykhiada (In Kruchenykh’s Vein,
1984), 404n, 408
Kabakov, Ilya (Il'ia Iosifovich Kabakov), 395, Kharitonov, Evgenii Viktorovich, 447–448
406, 470, 480 Kharms, Daniil (pseud. of Daniil Ivanovich
Kakabadze, David, 492 Iuvachev), 395, 399n, 401n, 406, 408,
Kalashnikov, Mikhail, 240 417, 470
Kalmakov, Nikolai Konstantinovich, —, Myr (The World, 1930), 417
Zhenshchina so zmeiami (Woman with Khlebnikov, Velimir (Viktor Vladimirovich
Serpents, 1909), 525 Khlebnikov), 191, 192, 203n, 215, 218,
Kamensky, Vasily (Vasilii Vasil'evich 232, 233, 235n, 243–244, 255, 270, 271,
Kamenskii), 270, 273, 274, 275, 285 273, 275, 285, 400, 404, 407, 408, 410,
—, Zemlianka (The Mud Hut, 1910), 274, 277 411, 412, 433, 455, 467, 468, 490, 498,
—, Zhelezobetonnye poemy (Ferroconcrete 499–500, 450, 551
Poems, 1914), 274 —, Golod (Hunger, 1920–21), 500
Kanbara, Tai, 492 —, Ladomir (World of Harmony, 1920), 490
Kancheli, Sandro, 232 —, Mi i doma (We and Our Buildings, 1918),
Kandinsky, Wassily (Vasilii Vasil'evich 500
Kandinskii), 155n, 178, 259, 269n, 480, —, Mir i ostal'noe (The World and the Rest,
524, 527 1920), 243
—, Paintings: Belyi oval (White Oval, 1919), —, O zasmeites’ smekhachi (Oh, You
527 Laughing Laugherers, 1910), 413
—, —, Chernoe piatno (Black Spot, 1912), 524 —, Troe (Three, 1913), 266, 270, 285, 412, 554
Name Index 617
—, Vozzvanie predsedatelei zemnogo shara Kolpinsky, Dmitry (Dmitri Dmitrievich

(Proclamation of the Chairmen of the Kolpinskii), 304
Terrestrial Globe, 1917), 490 —, Henry George e il movimento dei
—, Zakliatie smekhom (Incantation by riformatori fondiari (Henry George and
Laughter, 1910), 413 the Land Reform Movement, 1913), 304
—, Zangezi: Sverkhpovest' (Zangezi: —, Lettere sulla letteratura russa (Letters on
Supertale, 1922), 490, 547 Russian Literature, 1913), 304
—, Zharennaia mish (Roasted Mouse, Konchalovsky (Konchalovskii), Petr Petrovich,
1920–21), 500 497
Khlebnikov, Velimir, and Aleksei Kruchenykh, Konstantinović, Radomir, 331
Igra v adu (Game in Hell, 1912), 217, 400, Konstriktor, Boris (pseud. of Boris Aksel'rod),
407n, 416 399, 401n, 403, 408, 410, 416, 419, 445,
—, Pobeda nad solntsem (Victory over the 464
Sun, 1913), 219, 270, 273–274, 480, 547, Korneev, Boris Alekseevich, 234n, 235, 236,
586, 588 238, 240
—, Slovo kak takovoe (The Word as Such, —, Golubookaia Ekaterina (Blue-eyed
1913), 217n Catherine, s.d.), 238
—, Te Li Le (1914), 218 Kovalenko, Georgii Fedorovich, 171n, 179
Khlebnikova, Vera Vladimirovna, 524 Kramer, Jacob, 26
—, Lipovyi paren' (Linden Man, c.1920), Kristeva, Julia (Iuliia Krŭsteva), 106
528 Krivulin, Viktor Borisovich, 416–417
—, Shaman i Venera (Shaman and Venus, Kropivnitsky (Kropivnitskii), Lev Evgen'evich,
1920), 528 406
—, Veter: Lesnaia toska (Wind: Forest Kruchenykh, Aleksei Eliseevich,175, 177,
Longing, 1920), 528 189, 191, 194, 215–216, 217, 219, 221n,
Khovin, Viktor Romanovich (pseud. Vick), 220, 229, 230, 232, 233, 236, 238, 240,
Futurizm i voina (Futurism and the War, 242–245, 246, 255, 270, 271, 273, 275,
1914), 176, 481 285, 395, 398, 399n, 400, 404, 406–418,
Khvoshchinsky, Vasily (Vasilii Bogdanovich 433, 469, 470, 471, 480, 481, 490, 540,
Khvoshchinskii), 139, 148, 150 547, 551
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 124 —, Ballady o iade Kormorane (Ballads of the
—, Nollendorfplatz (Street Scene near Poison Cormoran, 1920), 413
Nollendorf Square, 1912), 126 —, Deklaratsiia zaumnogo iazyka
Kirillova, Elena Olegovna, Dal'nevostochnaia (Declaration of the Zaum'-Language,
gavan' russkogo futurizma (The 1921), 410–411
Far-Eastern Harbour of Russian Futurism, —, Dyr bul shchyl (1913), 413
2011), 552 —, Igra v adu: Poema vtoraia (Game in Hell:
Kiun, Emmy (née Wittman), 297 Second Poem, 1940), 407n
Kiun, Eva Oskarovna, see Kühn, Eva —, Lef agitki Maiakovskogo, Aseeva,
Kiun, Oskar, 297, 298 Tret'iakova (Lef Agitation by Mayakovsky,
Kivikas, Albert, Lendavad sead (Flying Pigs, Aseev and Tretyakov, 1925), 484
1919), 489 —, Malokholiia v kapote (Dullness in a
Klähn, Tim, 395–426 House-Coat, 1919), 408
Klimt, Gustav, 354 —, Mir i ostal'noe (The World and the Rest,
Knight, Chris, 498–499 1920), 243
Kobak, Aleksandr Vasil'evich, 416, 417 —, Noni: Umertviteli (Noni: Slaughterers,
Kogoj, Marij, 491 1913), 175n
618 Name Index
—, O zhenskikh stikhakh (On Female Poetry, —, Il canto della donna cosmica (Song of a
1918), 230 Cosmic Woman, 1918), 317
—, Pugal': Pistolet (Scarety: A Pistol, 1913), —, Il nuovo metodo intuitivo dell’inseg-
175 namento delle lingue moderne (The New
—, Sdvigologiia russkogo stikha (Shiftology Intuitive Method of Modern Languages
of the Russian Verse, 1922), 413 Teaching, 1907), 303
—, Sliuni chernogo geniia (Droolings of a —, La donna di tutti e di nessuno (The
Black Genius, 1923), 242 Woman of Everyone and Nobody), 297,
—, Slovo o podvigakh Gogolia (The Lay of 313
Gogol’s Feats, 1943), 408n —, La pazzia e la riforma del manicomio
—, Sobstvennye rasskazy detei (Actual (Madness and the Reform of Mental
Children’s Stories, 1923), 408 Asylums, c.1913–16), 308, 311n
—, Tainye poroki akademikov (Secret Vices of —, L'ottimismo trascendentale di Arturo
the Academicians, 1916 [recte 1915]), 414 Schopenhauer (Arthur Schopenhauer’s
—, Troe (Three, 1913), 266, 270, 285, 412, 554 Transcendental Optimism, 1907), 300
—, Velimir Khlebnikov v 1915 godu (Velimir —, Polemiche sul tattilismo (Debates on
Khlebnikov in the Year 1915, 1921/1966), Tactilism, 1921), 320
407n —, Sam Dunn è morto (Sam Dunn is Dead,
—, Vselenskaia voina Ъ (Universal War Ъ, 1917), 302, 314, 316–317, 340
1916), 481, 490 —, Sinfonia colorata (Colourful Symphony,
—, Vzorval (Explodity, 1913), 175, 217 1920), 297, 313
Kruchenykh, Aleksei, and Velimir Khlebnikov, —, Velocità (Speed, 1916), 314–315
Igra v adu (Game in Hell, 1912), 217, 400, —, Vita con Giovanni Amendola (Life with
407n, 416 Giovanni Amendola, 1960), 310
—, Pobeda nad solntsem (Victory over the Kukui, Il'ia (Ilja Kukuj), 402n, 410n, 424n
Sun, 1913), 219, 270, 273–274, 480, 547, Kulbin (Kul'bin), Nikolai Ivanovich, 179, 217,
586, 588 262, 266, 268–270, 273, 278
—, Slovo kak takovoe (The Word as Such, Kulikova, Marina Eduardovna, Iskusstvo
1913), 217n primor'ia 1920–1930-kh godov v sobranii
—, Te Li Le (1914), 218 Primorskoi kartinnoi galerei (Primorye Art
Kruchenykh, Aleksei, and Olga Rozanova, of the 1920s and 1930s in the Collection
Voina (War, 1916), 189, 190, 219, 481 of the Primorskaia National Art Gallery,
Krusanov, Andrei Vasil'evich, Russkii 1989), 552
avangard, 1907–1932 (The Russian Kuprin, Aleksandr Ivanovich, 417
Avant-garde, 2003–10), 552 Kurbas, Les' (Oleksandr-Zenon Stepanovych
Kühn, Eva (Eva Oskarovna Kiun, Eva Amendo- Kurbas), 294
la-Kühn), IX, XIX, 297–332, 340 Kuznetsov, Pavel Varfolomevich, 525
—, A Umberto Boccioni futurista due giorni
dopo la sua morte (To the Futurist La Cocherie (pseud.), 97
Umberto Boccioni Two Days After His Landt Momberg, Harald, 487
Death, 1922), 320 Lardini, C. O. (pseud. of Edoardo Nicolardi),
—, Al guerriero che torna (To the Returning L'arancia del futurismo (The Orange of
Warrior, 1917), 317 Futurism, 1910), 428
—, Appello al popolo italiano (Appeal to the Larionov, Mikhail Fedorovich, 136, 138, 142,
Italian People, 1919), 306n, 318–319 143, 149n, 151, 152, 153n, 156, 157n, 161,
—, Eva la futurista (Eva the Futurist, 1914), 170, 177, 178, 180–183, 194, 203, 257, 273,
297, 312–313, 321 330, 432–433, 497–499, 524, 525, 527
Name Index 619
—, Vremena goda (The Four Seasons, 1912), Liubarskii, Pavel Vasil'evich, Prostitutka (The
527 Prostitute, 1919), 556
Larionov, Mikhail, and Natalia Goncharova, Livshits, Benedikt Konstantinovich, 174, 200,
16 risunkov (Album of 16 Drawings, 1913), 253, 254, 255, 270, 273
433 Lodder, Christina, 199–225
—, Luchizm (Rayism, 1913), 433 Loeb, Jacques, 278–279
Laurencin, Marie, 88n, 132, 459 —, The Dynamics of Living Matter (1906),
Lazareva, Ekaterina Andreevna, 477–485 279n
Le Bon, Gustave, 278 Lokhvitskaia, Mirra Aleksandrovna, 230
—, L'Évolution de la matière (The Evolution of Lossky (Losskii), Nikolai Onufrievich, 279
Matter, 1905), 278 Lotarev, Igor' Vasil'evich, see Severyanin, Igor
Le Corbusier (pseud. of Charles-Edouard (pseud.)
Jeanneret-Gris), 490 Lotman, Yuri (Iuri Mikhailovich Lotman),
Leadbeater, Charles Webster, Man Visible and Kul'tura i vzryv (Culture and Explosion,
Invisible (1902), 146, 154, 358 1992), 481
Leadbeater, Charles Webster, and Annie Loy, Mina (pseud. of Mina Gertrude Löwy),
Besant, Thought-Forms (1901), 146, 382
358 Lunacharsky, Anatoly (Anatolii Vasil'evich
Lee, Sarah, 492 Lunacharskii), O vashei poezii (On Your
Léger, Fernand, 5, 6, 178, 180 Poetry, 1925), 245
Lehmann, Otto, Flüssige Kristalle und die Luxemburg, Rosa (Róża Luksemburg), 329
Theorien des Lebens (Liqid Crystals L'vov, Petr Ivanovich, 554
and the Theory of Life, 1906),
278–279 Maciunas, George (Jurgis Mačiūnas), 408n
Leman, Otto, see Lehmann, Otto Maeterlinck, Maurice, Hôte inconnu (The
Lenin (pseud. of Vladimir Il'ich Ul'ianov), 245, Unknown Guest, 1914), 354
318, 469, 556 —, Monna Vanna (1902), 354
Lenton, Lilian, 32 Magamal (pseud.), see Kühn, Eva
Lentulov, Aristarkh Vasil'evich, 177, 185, 496, Maiakovskii, Vladimir, see Mayakovsky,
497, 525 Vladimir
Lermontov, Mikhail Iurevich, 248 Maier, Vivian, 331
Lévi, Eliphas, 537 Malevich, Kazimir Severinovich (Kazimir
Lewis, Wyndham, 21–42, 45–65 Severynovych Malevych), 169, 170, 171,
—, Murals: Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel (1915), 173, 182, 183–185, 192–193, 199, 203,
36, 58 217, 222, 262, 275, 285, 294, 330, 395,
—, Writings: Open Letter on Vital English Art 406, 407, 408, 415, 524, 517, 547, 550
(1914), 31 —, Graphic designs: Shel avstriets v Radzivily
—, —, The Demon of Progress in the Arts (An Austrian Was Marching to the Town of
(1954), 34 Radzivil, 1914), 185, 192
Libedinskaya, Lydia (Lidiia Borisovna —, —, Smert cheloveka odnovremenno
Libedinskaia), Zelenaia lampa (The Green na aeroplane i zheleznoi doroge
Lamp, 1966), 227n, 229, 245n (Death of a Man Simultaneously on
Libedinsky, Yuri (Iurii Nikolaevich Libedinskii), an Aeroplane and the Railway, 1913),
245 175n
Lipavsky, Leonid Savel'evich, Issledovanie —, —, Troe (Three, 1913), 412
uzhasa (Horror Research, 1930), 481 —, Paintings: Chernyi krug (Black Circle,
Lipke, William C., 36n, 37, 38 1923), 524
620 Name Index
—, —, Chernyi kvadrat (Black Square, 1915), —, In Egypt (1930), 451n

399, 406, 415, 480 —, In Libya (1912), 46, 546, 547n
—, —, Golova (Head, 1928–29), 517 —, In Russia, 1914 (26 January – 17 February),
—, —, Moliashchaiasia zhenshchina 171, 542
(Praying Woman, 1910–11), 528 —, Leaves for African War (22 October 1935),
—, Stage designs: Pobeda nad solntsem 489
(Kruchenykh: Victory over the Sun, 1913), —, Visit to London, 1910, Lyceum Club
262, 273, 480 (2 April), 30, 439
—, Writings: Glavi iz avtobiografii —, Visit to London, 1914, Doré Gallery (7 June
khudozhinika (Chapters from the Artist’s 1914), 30, 50
Autobiography, 1933), 173 —, Visit to London, March 1912 and June
Malin, Jaan, 447 1914, 75
Mallo, Maruja, 117n —, Visit to Paris, 1912, in Gertrude Stein’s
Mandelstam, Osip (Osip Emil'evich literary salon, 366
Mandel’shtam), 413–414 —, Visit to Moscow, 1914 (26–31 January;
—, Razgovor o Dante (Conversation about 9–17 February), 171n, 542
Dante, 1933), 413 —, Visit to Saint-Petersburg, 1914
Marasco, Antonio, 357 (1–8 February), 171n, 542
Marchi, Virgilio, Interior Design: Casa d’Arte —, Visit to Tripoli (1912), 76
Bragaglia (1921), 319n
Margaillan, Cathy, La Révolution du langage Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, Writings:
chez deux futuristes (The Revolution of —, Bombardamento di Adrianopoli (The
Language in the Work of Two Futurists, Bombardment of Adrianople, 1912), 478,
2011), 458 544, 546
—, Les Femmes futuristes ou une —, Come si seducono le donne (How to
reconnaissance occultée (The Futurist Seduce Women, 1917), 342, 453
Women, or A Concealed Recognition, —, Contro l’amore e il parlamentarismo
2005), 458 (Against Sentimentalized Love and Parlia-
—, Les Romancières futuristes italiennes (The mentarianism, 1915), 98
Italian Futurist Women Novelists, 2011), —, Democrazia futurista (Futurist Democracy,
458, 460 1919), 312
Mari, Annetta, Come si seducono gli uomini —, Destruction: Poèmes lyriques / Distruzione:
(How to Seduce Men, 1918), 453 Poema futurista (Destruction, 1904/1911),
Marinetti Cappa, Benedetta, see Benedetta 538
(pseud.) —, Distruzione della sintassi – Immaginazione
senza fili – Parole in libertà (Destruction
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, Biography: of Syntax – Untrammeled Imagination –
—, And Mussolini, 306, 307, 330, 478, 506, Words-in-Freedom, 1913), 545
507, 509 —, Elettori Futurist! (First Futurist Political
—, Car crash (15 October 1908), 367, Manifesto, 1909), 427
384–387, 390 —, Gli indomabili (The Untameables, 1922),
—, Demission from central committee of the 489
Fasci (29 May 1920), 478 —, Guerra sola igiene del mondo (War, the
—, In Argentina, lecture at Asociación Sole Cleanser of the World, 1915), 427
“Amigos del Arte” (June 1926), 129–130, —, I diritti artistici propugnati dai futuristi
437 italiani (Artistic Rights Defended by the
—, In Bulgaria (1912), 545 Italian Futurists, 1923), 484
Name Index 621
—, Il tamburo di fuoco (The Drum of Fire, (An Open Letter to the Futurist Mac
1922), 484 Delmarle, 1913), 4, 97
—, Il tattilismo: Manifesto futurista —, L'uomo moltiplicato e il regno della
(Tactilism: Futurist Manifesto, 1921), macchina (Extended Man and the
320 Kingdom of the Machine, 1910/1915),
—, Il teatro di Varietà (Variety Theatre 101, 108, 350, 372n, 373, 375, 377,
Manifesto, 1913), 151 379–380
—, Il teatro futurista sintetico (A Futurist —, Mafarka il futurista / Mafarka le futuriste:
Theatre of Essential Brevity, 1915), see Roman africain (Mafarka the Futurist:
Futurist group manifestos African Novel, 1910), 297, 310, 311, 312,
—, La Conquête des étoiles / La conquista 316, 455, 538
delle stelle (The Conquest of the Stars, —, Manifesto tecnico della letteratura
1902/1904), 538 futurista (Technical Manifesto of Futurist
—, La danza futurista (Manifesto of Futurist Literature, 1912), 314, 371–372, 478, 545,
Dance, 1917), 151, 307n 456, 548
—, La fondazione e manifesto del futurismo —, Noi rinneghiamo i nostri maestri
(Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, simbolisti, ultimi amanti della luna (We
1909), XIV, 95, 96, 98, 129, 253, 254, 367, Renounce our Symbolist Masters, the
379, 383n, 385, 386, 387, 390, 391, 427, Last of All Lovers of the Moonlight, 1911),
502n, 504, 539, 542 377–379
—, La fondazione e manifesto del futurismo. —, Proclama futurista a los españoles
In Ireland. New Schools of Literature (May (Futurist Proclamation to the Spaniards,
1909), 76 1910), 114, 121n
—, La fondazione e manifesto del futurismo. —, Sintesi radiofoniche (Short Radio Dramas,
In Russia. Futurizm: Literaturnyi manifest 1933), 409n
(March 1910), 202 —, Taccuini (Notebooks, 1987), 306, 429
—, La fondazione e manifesto del futurismo. —, Un movimento artistico crea un partito
In Russia. Nabroski sovremennosti: politico (An Artistic Movement Creates a
Futuristy (March 1909), 169, 202 Political Party, 1919), 97
—, La fondazione e manifesto del futurismo. —, Un paesaggio udito (A Landscape Heard,
In Spain. Fundación y manifiesto del 1933), 409
futurismo (April 1909), 114 —, Una sensibilità italiana nata in Egitto
—, La necessità e bellezza della violenza (The (An Italian Sensibility Born in Egypt,
Necessity and Beauty of Violence, 1910), 1943/1969), 104n
385, 386, 508n —, Velocità (Speed, 1916), 314n
—, La nuova religione-morale della velocità —, Zang tumb tuuum: Adrianopoli ottobre
(The New Ethical Religion of Speed, 1916), 1912. Parole in libertà (Zang Tumb Tumb:
380 Adrianople, October 1912. Words-in-
—, L'alcova d’acciaio (The Alcove of Steel, Freedom, 1914), 478, 543, 545, 546
1921), 386 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, and Alberto
—, Le Futurisme (Futurism, 1911), 97–98 Viviani, Firenze biondazzurra sposerebbe
—, Le Futurisme mondial: Manifeste à futurista morigerato (Platinum-Blonde
Paris (World-wide Futurism: Manifesto Florence Seeks Marriage with Prissy
Launched in Paris, 1924), 489 Futurist, 1944), 333n
—, Le Roi Bombance (King Guzzle 1905), XIV, Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, and C. R. W.
101n, 538 Nevinson, A Futurist Manifesto: Vital
—, Lettera aperta al futurista Mac Delmarle English Art (1914), 30, 31, 51, 439
622 Name Index
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, and Enif Robert, —, Iskusstvo ostrova paskhi (The Art of the
Un ventre di donna: Romanzo chirurgico Easter Islands, 1914), 269n
(A Women’s Womb: A Surgical Novel, —, Svirel' kitaia (The Chinese Flute, 1914),
1919), 455, 459, 460 269n
Mautner von Markhof, Harriet, 335
Markov, Vladimir (pseud.), see Matvejs, Mayakovsky, Vladimir (Vladimir Vladimirovich
Voldemārs Maiakovskii), 177, 184, 185, 186, 189, 191,
Markov, Vladimir Fedorovich, 191, 243, 246 246, 255, 257, 270, 271, 273, 274, 285,
—, Russian Futurism: A History (1968), 226, 416, 462, 481, 488, 540, 551, 554
254 —, Bez belykh flagov (No White Flags, 1914),
Marlinsky, Alexander (pseud. of Alexander 481
Alexandrovich Bestuzhev), 248 —, Ia! (Me!, 1913), 432n
Marpillero, Emma, 313 —, Rossia. Iskusstvo. Mi (Russia. Art. We,
Marr, Iurii Nikolaevich, 395, 406, 408n 1914), 177n
Marsh, Clare, 72 —, Vladimir Maiakovskii: Tragediia (Vladimir
Martiros, Saryan, Gieny (Hyenas, 1909), 524 Mayakovsky: A Tragedy, 1913), 216, 270
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, Das —, Voina i iazyk (War and Language, 1914),
Kommunistische Manifest (Communist 481
Manifesto, 1848), 427 —, Voina i mir (War and the World, 1916), 481
Mashkov, Ilya (Il'ia Ivanovich Mashkov), 177, Mazel, Ruvim (Il'ia Moiseevich Mazel'), 525
497, 528 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 317, 318
—, Portret damy v kresle (Portrait of a Lady in McCarthy, Eamon, 111–135
a Chair, 1913), 528 McNeill, Patricia Silva, 492
Matić, Dušan, 331 Meazzi, Barbara, XI, XIV, 261n, 450–464
Matisse, Henri, 74, 76, 95, 192, 369, 384 —, L'arte futurista di piacere: Sintesi di
Matyushin (Matiushin), Mikhail Vasil'evich, tecniche di seduzione (The Futurist Art of
212, 222, 266, 267, 270, 273–274, 275, Pleasure: A Synthesis of the Techniques
277, 278, 281, 283, 285, 286, 527–528, of Seduction, 2012), 453
547 Meersman, Philip, 447
—, Compositions: Pobeda nad solntsem Meller, Vadym Heorhiiovych, 293, 294, 295
(Victory over the Sun, 1913), 270, 480 Melnikov, A. (caricaturist), 431–433
—, Sculptures: Begushchii chelovek (Man Melnikova, Sofia Georgievna, 231–233, 238,
Running, 1915–16), 527 241, 242
—, —, Tantsuiushchaia zhenshchina Meštrović, Ivan, Portrait of Růžena Zátková
(Woman Dancing, 1915–16), 527 (1912), 139
—, —, Venera (Venus, 1920), 527–528 Metzinger, Jean, 5, 6, 37, 178, 260
—, Writings: O knige Mettsenzhe – Gleza "O Metzinger, Jean, and Albert Gleizes, Du
kubizme" (On the Book by Gleizes and “Cubisme” (On “Cubism”, 1912), 212
Metzinger "Du Cubisme", 1913), 212–213 Meyerhold, Vsevolod (Vsevolod Emil'evich
—, —, Russkie kubo-futuristy (The Russian Meierkhol'd), 553n
Cubo-Futurists, 1933/34), 278 Micić, Branislav (Branimir, Branko, Valerij,
—, —, Tvorcheskii put' (My Creative Path, Vij, Virgil, or Ve), see Poljanski, Branko Ve
1933/34), 279, 281, 282, 286 (pseud.)
Matteotti, Giacomo, 308 Micić, Ljubomir, 484, 491, 539
Matvejs, Voldemārs (Hans Waldemars Yanov Mileeva, Maria, 498
Matvejs; pseud. Vladimir Markov), 269n Milev, Geo, 492
—, Iskusstvo negrov (Negro Art, 1919), 270n Milner, John, 495–499
Name Index 623
Miracco, Renato, 460 Naumov, Niktopoleon Pavlovich, 554, 556

Misler, Nicoletta, 523 Navratil', I. O., 237
Mnatsakanova, Elizaveta (Elisabeth Nevinson, Christopher Richard Wynne, 26, 30,
Arkad'evna Netzkowa, née 39, 45, 50–51
Mnatsakanjan), 445 Nevinson, Christopher Richard Wynne, and
Mon, Franz, 401n Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, A Futurist
Monastyrsky, Andrey (Andrei Viktorovich Manifesto: Vital English Art (1914), 31,
Monastyrskii), 395, 406, 470, 482 439
Moore, Henry, 38 Nevinson, Margaret Wynne Jones, Futurism
Moore, Nancy Gaye, 88 and Women (1910), 30, 439
Mordvinov, Alexander Alexandrovich, Count Nicholas I (Nikolai Pavlovich Romanov, Tsar of
Chernianka, 273, 274 Russia), 248
Mori, Marisa, XVIII, XIX, 457, 460n Nicholas II (Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov,
Morpurgo, Nelson, 451n Tsar of Russia), 524
Morris, Frances, 23 Nicholson, Ben, 38n, 40
Mosco, Valentina, Donna e futurismo, fra Nielsen, Jais, Pottemageren (The Potter,
virilismo e riscatto (Woman and Futurism, 1925), 487
between Virilism and Redemption, 2009), Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 278, 328, 331,
XVIIIn, 340n, 342n 386
Mosco, Valentina, and Sandro Rogari, Le Nijinska, Bronislava (Bronisława Niżyńska;
amazzoni del futurismo (The Amazons of Bronislava Khomivna Nizhyns'ka;
Futurism, 2009), 450, 453 Bronislava Fominichna Nizhinskaia), 292,
Moseley, Oswald Ernald, 32n 293
Moser, Mary, 25 Nik, A. (pseud. of Nikolai Aksel'rod), 399n,
Moshchinskaia, O. M., Monastir' (Monastery, 403, 407n
s.d.), 237 Nikolskaya (Nikol'skaia), Tat'iana L'vovna,
—, Po doline moei zhizni (Along the Valley of 399, 410
my Life, s.d.), 237 —, “Fantasticheskii gorod”: Russkaia
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, Le nozze di kul'turnaia zhizn' v Tbilisi (1917–1921),
Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, 1786), 293 ("Fantastic City": Russian Cultural Life in
Mühlschlegel, Ulrike, 531–536 Tbilisi, 1917–21), 226, 246
Mukhina, Vera Ignat'evna, 178 Nikonova, Rea (or Ry; pseud. of Anna
Munari, Bruno, 479 Aleksandrovna Tarshis), 395–424, 445,
Munch, Edvard, 280 467–471, 491
Murray, Natalia, 495 —, Kniga-fleita (Book-Flute, 1984), 404, 405
Mussolini, Benito, XIII, 297, 306, 307, 308, —, Kulin-art (Art for Ingestion, 1983), 404
330, 357n, 360, 478, 479, 490, 506, 507, —, Mir familii (The World of Names, c.1985),
509 412
—, Phonetic Waves (1992), 412, 419n
Nakatov, Il'ia (pseud. of Il'ia Markovich —, Sistema (The System, 1980ff.), 415, 416
Vasilevskii), Balaganchik (Puppet Show, —, Slovo – lishnee kak takovoe (The Word –
1913), 431 Superfluous as Such, 1998), 415n
Napoleon (Napoleone di Buonaparte, French —, Transponirovanie kartiny K. Malevicha v
Emperor), 97n chernyi bespauznyi stikh (Transposition of
Napravnik, Eduard (Eduard Francevič K. Malevich’s Painting into a Black Poem
Nápravník), Dubrovsky (1895), 237 without Pauses, 1983), 415
—, Garol'd (Harold (1884), 237 —, TTT (1968–70), 412
624 Name Index
—, Vandaletto (Little Vandal, 1984), 404 Pal'mov, Viktor Nikandrovich, 551n

—, Veshchi (Things, 1970–2001), 414 Pankhurst, Emmeline (née Goulden), 30n,
Nikonova, Rea, and Serge Segay, Vmesto 32n, 439, 440
manifesta (Instead of a Manifesto, 1983), Pannaggi, Ivo, 547
397, 410 —, Interior Design: Casa d’Arte Bragaglia
—, TRANSPONANCE TRANSSFURISMUS oder (1921), 319n
kaaba der abstraktion (1989), 401, 411n Pannaggi, Ivo, and Vinicio Paladini, Ballo
Nikonova-Tarshis, Anna-Ry, see Nikonova, Rea meccanico futurista (Futurist Mechanical
(pseud.), Ballet, 1922), 547n
Nizhinskaia, Bronislava Fominichna, see Panovskii, Vatslav Vatslavich, 552
Nijinska, Bronislava Pansera, Anty, and Tiziana Occleppo, Dal
Nizhyns'ka, Bronislava Khomivna, see merletto alla motocicletta (From Lace to
Nijinska, Bronislava Motorcycle, 2002), 457
Niżyńska, Bronisława, see Nijinska, Papeta, Sergei (Serhiy Pavlovych), 293
Bronislava Papini, Giovanni, 77, 303, 304, 341n, 346
Nizzoli, Marcello, 479 —, Un uomo finito (A Failed Man, 1912),
Novalis (pseud. of Georg Philipp Friedrich 539
Freiherr von Hardenberg), 271n Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 191, 245
Nozzoli, Anna, Tabù e coscienza (Taboo and Paz, Octavio, 532
Conscience, 1978), XII, 455 Peploe, Samuel, 38
Peppin, Brigid, 23, 36, 54, 55, 65
Œttingen, Hélène d’ (Helene von Oettingen, Perloff, Marjorie, 46n, 366–367, 370,
née Jelena Jadwiga Mionteska, comtesse 371–372, 383, 387
Miaczinska), 88n, 261n, 451, 459 Personé, Luigi Maria, 456, 459
Oleinikov, Nikolai Makarovich, 401n, 406, 408 Pessoa, Fernando, 492
Omuka, Toshiharu, 550–557 Peter the Great (Petr Velikii; Petr Alexeevich
Orpheus (mythological figure), 330 Romanov, Tsar of Russia), 272–273
Ostanin, Boris Vladimirovich, 416–417 Petersen Gether, Vibeke, 487
Otašević, Mira, 327–332 Petnikov, Grigorii Nikolaevich, 102
—, Beket i jastog (Beckett and the Lobster, Petrėnas, Juozas (pseud. Petras Tarulis), 488
2005), 331 Petrova, Yevgenia (Evgeniia Nikolaevna
—, Magamal (1994), 327–332 Petrova), 523
—, Ničeova sestra (Nietzsche’s Sister, 1999), Petrovsky, Andrey (Andrei Pavlovich
331 Petrovskii), 227
—, Zmajevi od papira (Paper Kites, 2008), 331 Petrov-Vodkin, Kuzma, 200
—, Zoja (Zoe, 2012), 331 —, Na linii ognia (In the Line of Fire, 1917),
Ouspensky, Pyotr (Petr Demianovich 177n
Uspenskii), 216, 278 Pettazzi, Giuseppe, Fiat Tagliero Building in
—, Chetvertoe izmerenie (The Fourth Asmara, Eritrea (1938), 490
Dimension, 1909), 279n Pettoruti, Emilio, 129, 130, 131, 437
—, Tertium Organum: Kliuch k zagadkam Piaget, Jean, 347
mira (Tertium Organum: A Key to the Picabia, Francis, 12, 15–18, 373–375
Enigmas of the World, 1911), 212 —, Portrait of a Young American Girl in a
State of Nudity (1915), 373–375
Paladini, Vinicio, and Ivo Pannaggi, Ballo Picasso, Pablo Ruiz, 6, 12, 41, 47, 74, 77, 95,
meccanico futurista (Futurist Mechanical 113, 117, 132, 178, 180, 253, 260, 367,
Ballet, 1922), 547n 369, 500, 513, 535
Name Index 625
—, Paintings: El embalse (Horta de Ebro) Proust, Marcel, 331

(The Reservoir: Horta de Ebro, 1909), 259 Prybyl's'ka, Evheniia Ivanivna, 292–293
—, —, Retrato de Gertrude Stein (Portrait of Puni, Ivan Al'bertovich (Iwan Puni; Jean
Gertrude Stein, 1905–06), 83 Pougny), 178, 183–184, 194, 257
Pimenov, Dmitrii, 482 —, Noveishie techenia v russkom iskusstve
Pinter, Harold, 331 (Newest Currents in Russian Art, 1927),
Pirandello, Luigi, 304 171
—, Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, No One Punin, Nikolay (Nikolai Nikolaevich Punin),
and One Hundred Thousand, 1926), 345 171
Piubellini, Enrica, 313 Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 207, 248,
Planck, Max, 344 399, 413, 418, 480, 482
Plase, Jānis (Zhan Plasse), 554 —, Evgenii Onegin (Eugene Onegin, 1825),
Plaza Chillón, José Luis, 112 398, 414
Podbevšek, Anton, 491 —, Ia pomniu chudnoe mgnoven'e (I
Poe, Edgar Allan, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlame, and Remember a Wonderful Moment, 1825),
Minor Poems (1829), 355 413
Poggi, Christine, 386 Pythagoras ho Samios, 499
Poljanski, Branko Ve, 484, 491
Polonskii, Iakov Petrovich, Den'i Noch' (Day Quinn, John, 23, 27, 39, 45
and Night, 1839), 238
Pomajzlová, Alena, 136–167 Rachilde (pseud. of Marguerite Eymery
Ponson du Terrail, Pierre-Alexis, La Jeunesse Vallette), XIVn, 94n, 95, 103
du roi Henri (The Youth of King Henry IV, —, Le Vendeur de soleil (The Seller of the
1859–64), 495n Sun, 1894), 94n
—, Le Club des valets de cœur (The Jack of Rachlevičiūtė, Ramutė, 488
Hearts Club, 1858), 495n Radetzky von Radetz, Joseph, 336
Popović, Mića, 331 Rainey, Lawrence S., 47, 48
Poroshin, Aleksandr, 234n, 236, 238 Rasponi Spalletti, Gabriella, 93
—, Korabliam ukhodiashchim (To Vanishing Raynaud, Mlle, (pseud.) see Saint-Point,
Boats, s.d.), 238 Valentine de
—, Dushnoi noch'iu (Sultry Night, s.d.), 238 Re, Lucia, 106, 334n, 335, 352n, 455, 456
Pougny, Jean, see Puni, Ivan Reghini, Arturo, 341n, 346
Prampolini, Enrico, 113n, 136, 137, 138, 144, Regina (pseud. of Regina Prassede Cassiolo
155, 156, 158, 357, 479, 505 Bracchi), XVIII, XIX, 457, 460n
—, Murals: Sintesi dell’Africa (Synthesis of Remizov, Aleksei Mikhailovich, 235, 417
Africa, 1940), 490 Renterghem, Albert Willem van, 309n
Pratella, Francesco Balilla, 142, 313, 542–543, Resnevich, Olga Ivanovna (Olga Signorelli),
545 304
Prebisch, Alberto, Marinetti en los “Amigos Reutlinger, Léopold, 91
del Arte” (Marinetti at the “Friends of Ribo, D. G. (musician), 237
Art”, 1926), 130–131 Rice, Anne Estelle, 38, 60
Previati, Gaetano, 516 Richard de la Fuente, Véronique, Valentine
Prezzolini, Giuseppe, 304 de Saint Point: Une poétesse dans
Prigov, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich, 305, 401, 406, l’avant-garde futuriste et méditerranéiste
418, 419, 470 (Valentine de Saint Point: A Poetesse
Prokofiev, Sergei (Sergei Sergeevich in the Futurist and Mediterraneist
Prokof'ev), 142 Avant-Garde, 2003), 88, 458
626 Name Index
Richard, Annie, and Georgiana Colvile, realtà… (In Reality, There Was Exactly…,
Autoreprésentation feminine (Female 1917), 350–352
Self-representation, 2013), 456n —, —, Che colpa ne ho io?... (Why Blame Me
Richardson, Mary Raleigh, 32, 440 for It?..., 1917), 347–348
Rifkind, David, 490 —, —, Conflagrazione geometrica
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai Andreevich, Sadko (Geometric Conflagration, 1917), 352,
(1896), 143 358
Ristović, Milan, 331–332 —, —, Tausend und eine Nacht (A Thousand
Robakidze, Grigol (Grigorii), 229, 231, 232, and One Nights, 1923), 354, 356–357
237, 240 —, —, Ricevimento – thé – signore – nessun
Robert, Enif (Enif Angiolini Robert), XIX, 451, uomo (Reception – Tea – Ladies – No
455, 456, 457, 459, 460, 461 Men, 1917), 342–344
Robert, Enif, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, —, —, Sono milioni di vertigini… (A Million
Un ventre di donna: Romanzo chirurgico Instances of Dizziness…, 1919),
(A Women’s Womb: A Surgical Novel, 349–350
1919), 455, 459, 460 —, —, Das persische Papageienbuch (The
Roberts, William, Paintings: The Vorticists at Persian Parrot Book, 1922), 354, 357
the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel: Spring —, Paintings: Anticolana alla fonte
1915 (1962), 25, 53, 58 (Anticolana at the Source, ante 1935),
—, Writings: Vortex Pamphlets, 1956–1958 355
(1958), 25–26, 53n —, Writings: Eterno mediterraneo (Eternal
Rodchenko, Alexandr Mikhailovich, 192 Mediterranean, 1964), 346
Rodin, Auguste, 94n —, —, Il fenomeno bisanzio (The Phenome-
Roenau, Ernst (pseud. of Ernst Rosenbaum), non of Byzantium, 1970), 346
354 —, —, Le donne cambiano finalmente…
Roerich, Nicholas (Nikolai Konstantinovich (Women Are Finally Changing, 1917),
Rerikh), 525 342
Rogari, Sandro, 450, 453, 454 —, —, Le donne del posdomani (The Women
Roht, Richard, and Henrik Visnapuu, Roheline of the Near Future, 1917),
moment (The Green Moment, 1914), 488 —, —, Risposta a Jean-Jacques…(An Answer
Romani, Romolo, 146, 154 to Jean-Jacques, 1917), 342
Romanov, Alexandr Nikolaevich, see —, —, Romanticismo sonnambulo
Alexander II (Tsar of Russia) (Sleepwalking Romanticism, 1917),
Romanov, Nikolai Alexandrovich, see Nicholas 344
II (Tsar of Russia) —, —, Una donna con tre anime (A Woman
Romanov, Nikolai Pavlovich, see Nicholas I with Three Souls, 1918), 334, 344
(Tsar of Russia) Rosenstock, Samuel, see Tzara, Tristan
Romanov, Petr Alexeevich, see Peter the Great (pseud.)
(Tsar of Russia) Rossomakhin, Andrei Anatol'evich, 431–434
Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad, 344n Rothenstein, John Knewstub Maurice, 26
Rosà, Rosa (Edyth Arnaldi, Edyth von Haynau), Roughton, Roger, 40
XII, XVIII, 333–365, 451, 453, 455, 456, Rousseau, Henri, 274
457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 506 Rozanov, Vasilii Vasil'evich, Voina 1914 goda
—, Drawings: Bandiere (Flags, 1919), 355 i russkoe vozrozhdenie (The War of 1914
—, —, Danzatrice (Dancer, 1921), 345–346 and the Russian Revival, 1915), 480
—, —, Mona Vanna (early 1920s), 353, 355 Rozanova, Olga (Ol'ga Vladimirovna
—, Illustrations: C'era veramente nella Rozanova), IX, 168, 174–175, 179, 184,
Name Index 627
189–191, 192, 194, 199–225, 230, 262, —, —, Postroika doma (The Building Site,
395, 406, 407, 408, 450, 460n 1913), 205
—, Illustrated books: Bukh lesinnyi —, —, Pozhar v gorode (Fire in the City,
(Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh, Forestly 1914), 174, 205, 207
Rapid, 1913), 217 —, —, Zavod i most (The Factory and the
—, —, Igra v adu (Khlebnikov and Bridge, 1913), 203, 206, 207
Kruchenykh, Game in Hell, 1914), 217 —, Sculptures: Avtomobil' (Automobile,
—, —, Te Li Le (Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov, 1915), 221
1914), 218–219 —, —, Velosipedist (chertova panel') (Cyclist
—, —, Utinoe genedyshko … durnykh slov [The Devil's Footpath], 1915), 221
(Kruchenykh, A Little Duck's Nest … of —, Writings: Manifest Soiuza Molodezhi (The
Bad Words, 1913), 217 Union of Youth Manifesto, 1913), 174,
—, —, Voina (Kruchenykh, War, 1916), 200, 201
189–191, 219–220, 481 —, —, Osnovy novogo tvorchestva (The
—, —, Vozropshchem (Kruchenykh, Let’s Bases of the New Creation and the
Grumble, 1913), 216 Reasons Why It Is Misunderstood,
—, —, Vzorval (Kruchenykh, Explodity, 1913), 213
1913), 217 Rubin, Neol, 400
—, —, Zaum'naia gniga (Kruchenykh and Rubiner, Ludwig, 124
Jakobson, The Transrational Boog, Rubinshtein, Lev Semenovich, 395, 406, 417
1915), 219 Rühm, Gerhard, 401n, 408n
—, Linocuts: Aeroplani nad gorodom Russolo, Luigi, 77, 78, 79, 103, 141, 142, 261n,
(Aeroplanes over the City, 1916), 189–190 313, 346, 383, 542
—, Lithographs: Bitva (Battle, 1916), 189 —, Paintings: Automobile in corsa (Racing
—, —, Bitva v gorode (Battle in the City, Motor-car, 1912–13), 77
1916), 189 —, —, Autoritratto con doppio eterico
—, —, Bitva v trekh sferakh, na sushe, na (Self-Portrait with Etheric Double,
more i v vozdukhe (Battle in the Three 1910–11), 346
Spheres: On the Land, on the Sea and —, —, Solidità della nebbia (Solidity of Fog,
in Mid-air, 1916), 189 1912), 79
—, —, Kon vstavshii na dibi (A Rearing-up —, —, Volumi dinamici (Dynamic Volumes,
Horse, 1916), 175 1913), 77
—, —, Poedinok (Duel, 1916), 189 —, Writings: L'arte dei rumori: Manifesto
—, —, Vselenskaia voina Ъ (Universal War Ъ, futurista (The Art of Noises: A Futurist
1916), 398n, 481, 490 Manifesto, 1913), 383, 493
—, —, Vzriv (Explosion, 1916), 175 Ruta, Anna Maria, 457
—, Paintings: Gorodskoi peizazh (Cityscape, Rutter, Frank, 40, 439
1914); see Pozhar v gorode Ryleyev, Kondraty (Kondratii Fedorovich
—, —, Inter'er pivnoi (Pub Interior, 1914), 209 Ryleev), 248
—, —, Kuznitsa (The Smithy, 1912), 205
—, —, Metronom (Metronome, 1914), 199, Saakadze, Giorgi (Giorgi Siaushis dze
210–211, 213 Saakadze, called “Grand Mouravi”),
—, —, Na ulitse (Teatr modern) (In the 234n
Street: The Art Nouveau Theatre, Saint-Point, Valentine de (pseud. of Anna
1915), 214–215 Jeanne Valentine Marianne De Glans de
—, —, Pivnaia (Auktsion) (The Pub [The Cessiat-Vercell), IX, Xn, 87–110, 451, 452,
Auction], 1914), 208, 209 455, 458–460, 506
628 Name Index
—, La Femme dans la littérature italienne zureichenden Grunde (On the Fourfold

(Women in Italian Literature, 1911), 92 Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,
—, La Métachorie (Beyond the Chorus, 1913), 1813), 298n, 304
87, 89, 90, 92, 458 Schwitters, Kurt, 408n
—, Le Théâtre de la femme (Women’s Scott, Julia (Julia Kinney H. Scott), 303, 341
Theatre, 1913), 92 Scriabin, Alexander Nikolaevich, 39
—, Manifeste de la femme futuriste Scurto, Olga, see Barbara (pseud.)
(Manifesto of the Futurist Woman, 1912), Sedgwick, Eve: Between Men: English
87, 88, 90, 96, 99–102, 329 Literature and Male Homosocial Desire
—, Manifeste futuriste de la luxure (Futurist (1985), 29
Manifesto of Lust, 1913), 34, 87, 90, 99, Segay, Serge (Sergei Sigei, pseud. of
102–105, 106 Sergei Vsevolodovich Sigov), 395–403,
—, Une femme et le désir (A Woman and 406–408, 410, 411, 416, 419, 497–473
Desire, 1910), 92 —, Chitantologia zaumi 1910–1972
Saint-Pol-Roux (pseud. of Paul-Pierre Roux), (Readology of Zaum 1910–1972, c.1972),
95n 403n
Salaris, Claudia, 336, 355, 451, —, Springtime for Kruchenykh (1979), 469
—, Le futuriste (The Futurist Women, 1982), Selmanagić, Selman, 331
XI, 334–335, 451, 454 Semeiko, Nikolai, Grigoriu Robakidze (To
Salmi, Mario, 139 Grigol Robakidze, s.d.), 237
Salome (biblical figure), 233 —, V zakoldovannoi izbe (In the Enchanted
Sand, George (pseud. of Amantine-Lucile- Cottage, s.d.), 237
Aurore Dupin), Contes d’une grand’ mère Semenko, Mykhailo Vasyl'ovych (Mykhail'
(Grandmother’s Tales, 1872–1875), 267 Vasil'evich), 292, 295
Sands, Ethel, 39 Šemerys, Salys, 488
Sant’Elia, Antonio, 81, 505 Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, 100
Sapgir, Genrikh Veniaminovich, 395, 406 Semper, Johannes, 488
Sartini Blum, Cinzia, The Other Modernism Senio (pseud. of Giuseppe Sciti), La signora
(1996), 455 Serao (Mrs Serao, 1910), 428
Satie, Erik (Éric Alfred Leslie Satie), 95 Serao, Matilde, 427–430
Satunovsky, Ian (Iakov Abramovich —, Il futurismo in ritirata (Futurism on the
Satunovskii), 407 Retreat, 1919), 427
Savitsky, Igor (Igor' Vital'evich Savitskii), 550 Serebriakova, Zinaida (Zinaida Evgenevna
Scarfoglio, Edward, 428 Serebriakova, née Lansere), 177n
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 271n Sereni, Emilio, 297n
Scherstjanoi, Valeri (Valerii Mikhailovich Settimelli, Emilio, 304, 317, 334, 335, 346,
Sherstianoi), 401n 356
Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von, 271n Severini, Gino, 4, 8, 77, 95, 103, 179, 427, 517,
Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl, Petri Fischzug (The 539
Miraculous Draught of Fishes, 1918), 120 —, Writings: La vita di un pittore (The Life of
Schmitt, Florent, 95 a Painter, 1946), 96n
Schönberg (after 1934 Schoenberg), Arnold, —, —, Le analogie plastiche del dinamismo
39 (Plastic Analogies of Dynamism,
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 300, 310, 321, 328 1913), 11n
—, Parerga und Paralipomena (Appendices Severyanin (Severianin), Igor (pseud. of Igor'
and Omissions, 1851), 298 Vasil'evich Lotarev), 411
—, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom Sforza, Caterina, 100
Name Index 629
Sforza, Ottaviano, 100 Somenzi, Mino (Stanislao), 311n, 317

Shaikevich, Grigorii, 236 Somigli, Luca, 31, 75, 76
—, Kolibel'niaia (Lullaby, s.d.), 238 Sontag, Susan, 331
—, P'ero (Pierrot, s.d.), 238 Sorel, Georges, 328, 385, 478, 539
Shakespear, Dorothy, 21, 22, 23, 27, 57, 58 Sosnkowski, Jerzy, Auto, Ty i Ja (miłość
Shekhtel', Lev Fedorovich (pseud. of Lev maszyn) (A Car, You and Me: Love of
Zhegin), 432n Machines, 1925), 492
Shekhtel', Vera Fedorovna, 186 Spackman, Barbara, 455
Shklovsky, Viktor (Viktor Borisovitch Spandikov, Eduard, 269n
Shklovskii), 481 Sprovieri, Giuseppe, 95, 141n, 146, 203, 262,
Shkolnik, Josif Solomovits, 170n, 269n 310, 338, 544
Shkurupiy, Geo (Heorhii [Iurii] Danilovych St John (Evangelist), Apokalypsis (Book of
Shkurupii), 295 Revelation, 95 AD), 173
Shleifer, Savelii Iakovlevich, 269n St Francis of Assisi, see Francis of Assisi
Sibelius, Jean, 280 Stadler, Ernst, 124
Sigei, Sergei, see Segay, Serge (pseud.) Stagni Testi Pensabene, Fides (née Fides
Signora X (pseud.), see Zátková, Růžena Stagni), XVIII, 460n
Signorelli, Angelo, 304 Stalin, Joseph (pseud. of Iosif Vissarionovich
Signorelli, Olga, see Resnevich, Olga Dzhugashvili), 234n, 245, 482
Ivanovna Stein, Gertrude, 77, 83, 331, 366–394
Sigov, Sergei Vsevolodovich, see Segay, Serge —, A Chair (1914), 374
(pseud.) —, A Water-fall and a Piano (1936), 388
Sina, Adrien, 87–88, 90, 91, 94n, 458, 459 —, American Crimes and How They Matter
—, Feminine Futures (2011), XIII, 87 (1935), 388
Singer Sargent, John, Portrait of Henry James —, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor
(1913), 440 (1934/1982), 375, 384, 388
Siniakova, Maria (Mariia Mikhailovna —, Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), 376,
Siniakova-Urechina; Maryia Mykhailovna 377, 380
Syniakova-Urechyna), 168, 191–194 —, Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), 379
—, Watercolours: Bomba (Bomb, 1916), 192 —, Is Dead (1936), 388
—, —, Izgnanie iz raia (Expulsion from —, Lectures in America (1935), 376
Paradise, 1916), 192 —, Marry Nettie (1915–17/1955), 366,
—, —, Voina (War, 1916), 192–193 370–372
Sironi, Mario, 313 —, Patriarchal Poetry (1927/1953), 367
Sironi, Marta, 439–441 —, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Sitwell, Edith Louisa, 40 (1933), 366, 370, 380, 384, 388
Socrates (Sōkratēs), 414 —, Portraits and Repetition (1935), 376
Soffici, Ardengo, 77, 178, 180, 202, 260–264, —, Tender Buttons (1914), 370, 374, 381, 388
304, 311, 452 —, Wars I Have Seen (1945), 376
—, Writings: Primi principi di un'estetica —, Why I Like Detective Stories (1937), 388
futurista (First Principles of a Futurist Steiner, Evgeny (Evgenii Semenovich
Aesthetics, 1919), 539 Shteiner), 403n
Solar, Xul (pseud. of Oscar Agustín Alejandro Steiner, Giuseppe, 458
Schulz Solari), 129, 130, 131, 437, 534 Steiner, Rudolf, 328, 339, 341, 344, 537
Sologub, Fyodor (pseud. of Fedor Kuzmich Stepanov, Aleksei Stepanovich, Volki noch'iu
Teternikov), 267, 417 (Wolves at Night, 1910s), 524
Somenzi, Bruna, see Brunas (pseud.) Stepanova, Varvara Fedorovna, 194, 460n
630 Name Index
Stratanovsky, Sergei (Sergei Georg'evich —, Uglovoi kontr-rel'efa (Corner Counter-

Stratanovskii), 417 Reliefs, 1913–17), 183
Straus, Beth, 80 Tavolato, Italo, 489
Stravinsky, Igor (Igor' Fedorovich Stravinskii), —, Elogio della prostituzione (In Praise of
142n, 331 Prostitution, 1913), 106
—, Feu d’artifice, op. 4 (Feierverk; Fireworks, Tempest, Marie, 40
1908), 505 Terentyev (Terent'ev), Igor' Gerasimovich, Moi
—, Liturgie (Liturgy, unfinished ballet), 141 pokhorony (My Funeral, 1919), 238
Strindberg, August, 280 Teruyuki, Hara, 550
Strożek, Przemysław, 489 Thompson, Marguerite (Marguerite Thompson
Subotić, Irina, 327–332 Zorach), 37
Sudac, Marinko, 477, 483–484 Þórðarson, Þórbergur, Futuriskar
Sudakova, Elena Nikolaevna, 498, 500 kveldstemningar (Futurist Evening Mood,
Sudeikin, Nikolai, 244 1917), 487
Švede Dubeneckienė, Olga, 488 Thoreau, Henry David, 300
Swanzy, Mary, IX, XX, 70–86 Tickner, Lisa, 34, 55–56, 66
—, Canal Embankment (s.d.), 79, 81 Tyuvelev (Tiuvelev), Nika, 408
—, Futuristic Study with Skyscrapers and Titans (mythological figures), 313–314, 319
Propellors (s.d.), 81 Tobin, Jordan, 252–265, 497–498
—, Oil Painting à la mode d’André Lhote Toklas, Alice B. (pseud.), see Stein, Gertrude
(s.d.), 78 Toklas, Alice Babette, 369, 370, 371, 375, 380
—, Propellors (1942), 81–82 Tolstaia, Tat'iana, see Vechorka, Tat'iana
—, White Tower (s.d.), 80–81 (pseud.)
—, Woman with White Bonnet (s.d.), 82–83 Tolstaia-Vechorka, Tat'iana, see Vechorka,
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 278 Tat'iana (pseud.)
Swift, Jonathan, 70 Tolstoy, Aleksey (Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi),
Syniakova, Maria, see Siniakova, Maria 201
Tolstoy, Boris (Boris Dmitrievich Tolstoi), 227,
Tabidze, Titsian, 229, 232, 237, 240, 246 243, 244n
Tablada, José Juan, 532 Tolstoy, Leo (Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi), 274,
—, Impresión de La Habana (Impression of 278, 305, 328, 480, 481n
Havana, 1920), 533 Tommasini, Oreste, 303
—, La calle donde vivo (The Street Where I Torre, Guillermo de, 118–120, 128, 129,
Live, 1920), 533 435–436
—, Li-Po y otros poemas (Li-Po and Other —, Amiga (Girlfriend, 1921), 119n
Poems, 1920), 533–534 —, Helices (Propellers, 1923), 118, 119n, 120,
—, Un día: Poemas sintéticos (One Day: 435, 436, 437
Concise Poems, 1919), 533 —, Literaturas europeas de vanguardia
Tairov, Alexander (Oleksandr Iakovlevych (European Avant-garde Literatures, 1925),
Tairov, pseud. of Aleksandr Iakovlevich 119, 129, 435
Korenblit), 293 —, Resol (Glare of the Sun, 1920), 119n, 120
Tarquini, Alessandra, 462n Torre, Norah de, see Borges, Norah
Tarshis, Anna Aleksandrovna, see Nikonova, Toscanini, Arturo, 306
Rea (pseud.) Tretyakov (Tret'iakov), Sergei Mikhailovich,
Tarulis, Petras (pseud.), see Petrėnas, Juozas 484, 553–554
Tatlin, Vladimir Evgrafovich (Volodimyr Triolet, Elsa (née Ella Kagan), 88n, 459
Evgrafovych Tatlin), 182, 183, 184, 550 Trotsky (Trotskii), Lev Davidovich, 318
Name Index 631
Tsipuria, Bela, 226–251 Vares, Johannes, see Barbarus, Johannes

Tsvel', Gleb (pseud. of Oleg Iudaev), 406 (pseud.)
Tucović, Dimitrije, 330 Varo Uranga, Remedios (María de los
Tufanov, Aleksandr Vasil'evich, 395, 400, 406, Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga),
408, 411, 418, 471 458
Tugendkhold, Yakov (Iakov Aleksandrovich Vasilieva (Vasil'eva), Nina Nikolaevna,
Tugenkhol'd), 188 233–234
Turchinskaia, Elena Iur'evna, Avangard na —, Fantasticheskii Kabachеk (The Fantastic
Dal'nem Vostok: “Zelenaia koshka”, Tavern, 1919), 234
Burliuk i drugie (The Avantgarde in the —, Petrograd (s.d.), 237
Far East: “Green Cat", Burliuk and Others, —, Posviashcheniia (Dedicated to Sofia
2011), 550–557 Georgievna Melnikova, 1919), 233
Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Gerald Hugh (Lord Berners, —, Tsveti tomilis (Languishing Flowers, s.d.),
14th Baron Berners), 142, 146 237
Tysliava, Juozas, Le Football (1924), 488 —, Zolotie resnitsi (Golden Eyelashes, 1919),
Tyuvelev, Nika, see Tiuvelev, Nika 233
Tzara, Tristan (pseud. of Samuel Rosenstock), Vasilieva (Vasil'eva), Sofia, 233
16–18, 408n, 446, 535 Vasilieva (Vasil'eva), Vera, 233
Vautier, Ernesto, 130n
Udal'tsova, Nadezhda Andreevna, 181, 182, Vechorka, Tat'iana (pseud. of Tat'iana
194, 450, 460n Vladimirovna Efimova, married Tolstaia),
—, Dnevniki (Diaries, 1916), 182 226–251
Ugrinov, Pavle (pseud. of Vasilije Popović), —, A.A. Bestuzhev (Marlinski) (1932), 248
331 —, Avtobiografiia (Autobiography, 1951),
Unamuno, Miguel de, 115 227n
Uspenskii, Petr Demianovich, see Ouspensky, —, Baku (s.d.), 247
Pyotr —, Barabanshchik perebiraet lapkami laiki
Uzelac, Sonja Briski, 482 (Drumming with Husky Paws, 1919), 241
—, Bespomoshchnaia nezhnost' (Helpless
Vaginov, Konstantin Konstantinovich, 400, Tenderness, 1918), 234
406, 418 —, Detstvo Lermontova (Lermontov’s
Valdes, Petrus (Pierre Vaudès, Peter Waldo), Childhood, 1957), 248
299n —, Iveria', see Iz za gori lesnie lani
Valeria, Irma, XIX, 313, 340, 453, 459, 460 —, Iz za gori lesnie lani (Fallow Deers from
—, Occultismo e arte nuova (Occultism and the Forest Mountain, 1918), 239, 246
New Art, 1917), 341 —, Kira (1918), 238
Valishevsky, Zigmunt (Ziga; Zygmunt —, Khlebnikov (1920–24), 244
Waliszewski), 232 —, Magnolii (Magnolias, 1918), 234, 235,
Vallecchi, Attilio, 313 236
Valle-Inclán, Ramón María del (pseud. of —, Mir i ostal'noe (The World and the Rest,
Ramón José Simón Valle Peña), 115 1920), 243
Van Gogh, Vincent, 37n, 74 —, Molniia v tumane (Lightning in the Mist,
Vando Villar, Isaac del, 116 1919), 239–240
—, Manifiesto ultraísta (Ultra Manifesto, —, Navodnenie (The Deluge, 1925), 245
1919), 115n —, Nechaianno: Zhizn' A. Kruchenykh
Vanhanen, Janne, 492 (Accidentally: Life of A. Kruchenykh,
Vannicola, Giuseppe, 303 1919), 244
632 Name Index
—, Nu chto-zhe (So, Well, s.d.), 238 Vigodskii, G.-N. (pianist), 237, 238
—, Ob Aleksandre Bloke (About Alexander Vinogradov, Nikolai Dmitrievich, 525
Blok, 1921), 235n Visnapuu, Henrik, and Richard Roht, Roheline
—, Opiat' v otravlennikh usladakh (Poisoned moment (The Green Moment, 1914), 488
Pleasure, Again, s.d.), 238 Voloshin, Max (Maximilian Alexandrovich
—, Portrety bez retushi (Portraits without Kirienko-Voloshin), 230
Retouching, 1998), 246n Vukić, Fedja (Feđa), 479
—, Rodi (Childbirth, 1922), 246 Vvedensky (Vvedenskii), Alexandr Ivanovich,
—, Sliuni chernogo geniia (Droolings of a 399n, 470
Black Genius, 1923), 242
—, Soblazn afish (Temptation of Theatre Wadsworth, Edward Alexander, 22, 26, 31, 45,
Posters, 1919), 240, 242 53, 56, 57n
—, Tret' dushi (One-Third of a Soul, 1927), Waiss, Talí, 532
226, 246–247 Waugh, Peter, 447
—, V parchovom obruche (In a Brocade Hoop, Waugh, Rosa, 61
1919), 241 Weber, Max, Cubist Poems (1914), 492
—, Vesnoiu serdtsem ne bolei (Don't Let Your —, Cubist Poems. Japanese. Rittaiha no shi
Heart Feel Pain in Spring, 1919), 239 (1923), 492
—, Vospominaniia o Khlebnikove (Memoirs Weininger, Otto, Geschlecht und Charakter
on Khlebnikov, 1925), 244 (Sex and Character, 1903), 36, 65
—, Zaumnyi iazyk i dra dinamitnogo dendi Wells, Herbert George, War of the Worlds
(Transrational Language and the Dra of a (1897), 480, 481n
Dynamite Dandy, 1920), 244 Werenskiold, Erik, 280n
—, Zautrenya na rassvete (Matins in the West, Rebecca, Indissoluble Matrimony
Sunrise), 243 (1914), 33
Vechorka-Tolstaia, Tat'iana, see Vechorka, Weststeijn, Willem Gerardus, 467–473, 491
Tat'iana (pseud.), White, John James, 124, 126
Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y, La Whore of Babylon (Babylōn hē megalē,
Venus del espejo (The Toilet of Venus / biblical figure), 173
Rokeby Venus, c.1646), 32, 440 Wieniawski, Henryk, Souvenir de Moscou,
Vella, Attilio, 307 op. 6 (Memories of Moscow, 1852), 237
Veniavskii, Genrik, see Wieniawski, Henryk Wilenski, Reginald Howard, 40, 41
Verdier, Abel, Une étrange petite nièce Winters, Yvor, 40
de Lamartine (Lamartine’s Strange Wittig, Monique, Avant-note à Djuna Barnes:
Grandniece, 1972), 88 La Passion (Forword to Djuna Barnes,
Verdone, Mario, 334, 336, 338, 350, 356, 457 “The Passion", 1982), 107–108
Vereshchagin, Vasilii Vasil'evich, 525 Wittman, Emmy, 297
Verhaeren, Émile Adolphe Gustave, 247, 271, Wonders, Sascha (pseud.), see Hänsgen,
273 Sabine
Verlaine, Paul, 273 Wonstra, Rixt, 490
Vézelay, Paule (pseud. of Marjorie Watson- Wood, Mary, 440n
Williams), 41 Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own (1929),
Vick (pseud.), see Khovin, Viktor Romanovich 28
Vidin, Ivan Mikhailovich, 552, 556 —, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1923), 28
—, Murals: Lenin Library in Vladivostok Worringer, Wilhelm, Abstraktion und
(1923), 556 Einfühlung (Abstraction and Empathy,
Vielé-Griffin, Francis, 271 1907), 269n
Name Index 633
Wright, Andrée, 97n —, —, Giuoco di influenze ossia La vittoria

Wright, Wilbur, 97n dello spirito più forte (Will of
Wulz, Wanda, XVIII, XIX, 457 Influence, or Victory of the Stronger,
Wünsche, Isabel, 266–291 c.1916–20), 145–146
—, —, Il fariseo / Ipocrita (The Pharisee /
Yeats, Jack Butler, 72 Hypocrite, 1919–20), 160
Yeats, William Butler, 70 —, —, Intemperia in montagna / Neve,
—, Deirdre (1907), 75 piogga, vento: Tempesta in Alta
Yuon, Konstantin Fyodorovich (Konstantin montagna (Storm in the Mountains,
Fedorovich Iuon), 200 c.1920–21), 155
—, —, Invasione (Invasion, c.1916–20), 146
Zabolotsky, Nikolai Alexeevich, 408 —, —, Isole Baleari (Balearic Islands,
Zancan, Marina, 454 c.1913), 156
Zanotti, Pierantonio, 492 —, —, La vita del Re David secondo le
Zátková, Růžena (Rougena Zatkova), 136–167, legende bibliche (The Life of King
339, 359, 450 David According to Biblical Legend,
—, Costume designs: Sadko (Rimsky- 1917–18), 148, 156
Korsakov, 1916), 143 —, —, La vittoria dello spirito più forte
—, Drawings and paintings: Acqua (Water, (Victory of the Stronger, c.1916–20),
1919–20), 145n, 153, 154 145, 147
—, —, Amicizia (Friendship, c.1916–20), 146 —, —, Limoni (Lemons, c.1917), 149
—, —, Amore (Love, c.1916–20), 146 —, —, Lotta di supremazia fra vari oggetti
—, —, Angoscia (Anxiety, c.1916–20), 146 (The Struggle for Supremacy among
—, —, Attrazione (Attraction, c.1916–20), Various Objects, 1922), 158
146 —, —, Luna (Moon, c.1920), 155
—, —, Campagna romana (Roman —, —, Marinetti in bianco e nero (Marinetti
Countryside, c.1915), 156 monochromatic, c.1921), 158
—, —, Capri (c.1915), 156 —, —, Marinetti-Luce elettrica (Marinetti-
—, —, Cascata / Cascata in Montagna Electric Light, c.1921–22), 158
(Waterfall / Waterfall in the —, —, Marinetti-Luce solare (Marinetti-
Mountains, 1919–20), 155 Sunlight, c.1921–22), 158
—, —, Catastrofe (Catastrophe, c.1916–20), —, —, Mente umana fecondata di dio (Man’s
146 Soul Enriched by God, c.1920), 154
—, —, Espansione di oggetti (Expansion of —, —, Nebbia (Fog, c.1920), 155
Objects, c.1921), 156 —, —, Neve (Snow, c.1920), 155
—, —, Estasi (Ecstasi, c.1916–20), 146 —, —, Neve, pioggia, vento: Alta montagna
—, —, Forme forze (Forms Forces, c.1921), (Snow-Rain-Wind in the Mountains,
156 1919–20), 155
—, —, Forze capricciose (Capricious Forces, —, —, Pitture luminose (Luminous Paintings,
c.1922), 158 1919–21), 141, 149, 151, 156
—, —, Forze meccaniche (Mechanical Forces, —, —, Profezia (Prophecy, c.1920), 154
c.1922), 158 —, —, Quadri-sensazioni, see Pitture
—, —, Forze ritmiche degli abeti (The luminose
Rhythmic Forces of Firs, c.1916), 143 —, —, Sensazione di castagno (The Feeling
—, —, Galli di Bricco (Roosters from Bricco, of a Chestnut, c.1916), 143
1921–22), 158, 159 —, —, Sensazione di pino (The Feeling of a
—, —, Ghiacciai (Glaciers), see Nebbia Pine, c.1916), 143
634 Name Index
—, —, Sensazioni delle piante (The Feelings —, Asel naprokat (Donkey for Hire, 1919),
of Plants, c.1916), 143 411
—, —, Stati d’animo / Studi psichici (States —, Ianko krul' albanskai (Yanko, the
of Mind / Psychic Studies, s.d.), 145 Albanese King, 1918), 244
—, —, Studi psichici (Psychic Studies, —, Nataliia Goncharova i Mikhail Larionov
c.1921), 156 (1913), 433
—, Sculptures, Ariete / Sensibilità, rumori —, Zaumnaia poezia i poezia voobshche
e forze ritmiche della machina pianta- (On Zaum' Poetry and Poetry in General,
palafitte (Pile Driver / Sensibility, Noises 1918), 233
and Rhythmic Forces of a Pile Driver, —, zgA IAkaby (As if Zga, 1920), 411
1916), 140–141, 143–144, 156 Zdanevich, Kirill Mikhailovich, 240, 492
—, —, Forze psichiche (Psychic Forces, Żeligowski, Lucjan, 298n
c.1922), 158 Zhegin, Lev (pseud.), see Shekhtel', Lev
—, —, Polifemo / Il mostro della guerra Fedorovich
(Polyphemus / Monster of War, Zlydneva, Natal'ia Vital'evna, 481
1920–21), 156 Zoffany, Johann (Johannes Josephus Zauffely),
—, —, Sole (Sun, c.1920–21), 157 The Academicians of the Royal Academy
—, Writings: Il pazzo (The Madman, c.1920), (1771–72), 25
150–151 Zouari, Fawzia, La Caravane des chimères
Zátková, Sláva, 139, 143n, 144n, 145, 145n, (The Caravan of Chimeras, 1990), 88
148 —, Valentine de Saint-Point au carrefour de
Zátková, Zdena, 139–140, 151, 155n, 160n deux cultures (Valentine de Saint-Point
Zdanevich, Ilya (Il'ia Mihkailovich Zdanevich), at the Crossroads of Two Cultures, 1983),
202, 203, 232–233, 236, 238, 240, 241, 90n
399n, 400, 408, 411, 418, 480 Zvantseva, Elizaveta Nikolaevna, 200, 267
Subject Index
7 & 5 Group (Seven and Five Society, founded in Aerial Art, see under Painting
London in 1919), 37n, 41 Aerial theatre (Teatro aereo), see under
41° (Ormotsdaerti gradusi / Sorok odin Theatre
gradus / Le Degré Quarante-et-Un; Aeropainting (Aeropittura), see under Painting
Futurist group in Tbilisi and Paris), 229, Aeroplane, 120, 175n, 187–190, 220, 246,
233, 243, 246, 399, 400 273–274, 328, 329, 330, 368, 369,
391 (Barcelona, New York, Zurich, Paris, 378, 379, 490, 518, 529, 539; see also
1917–24), 16, 18 Aviation, propeller
1968 rebellion, see Students’ unrest of 1968 Aesthetics, IX–X, XIX, 3, 5, 8, 33, 41, 48, 60,
Abbaye de Créteil (artists’ community, 63, 66, 79n, 87, 89, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117,
founded in 1907), 5 118, 119, 121, 122, 124, 126, 128, 129, 131,
Abstraction (Abstract art), 9, 15, 32, 38n, 132, 136, 152, 172, 174n, 176, 177, 200,
41, 45, 47, 49, 57, 63, 65, 82, 131, 140, 204, 226, 235, 236, 239, 240, 241, 246,
142–149, 152–153, 158, 199–200, 247, 255, 264, 268, 294, 355, 367, 368,
213–222, 283, 334, 338, 347, 350, 372, 375, 379, 384–386, 388, 390, 391,
352–355, 358, 359, 458, 517, 527, 543 397, 403, 431, 436, 439, 452, 455, 458,
Absurdism, 189, 193 330, 399n, 400, 406, 478, 479, 480, 486, 487, 488, 489, 490,
407, 408, 411, 470; see also Nonsense, 483, 494, 509, 532, 534, 538
ObeRIu, Theatre of the Absurd —, Aestheticism, 59
Academicism, XV, 25, 337, 495, 500 —, Aestheticization of everyday life, see Art
Academy of Italy (Reale Academia d’Italia), and life
see Geographical index —, Aestheticization of war, 18, 168, 172, 175,
Acculturation (absorption, adaptation, 186–195, 387, 478, 481, 490, 508n
assimilation), 3, 5, 7–10, 19, 38, 115, —, of silence, 493
206, 220, 227, 234, 245, 246, 247, 264, —, of the machine, see Machine aesthetics
397, 477, 494, 531, 533, 535; see also —, of violence, 168, 171–175, 194, 368,
Cross-fertilization, eclecticism, influence, 385–388, 508n
interculturalism African art, 269n, 270n, 486, 494
Acmeism (literary school in Russia, 1910–14), Agriculture, 272, 273, 274, 275, 303, 531, 543;
234n, 413, 416, 417, 431 see also Peasantry
Acoustic turn, 543 Airpainting, see under Painting
Action Art (Action Theatre), 173, 430–433, Airplane, see Aeroplane
496; see also Happening, performance Akademiia Zaumi, see International Academy
art, publicity stunts, street performance of Zaum
Admiration of the past, see Passéism Akmeism, see Acmeism
Adultery, XV, 97n, 235, 311n Alchemy, 349
Adventure, 229, 327, 328, 336 Aleatorics (chance procedures in art), 221,
Advertising (publicity, marketing), 18, 38n, 47, 370, 447, 537
48, 49, 51, 97, 106, 345, 431, 479, 505n, Al'fa Lira (literary society in St. Petersburg and
513, 542; see also Artists’ postcards, Tbilisi, founded in December 1917), 235
manifestos, posters, publicity stunts, Alfar (A Coruña, 1920–54), 112n
slogans Alienation, 276, 378, 385, 538
AENIGMA (anthroposophical artists’ group in Allied Artists’ Association (AAA, founded in
Munich, active 1918–28), 339 London in 1908), 35, 38, 58, 59n
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0042
636 Subject Index
Alliteration, 413 Archaism, 220, 269, 523, 527–529; see also

Alogism, see Irrationalism, nonsense, Primitivism
transrational, zaum' Architecture, 9, 29, 32, 62, 63, 81, 128,
Alphabet, 469 130n, 231, 233, 273, 276, 331, 389, 490,
Alpha-Lira, see Al'fa Lira 500, 502, 518; see also Razionalismo,
Amateur art (Dilettantism), 27, 55, 63, 184, urbanism
294, 342, 400, 412, 493 Architecture, Futurist, 490, 500, 505
Amauta (Lima, 1926–30), 112n Arditi, 478
Amazons, X, XI, 100, 174, 186, 433, 453 Argus: Ezhemesiachnyi literaturno-khu-
American Fund for French Wounded, 368, 380 dozhestvennyi zhurnal (Sankt-Peterburg,
Amore, XVn, 49, 64, 66, 98n, 99, 146, 311n, 1913–16), 433
312, 313; see also Sentimentalism Aristocracy, 150, 233, 243, 244n, 248, 333,
Analogies (in Futurist literature), 11n, 377 336
Anarchism, XIII, 17, 49n, 96n, 105, 217, 257, Army, see Military
297, 306–307, 367 386, 438, 467, 478, ARS (Tbilisi, 1918–19), 234
478, 480, 482, 508 Arson, 32
Anarcho-Futurists (Neo-Futurist group in Art and life (arte-vita), 161, 280, 330,
Vologda, founded in 1962), 396n, 402 333, 441, 482, 504; see also Futurist
Anatomic theatre, 481 Refashioning of the Universe,
Andrey Bely Prize, 396 productivism
Androcentrism, 168, 194 Art Déco (Design style, c.1920–40), 487
Angels, 116, 187–188, 239, 240, 435–436, Art education, 24, 37–38, 55, 57, 73, 76,
539 111–112, 177–178, 267, 293, 337, 339,
Animism, 347, 348, 516 482, 516, 554; see also Training
Anthroposophy, 339, 458 Art Indépendant, 76
Anticlassicism, 139 Art Informel (French art movement, 1950s),
Anticolonialism, 87, 88, 89, 90n 156
Anti-establishment, 18, 168, 175, 186, 471, Art Nouveau (Jugendstil, Sezession-Stil, Stile
495 Liberty, c.1890–1910), 214, 292, 336–338
Antifascism, 297, 306, 308 Art of Noise, see Noise music
Anti-Feminism, X, XIX, 65 Arte postale, 470n; see also Mail Art
Anti-Futurism, see Futurism, ridiculed Arte sacra futurista (Futurist religious art),
Anti-militarism, 490 XVIII, 509n, 510
Anti-modernism, 138 Arte-azione, see Actionism
Anti-passéism, see Antitraditionalism Artists’ books (livres d’artistes, book art), 231,
Anti-patriarchalism, 186 240, 396n, 403–405, 481
Anti-Symbolism, 370 Artists’ cafés, 117, 229, 232, 234, 261n; see
Antitraditionalism, 96, 100, 189, 528 also in Geographical index
Anti-urbanism, 266, 272–278 Artists’ postcards, 185
Apocalypse, 173, 177, 187, 188, 398, 489, 524 Arts and crafts, 139, 234, 292, 294, 337
Apollon: Khudozhestvenno-literaturnyi Asemic writing, 446
zhurnal (Saint-Petersburg, 1909–17), 169, Aspanfut, see Association of Panfuturists
202 Assassination, 330; see also Terrorism
Applied arts, XVIII, 39, 58, 59, 234, 337, 457; Assemblage, 144, 152, 154, 356, 548
see also Advertising, arts and crafts, Assimilation, 3, 5, 7, 8–13, 19, 114–115, 118,
ceramics, graphic design, fashion design, 121, 125–126, 128, 132, 199, 222; see also
interior design Acculturation, eclecticism
Subject Index 637
Associación “Amigos del Arte” (Buenos Aires, Balkan Wars (1912–13), 478, 480, 545–546
1924–42), 129–131, 437 Ballet, 132, 151, 293, 525
Association of Panfuturists (Futurist group in Ballets Russes (itinerant ballet company,
Kiev, founded in 1922), 292, 294–295 founded in 1909), 132, 141–142, 148, 181
Associazione Artistica Internazionale (artists’ Barbarianism, 193, 204, 528, 529; see also
centre in Rome, 1884–1935), 338 Primitivism
Associazione Donne Professioniste e Artiste Barbarogenius, 491–492
(Fascist art organization, founded in Baroque, 118, 532
1932), 357 Battle of Adrianople (3 November 1912 –
Associazione Nazionale Fascista Donne 26 March 1913), 478, 543–546
Artiste e Laureate (Fascist art Bauhaus, 295, 331, 416n, 482, 509, 541
organization, founded in 1926), 357n, BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), 23
359–360 Bicycles, 15, 215, 221, 263, 390, 391, 400,
Astronomy, 279, 349 478, 518
Atheism, 510 Belle Époque, 89, 479
Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Art, Berezil' (theatre company in Kharkiv,
and Politics (Boston, 1857–2009), 370 1922–33), 294
Audience, 17, 30, 48, 77, 117, 122, 184, 432, Beyonsense poetry, see Zaum'
489, 493, 495, 497, 498–500, 542–546; Bible, 148, 173, 233; see also Church, religion
see also Participatory art Biennale, see Geographical index
Austro-Hungarian Empire, 477 Biennio rosso (Red Biennium, 1918–20), 478
Autobiography, V, 173, 227, 229, 248n, 252, Big City, see Metropolis, urbanism
297, 300, 312, 366, 370, 376, 377, 380, Big-City life, see Modernity
384, 388, 390, 399, 419n Black Friday (18 November 1910), 439n
Autogenesis, 108 Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex
Automatic writing, 279, 344 (London, 1914–15), 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33,
Automaton, 61, 377, 492; see also Cyborg, 36, 38n, 39, 51, 53–58, 62, 64, 440
marionette, robot Bloomsbury circle (group of English writers
Automobile (motorcar), 66, 77, 144, 221, and intellectuals, founded in 1912), 47
366–391, 478, 492, 529, 539, 544; see Blue Horns, see Tsisperi Qantsebi
also Transportation Body and technology, 61, 375–378; see also
Avant-garde, IX, X, XI, XII, XX, 8, 10, 23, Automaton, Extended Man, fusion of
33–34, 46, 88, 94n, 111, 112, 117, 118, humans and machine
129, 179, 330, 373, 445, 477, 479, 482, Bogoiskatel'stvo / Bogoiskateli
484, 486–494, 509, 537–539, 541 (“God-Seekers”; Russian philosophical
Avant-garde magazines, IX, 116, 124, 127n, movement, founded in 1906), 278
128, 236, 313, 484, 492, 513, 537; see Bohemianism, 228, 303, 369, 370
also Little Magazines Bolshevik Revolution, see Russian Revolution
Bolshevism, 228, 229, 318
Baku Commissars, 247 Bombs, 32, 189, 192, 478, 543, 544, 546n
Balaganchik (fairground / puppet theatre), Book art, 470, 491; see also Artists’ books
553 —, Futurist, 175, 189, 190, 217, 218, 219, 266,
Balaganchik (literary society in Vladivostok, 270, 285, 403, 412, 481, 554
founded in 1922), 554n Book as object, 470
Baleares: Revista semanal ilustrada de Book illustrations, 60, 116, 122n, 123, 148,
información, literatura, arte, comercio 199, 216–219, 267–268, 270, 280n, 281,
(Palma, 1917–23), 112n 281, 283, 285, 333–336, 346–352, 354,
638 Subject Index
357, 359, 403, 412, 469, 488, 551, 552, Catholicism, XVI, XVIII, 93, 299n, 510; see
553 also Christianity
Bourgeoisie (middle classes), 28, 33–34, 65, Censorship, 37, 40, 248, 396n, 401, 492
93, 96, 344, 359, 500 Centenary of Futurism, see under Futurism,
British Union of Fascists (political party, anniversaries of
founded in 1932), 32n Ceramics, 333, 356, 503n, 510
Bruitism, 542; see also Art of Noise Champion (firm), 375
Bubnovyi valet ("Jack of Diamonds"; Chance procedures in art, see Aleatorics
avant-garde group in Moscow, founded in Chaos, 274, 481, 537, 556
1910), 256, 495–501 Chasy (Leningrad & Moskva, 1976–90), 416
Buddhism, 278, 336n, 524, 525 Chauvinism, 185; see also Nationalism
Budetlianin / Budetliane (people of the —, (masculinist attitude), XVII
future), 170, 162n, 203, 252–254; see also Chinoiseries, 525
Futurism in Russia Choreography, see Ballet, dance
Budetlianstvo (Creative programme for the Christianity, 139, 148–149, 278, 527; see also
future), 254, 490 Catholicism, Protestantism, Reformed
Budil'nik (Sankt-Peterburg, 1865–71; Moskva, Church, religion
1873–1917), 431 Chronophotography, 11
Budushchel' (group of young anarchistic Chronotope, 366, 368
poets, founded c.1962), 467 Church, see Christianity
Budushchnik / Budushchniki (Futurists), 170, Cinema (film), 214, 230, 234, 275, 297, 313,
203 314n, 327, 330, 383, 493, 531, 542
Buffoonery, 495 Circus, 116–117, 416, 493
Bulgarian War, see Balkan Wars Città dell’Africa Orientale, 490
Burning of books (biblioclasm), XV, 6, 331, Città di Fondazione, 490
404, 502 City; see Metropolis, urbanism
Byzantine art, 138, 346 Classicism, 507
Cliché, 106, 168, 186, 194
Cabaret, 117n, 477, 542, 553, 556; for Collage, XII, 6, 117, 149, 152, 155, 190–191,
individual cabarets, see in Geographical 199, 200, 208, 210, 219–221, 263, 294,
index 403, 404n, 406, 416, 417, 435, 470, 481
Cacophony, 242, 481, 543 Collectivism, 416
Calligraphy, 525 Colonialism, 435–436, 489, 494, 523n
Camden Town Group (Post-Impressionist Commedia dell’arte, see under Theatre
group in England, active 1911–13), 38 Communication, 479, 506; see also Media,
Capitalism, 248 telegraphy, telephone
Car crash, 366, 367, 368, 369, 369, 384–390 Communism, 297, 305, 318, 427, 508–509,
Caricature (Satire, cartoons), 184, 185, 312, 556; see also Bolshevism
427–441, 497, 556; see also Parody Communist Party, Russian (Kommunisti-
Caricatures of Futurism, see Futurism, cheskaia Partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza),
ridiculed 556
Cars, see Automobiles Communist-Futurists, in Turin, 305, 508–509
Cartel literario (literary poster), 435–436 Compenetration (Interpenetration), 7, 8, 15,
Cartoons, see Caricature 79, 209, 210, 380, 356
Case d’arte (artists’ sales and exhibition Complessi plastici (Sculptural Aggregations),
galleries), 137, 154, 155, 157, 158, 319n 144, 356, 548; see also Assemblage
Cat and Mouse Act (1913), 32 Conceptualism (Russian art movement, early
Subject Index 639
1970s), 395, 401, 506, 414, 417, 482; see Cultural exchange, see Acculturation
also Moscow Conceptualists Cuman People, 524
Conciliation Bills (1910, 1911 and 1912), 435n Cyrillic script, 295, 296, 416
Conservatism, XVI, XVIII, 33, 61, 73, 84, 117,
128, 184, 274, 321, 440, 482; see also Dada (art movement, founded in 1916), 3,
Conventional culture, traditionalism 15–18, 241, 295, 320, 330, 400, 435, 447,
Constructivism (art movement, founded in 462, 477, 484, 486, 492, 509, 532, 537,
Russia in 1919), 183, 252, 292, 295, 401, 541, 542
404, 410, 482, 486, 493, 509, 537, 556 Dada (Zürich & Paris, 1917–20), 16, 17, 18
Continuous becoming, 369, 379, 382, 390 Dada Anthologie (Zürich, 1919), 17, 18
Continuous present, 369, 379, 381, 382, 390 Dada-Jok (Zagreb, 1922), 484
Conventional culture, XV, 18, 49, 186, 191, Dada-Tank (Zagreb, 1922), 484
235; see also Tradition Dance, XI, XVIII, 11, 65, 87–90, 92, 122–123,
Corporate society, 479 151, 267, 294, 307n, 345–346, 360, 452,
Corriere della sera (Milano, 1876-present), 458; see also Ballet
78, 307 Danger, 368, 369, 380, 386, 387, 388, 390
Cosmic consciousness, 104, 281, 311n, Das Neue Leben (artists’ group in Basel,
312, 313, 316–317, 334, 343, 378, 527, founded in 1918), 15, 17
548; see also Esotericism, mysticism, DAstrugistenDA (sound-poetry collective,
occultism, spiritualism founded in 2005), 447
Cosmopolitanism, 5, 12, 29, 74, 94, 178, 179, Decadence, 102n, 274, 492
436 Decadentism (European art movement,
Costume design, XVIII, 132, 143, 180, 270, c.1880–1900), 538; see also Aestheticism
292, 293, 505, 525 Decembrist uprising (Vosstanie dekabristov;
Crafts, see Arts and crafts 26 [O.S. 14] December 1825), 248
Creación / Création (Madrid, 1921, Paris, Declamation, see Manifestos, performances
1924), 535 of; Poetry, performances of
Creacionismo (Creationism, literary Deconstruction / reconstruction, 478, 480,
movement, founded c.1912), 532n, 535 482
Crescendo (Sofiia, 1922), 492 Decorative (Decorativism), 3, 59, 139, 142,
Cronache d’attualità (Roma, 1916, 1919, 143, 338
1921–26), 319 Defamiliarization, 368, 386, 388, 481
Cross-fertilization, 5, 179, 187 Degeneration, 172, 272
Crowd, 94, 123, 124, 272, 383, 384, 508 Democracy, 30n, 312, 504
Cubism, 3–10, 13n, 15, 38, 47, 48, 70–72, 75, Der Blaue Reiter (artists’ group in Munich,
76, 77, 78, 81, 84, 111–115, 117, 125, 127, founded in 1911), 46, 113, 122
129, 131, 132, 169, 170, 178, 179, 180, 187, Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider Almanac, 1912),
201, 202–208, 212, 213, 216, 252–253, 122
255, 256–260, 262, 263, 264, 265, 270, Der Sturm (subtitle varies, Berlin, 1910–32),
276, 293, 431, 436, 478, 484, 492, 493, 180
513, 523, 529 Design, see Costume design, fashion design,
Cubo-Futurism, 72, 80, 81, 83, 132, 170, graphic design, interior design
171, 178, 185, 186, 189, 199, 203, 215, Destruction (demolition), 6, 32–33, 108, 129,
216, 221, 252, 253, 255, 264, 266, 267, 168, 174, 188, 192, 215, 220, 254, 331,
270–276, 292, 400, 411, 431, 481, 488, 368, 384–386, 441, 478, 478, 480, 481,
537; see also Russian Futurism 482, 487, 538, 545; see also Burning of
Cuisine, 452 books, iconoclasm, vandalism
640 Subject Index
Detective, 375, 388 Dystopia, 489

Devětsil (Czech avant-garde group, active
1920–30), 157 EAM, see European Network for Avant-Garde
Diapazon: Antologiia sovremennoi nemetskoi and Modernism Studies
i russkoi poezii (The Range: Anthology Eccentrism, XVII, 13, 307n
of Contemporary German and Russian Eclecticism, 71, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 124,
Poetry, 2005), 446 126, 128, 130, 200, 416, 429, 461
Diaspora, see Exile Eco della cultura (Napoli, 1914–17), 428
Dictatorship, 228 École de Paris, see School of Paris
Dilettantism, see Amateur art Economy, 24, 28, 303, 304, 314, 330, 385,
Discourse analysis, 537 471, 494n, 531
Disprezzo della donna, see Scorn for woman Ediciones del Hebreo Errante (publishing
Dissolution of matter, 369, 384 house), 471
Dissonance, 217, 220, 368, 384 Edwardian society, 27–29, 33, 37–39, 42
Distraction, 382–383 Effeminacy, 50, 52, 56
Divisionism (Neo-Impressionist style adopted Ego, Dissolution of, 548
in Italy c.1891), 478, 516–517, 520 Ego-Futurism, 170, 254n, 400, 411, 431, 537
Divorce, XVII, XVIII, 93, 150, 215, 244n, 305 Egyptian art, 139
Doctrine (aesthetic dogma), 72, 84, 138, 186, Élan vital (life force), 60; see also Vitality
241, 253, 254, 255, 513 Electric light, 144, 158
Dokhlaia luna (Moskva, 1913–14), 170 Elevators, 273
Dokumentum (Budapest, 1926–27), 484 Elitism, XIV, XVII, 74, 97n
Domesticity (female), 27–28, 65, 100–101, Emancipation (female), XII, XVI, XVII, 28, 33,
274, 311, 391; see also Gender issues, 56, 63, 93, 105, 108, 228–229, 314, 328,
Donkey’s Tail, see Oslinyi khvost 440, 451n, 453; see also Feminism
Doppelgänger, 346 —, (national), 74, 228, 243, 247, 294, 298n
Double (Eisk, 1991–2000), 396, 405–406, Emigration, see Exile
415, 416, 471 Energy, 7, 14, 45, 60, 78, 81, 82, 96, 97, 104,
Drama, 75, 94n, 151, 176–177, 215, 233, 244, 120, 123, 147, 158, 175, 192, 309, 313,
267, 297, 313, 327, 354, 396, 411, 446, 480, 314, 344, 347, 358, 360, 366, 385, 440,
490, 544, 553; see also Sintesi, theatre 547, 551
Drugoe polusharie: Mezhdunarodnyi Ennui, 538
elektronnyi zhurnal literaturnogo i Equality of the sexes, 228
khudozhestvennogo avangarda (Moscow, Eroticism, XIII, XV, 30, 34, 50, 61, 96, 101,
2007 – present), 448 102–105, 106, 233, 308, 314, 316, 328,
Duel, 103, 173, 189 453
Duration (durée), 211, 213n, 279, 382; see Eroticization of machines, 369, 373
also Time Esotericism, 87, 89, 90, 94n, 334, 336, 340,
Dynamism, XX, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 24, 45, 47, 48, 341, 345, 347, 359; see also Cosmic
49, 55, 57, 60, 62, 63, 77, 81, 103, 104, consciousness, mysticism, occultism,
120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 131, 138, 142, spiritualism
143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 151, 154, 158, 161, Estridentismo (Stridentism; Mexican avant-
175, 179, 181, 183, 186, 190, 192, 194, garde movement, founded in 1921), 533,
201, 205, 206, 207, 208, 213, 220, 244, 535
254, 259, 263 264, 279n, 295, 312, 316, Étaples art colony (informal artist settlement,
327, 338, 352, 382, 478, 490, 496, 518, c.1880–1914), 38, 59
519, 554, 556 Eternal Network, see Mail Art
Subject Index 641
Ether, 13, 19, 344n, 345 —, Fascist art, XIX, 489–490, 505–509
Eurocentrism, 494 —, relationship with Futurism, see under
European Network for Avant-Garde and Mod- Futurism
ernism Studies (EAM), 486, 487, 493, 494 Fashion, 293–294, 328, 342, 440, 503n
Evanescence, 366, 368, 369, 379n, 384, 385, Fauvisme (French art movement, c.1900–10),
388, 389 3, 5–6, 13n, 21, 38, 41, 59, 71, 77, 200,
Everyday life (quotidian existence), 98, 189, 204
193, 205, 210, 233, 275, 366, 367, 368, February Revolution (in Russia, 1917), 482
373, 386, 388, 414 Femina (Paris, 1901–17; 1917–21, 1922–39,
Exaltation of the machine, see Machine cult 1945–54), XIV
Exile (Emigration), 14, 72, 194, 231, 264, Feminine beauty, literary trope of, 116, 236,
297n, 400, 471 313
Exoticism, 89, 524, 528–529; see also Feminine Other, 24
Primitivism Femininity, XIV, 21, 24, 30, 34, 50, 52,
Experimentalism, 40n, 41, 121, 156, 201, 221, 54, 56–57, 59, 60–61, 64–67, 87, 92,
286, 370, 446, 447, 448, 467, 470, 486, 100–106, 107, 119, 136, 186, 230, 235,
535 236, 261, 310, 336, 436n, 451, 456–458
Explosion, 220, 481, 516, 517, 517n, 519, 520 Feminism, X, XII, XIV, XVII, XVIII, XIX, 22–24,
Expressionism, X, 15, 111, 112–115, 120–132, 28, 33, 44, 53, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 87,
169, 436, 484, 486, 493, 529, 541, 548, 91–94, 97–98, 100, 105, 107, 119, 313,
555 333, 334, 337–338, 367, 451, 453, 455,
—, in Germany, 112, 115, 118, 120, 122, 124, 457; see also Emancipation (female);
127, 295, 477, 492, 523, 554 gender issues, suffrage, woman question
Extended Man (uomo moltiplicato), 49, 101n, Femme fatale, 354
108, 350, 372n, 373, 375, 377–378, 379 Fenixi (Tbilisi, 1918–19), 492
Figurative art, 41, 107, 190, 191, 217, 220, 221,
Facepainting, 173, 432, 496–500 334, 354, 533; see also Mimesis, Realism,
Factography, 482 representation
Factories, 203, 206–207, 273, 293, 356, 375, Film, see Cinema
376 First World War, see World War I
Faktura, 403 First World War, anniversary of, 477–484
Family, institution of, 33, 93, 105 Fisicofolia (body madness), 547
Fantasy, 19, 268, 276; see also Imagination Fiume adventure of 1919/20, 306, 453
Fasci italiani di combattimento (Italian Flâneur / Flâneuse, 28
Leagues of Combat, founded in 1919), Florentine proto-Surrealism, 33, 334, 347
330, 478 Fluxus (art movement, founded in 1960), 470
Fasci politici futuristi, see Futurist Political Folk art, 122, 136, 138, 142, 180, 192, 194,
Party 256, 266, 269, 272, 280, 292; see also
Fascination with the machine, see Machine Primitivism
cult Ford (motor company), 368–369, 376, 380,
Fascio politico futurista, see Futurist Political 390, 391
Party Formalism, 401, 552
Fascism, X, XI, XIII, XIX, 32n, 105, 297, Formisci (Kraków, 1919–21), 112
306–308, 330, 357, 385, 462n, 478, Fourth dimension, 199, 212–213
489–490, 505–509, 511, 512–513, 547n Fragmentation, 17, 78, 155, 158, 190,
—, Fascist action-squads, see Fasci italiani di 206–210, 213, 215, 217, 327, 330, 398,
combattimento 469, 481, 517; see also Collage
642 Subject Index
Frakcija: Performing Arts Magazine (Zagreb, —, and the First World War, 168–195, 219,
1996–present), 327 221, 228, 311, 342, 385–386, 477–482,
Free love, XVIII, 33, 105 487, 490, 500
Free Verse; see under Poetry —, anniversaries of, 2009, Hundredth
Freedom (liberty), 30, 72, 118, 128, 132, 145, anniversary of the foundation of the
149, 161, 186, 187, 201, 204, 228, 242, Futurist movement (Centenario del
247, 269, 314, 318, 327, 328, 337, 346, Futurismo), 450, 504, 510–511
439, 545 —, foundation of (1909), 98, 114, 169, 202
—, of religion, 229 —, Futurism Studies, 450, 455, 489
—, of speech, 229 —, global, IX, 97, 170, 171, 172, 179, 262, 489
Furizm, see Transfurism —, heterodox, IX, XIX, 136–167, 192
Fusion, of art and life, 161, 280, 330, 333, —, historiography, 451, 512, 564
441, 482 —, in Argentina, 111–134, 436–437, 535; see
—, of humans and machine, 61, 375–378 also Ultraism
—, of the arts, 505; see also Gesamtkunstwerk, —, in Baku, 227–228, 243–245, 246–247
synaesthesia —, in Croatia, 484, 491
FUTURAHMA (Materials analysis project), 521 —, in Denmark, 486–487
Futurbolscevismo, 508; see also Communist- —, in England, 2, 21–69, 439–440; see also
Futurists Vorticsm
Futurism, 1905–08, period of Proto-futurism, —, in Estonia, 488–489
XIV, 75, 94, 538 —, in Florence, 77–78, 261n, 297, 313, 334,
—, 1920–1944, period of Secondo futurismo 335, 339, 340–341, 346, 539
(Second-Wave Futurism), 150, 484, 508, —, in France, XI, 4n, 87–110
511, 520 —, in Georgia, 226–251, 399n, 492
—, 1930s and 1940s, period of Terzo —, in Iceland, 487
futurismo (Last phase of Futurism), X, XVIII, —, in Ireland, 70–86
XIX, 479, 489–490, 505–507, 509–513 —, in Italy, 141–161, 300–321, 338–360,
—, 1944 ff., period of Neo-Futurism, 431 450–464, 516–522
—, and Fascism, X, XVIII, XIX, 297, 306–308, —, in Japan, 492, 523–525, 550–551, 554–556
330, 478, 479, 489–490, 505–507, —, in Latin America, 531–536; see also
509–513 Creacionismo, Estridentismo, Ultraismo,
—, and feminism, X, XII, XIV, XVII-XVIII, XIX, and Geographical index
91–94, 97–98, 100, 105, 333, 337–338, —, in Lithuania, 487–488
451, 453, 455 —, in Milan, XIX, 96, 141, 142, 261, 306–307,
—, and occultism, 87–90, 94n, 333–359, 310, 340, 510
538–540 —, in Naples, 427–430
—, and politics, 297, 306–309, 453, —, in Northern Countries, 486–489
506–509, 512 —, in Poland, 112, 492
—, and religion, XVIII, 104, 215, 480–481, —, in Rome, XIX, 95, 136–148, 179, 203, 262,
509–510 297, 303–307, 310–311, 338–340, 358n,
—, and spirituality, XVIII, 87–89, 94–95, 106, 510
136, 140, 147, 148–156, 161, 215, 270, —, in Russia, XI, XIX, 168–248, 252–291,
273, 277–280, 285–286, 338, 346, 350, 395–424, 431–434, 460, 469–471, 477,
458, 480–481, 512, 518, 525, 528, 539 480–482, 484, 488–491, 495–501,
—, and Symbolism, 241, 247, 266–272, 508, 523–530, 537, 539–540, 541, 542,
279–282, 334, 359n, 458, 478, 516–517, 547, 550–557; see also Cubo-Futurism,
545 Ego-Futurism, Hylaea, Rayism, zaum'
Subject Index 643
—, in Sicily, XVI —, La pittura futurista: Manifesto tecnico. In

—, in Slovenia, 491 Russia. Manifest futuristov (1912), 201,
—, in Switzerland, 3–20 202, 428, 484
—, in the Far East, 550–557 —, La scienza futurista (Futurist Science;
—, in Ukraine, 292–296 Carli, Chiti, Corra, Ginanni, Mara,
—, independent groups, Futuristi di Iniziativa Settimelli, 1916), 341
(founded in Florence in 1933), XIX —, Les Exposants au public / Gli espositori
—, —, Futuristi Indipendenti (founded in al pubblico (The Exhibitors to the Public;
Florence in 1922), XIX Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Severini, 1912),
—, —, Futuristi Primordiali (Como-Milano, 8, 9, 60, 78, 208, 212, 529
1940–41), XIX —, Les Exposants au public. In Russia.
—, —, Nuovo Futurismo (founded in Milan in Eksponenty k publike (1912), 201
1934), XIX —, Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (Manifesto
—, para-Futurism, 489 of the Futurist Painters; Balla, Boccioni,
—, punitive expedition to Florence (30 June Carrà, Russolo, Severini, 1910), 82, 310,
1911), 261n 484
—, ridiculed, IX, 149, 184, 371, 427–441, 505 —, Manifesto dell’aeropittura: La prima
—, superficial understanding of, IX, 367 affermazione nel mondo di una nuova
—, terminology, 81, 169–171, 171n, 203, arte italiana (Manifesto of Aeropainting;
203n, 253–255, 493; see also Labelling Marinetti, Balla, Benedetta, Depero,
—, unofficial groups, see Futurism, Dottori, Fillia, Prampolini, Tato, Somenzi,
independent groups 1931), 518
Futurist Group Manifestos (for manifestos by —, Poshchechina obshchestvennomu
individual authors see under author’s vkusu (A Slap in the Face of Public
name in name index) Taste; Burliuk, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh,
—, Gli espositori al pubblico, see Les Mayakovsky, 1912), 201, 204, 399, 416,
Exposants au public 417, 480, 482, 551
—, I manifesti del futurismo (Futurist —, Programma politico futurista (Political
Manifestos, ed. by “Lacerba”, 1914), Programme of Futurism; Marinetti,
114n Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, 1913), XVII
—, Il teatro futurista sintetico (A Futurist —, Truba Marsian (The Trumpet of the
Theatre of Essential Brevity; Marinetti, Martians; Aseev, Bozhidar, Khlebnikov,
Corra, Settimelli, 1915), 151 Petnikov, Siniakova, 1916), 192, 480, 500,
—, Kogo predosteregaet Lef? (Whom Does 586
Lef Warn? Aseev, Arvatov, Brik, Chuzhak, —, V kogo vgryzaetsia Lef? (Whom Does Lef
Kushner, Maiakovskii, Tret'iakov, 1923), Wrangle with? Aseev, Arvatov, Chuzhak,
554 Brik, Kushner, Maiakovskii, Tret'iakov,
—, L’arte meccanica: Manifesto futurista 1923), 554
(Manifesto of Futurist Mechanical Art; —, Za chto boretsia Lef? (What is Lef Fighting
Prampolini, Pannaggi, Paladini, 1923), For? Aseev, Arvatov, Brik, Chuzhak,
61n Kushner, Maiakovskii, Tret'iakov, 1923),
—, L’impero italiano (The Italian Empire; 554
Marinetti, Carli, Settimelli, 1923), 484 Futurist novels, XII, 297, 302, 310, 312, 316,
—, La pittura futurista: Manifesto tecnico 321, 333, 334, 344, 347–354, 359, 452,
(Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto; 453 455, 457, 458, 460, 489, 492, 538
Balla, Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Severini, Futurist Political Party (Partito Politico
1910), 9, 10–11, 83, 484 Futurista; Fasci Politici Futuristi, founded
644 Subject Index
in 1918), XVII, 97n, 297, 305, 306, 317, Golubyie Rogi, see Blue Horns
478 Gosizdat (publishing house), 401n
Futurist Refashioning of the Universe Gospel, see Bible
(Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo), 98, Graeco-Roman civilization (Ancient antiquity),
108, 144, 194, 511; see also Art and life, 209, 319n
productivism Grammar, 215, 242
Futurist Revolution, 98, 352 Grand tour, 111
Futurist serate, see under Theatre Graphemes, 543
Futurist State, 489 Graphic art, 13n, 36, 49, 49, 116–117, 175,
Futurist-Fascist alliance (1919–20), 297, 330, 180–181, 185n, 186–192, 216–222, 231,
478 240–241, 283–284, 292–296, 334–335,
342–354, 358–359, 452n, 461, 469, 488,
Gaelic Revival, 73 492, 525, 545; see also Artists’ books,
Gazzetta dell’Emilia (Bologna, 1857–present), book illustrations, linocut, lithography,
542–543 poster, typography, woodcut
Gender and art, XI-XII, XVII-XIX, 22–24, 29, 31, Great War, see Word War I
33–34, 39, 44, 51–53, 57, 59–61, 65–67, Grecia (Sevilla, 1918–20; Madrid, 1920), 112n,
72, 99, 113, 168, 172, 175, 176–184, 194, 116, 119n, 122n, 123, 125, 126
338, 344, 359n, 453, 455–456, 460, 506 Grotesque, 93, 184
Gender issues, XIX, 27–29, 100–108, 186, Group 41°, see 41°
342, 359 Group X (Vorticist revival group in London,
Gender Studies, X, XII, 92, 454–457 active 1919–20), 26n, 27, 41
Genius, XI, 24, 65, 102, 242, 308, 318, 367, Gruppi Indipendenti Futuristi, see Futurism,
376, 457, 478; see also Barbarogenius independent groups
Geometry, 38n, 41, 47, 48, 51, 60, 62, 63, 65, Guerrilla, 482; see also Terrorism
113, 117n, 131, 147, 148, 190, 191, 200, Guerrilla Girls (anonymous group of feminist
205, 207, 208, 294, 352, 358, 436, 517 artists in New York, founded in 1985), 482
Geopoetika, Serbian publishing house, 327, Guild of Poets, see Tsekh poetov
329, 331 Gynaeceum, 342
Gesamtkunstwerk (Total Work of Art), 83, 151,
280, 479, 505, 538, 573 Hacking (Computer), 482
Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Österreichs Haiku, 533
(Austrian artists’ association, founded in Handicrafts, see Arts and craft
1861), 336 Happening, 495, 542; see also Action Art
Gil Blas (Paris, 1879–1940), 546 Harlequin, 117, 553n
Gileia (Hylaea) (Futurist group in Moscow, Health, 129, 309, 319
founded in 1910), 170, 23n, 266, 269n, Hermeneutics, 537
270, 273 Hero worship, XVI, 247, 306n, 467, 507
Giorgi Saakadze (dir. Mikheil Chiaureli, 1943), Heroism, 63, 97n, 100, 101, 102, 175, 188,
234n 247, 316, 318, 319, 354, 380, 385
Giubbe Rosse, see Geographical index under Historical avant-gardes, XX, 71, 88, 114, 118,
Florence 248, 327, 395, 396, 397, 401, 403 406,
Gnosticism, 539 407, 410, 411, 445, 447, 467, 468, 470,
God-seeker movement, see Bogoiskatel'stvo 471, 484, 486, 493, 532, 600
Golfshtrom (publishing house), see Historiography, 46, 54, 57, 451, 502, 512
Hol'fshtrom Hol'fshtrom (Kyiv, 1925), 4:58
Golos Rusi (Petrograd, 1915–17), 184 Holism, 286
Subject Index 645
Homosociality, 27–31 Industry, 64, 74, 188, 205n, 206, 208, 217,
Human and machine, see Body and 243, 247, 292, 373, 378, 436; see also
technology Factory, machine, technology
Humour, 46, 498; see also Caricature, Infidelity, see Adultery
Commedia dell’arte, harlequin, parody, Influence, concept of, IX, XX, 3, 112, 114–115,
satire 260, 272, 371
Hylaea (Futurist group), see Gileia Installation art, 542
Hypertext, 445 Instinct, 6, 74, 99, 100n, 147, 153, 341, 490;
see also Irrationalism
I poeti futuristi (Anthology, 1912), 543 Interculturalism, IX; 493
‘I’, literary, 548 Interdisciplinarity, 486
Iconoclasm, 129, 169, 219, 337, 496; see also Interior design, 461, 503n
Burning of books, destruction Intermediality, 479; see also Fusion of the
Iconography, 17, 184, 481, 498 arts, Gesamtkunstwerk, mixed-media,
Idéisme (Symbolist trend in the arts, 1890s), synaesthesia
87, 89 International Academy of Zaum (Akademiia
Identity, artistic, 47, 61, 203, 227, 529 Zaumi), 445–449
—, female, 87, 89, 92, 93, 101, 104, 106, 129, International Mail Art Network, see Mail Art
186, 344, 375 International Yearbook of Futurism Studies
—, social, cultural and psychological, 34, 74, (Berlin & Boston, 2011-), IX, 450, 461
106, 177, 186, 188, 230–231, 272, 345, Internationalism, 262
373, 378–384, 388, 510n; see also Ego, Internet (World-Wide-Web), 447, 448, 461,
individualism, subjectivity 470; see also Net.Art
—, national, 129, 186, 510n; see also Interpenetration / Compenetration, 7, 8, 15,
Emancipation (national), 79, 209, 210, 356, 382
—, sexual, 92, 101, 104–107, 330 Intonarumori; see under Music, Musical
Ideology, 25, 27, 56, 61, 67, 93, 105, 119, 168, instruments
172, 175, 186, 191, 245, 246, 252, 260, Intuition, 59, 102, 107, 212, 213, 259, 264,
261, 264, 310, 479, 481, 502, 506, 507, 279, 303, 309, 431, 445, 478
508n, 510, 513, 539; see also Politics Irish Times (Dublin, 1874-present), 75n, 76
Il giorno politico letterario del mattino Irony, 46
(Napoli, 1904–27), 427, 428 Irrationalism, 212, 215, 219, 330, 347, 458,
Illustrations, see Book illustrations 540; see also Absurdism, alogism,
Imagination sans fils (wireless / instinct, intuition, madness, primitivism,
untrammelled imagination), 546 transrational
Imagism (Anglo-American poetry movement, Irredentism, 300, 478, 508
founded in 1912), 39, 537 Islam, 87, 89, 90
Imitation, see Eclecticism Isms, see Historical avant-gardes
Impressionism, 51, 156, 200, 240, 256, 266, Italian Academy, see Geographical index
268, 270, 271, 276, 279, 283, 478; see Italian Revolution, 478
also Post-Impressionism Italian Socialist Party, see Partito Socialista
Independent Futurism, see Futurism, Italiano (PSI)
independent groups Italianità (Italianness), 509–510
Individual and collective, 21, 169, 272, 328 Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–36), 547n
Individualism, XVII, 23, 102, 139, 142, 181, Italo-Turkish War (Libyan War, 1911–12), 76,
248, 257, 269 478, 546n, 547n
Indoctrination, XVI Izvestia (Petrograd, 1917-present), 469
646 Subject Index
Jack of Diamonds, see Bubnovyi valet Lacerba (Firenze 1913–15), 4n, 77, 78, 83, 95n,
Jealousy, 33, 36, 451n 115n, 260, 261n, 262, 263
Jews, 297, 318 Language, 160, 215, 228, 242, 244, 255, 297,
Journalism, 33, 76, 87, 89, 103, 136, 150, 172, 298, 303, 318, 370, 381, 384, 398, 400,
297, 300, 330, 427, 428, 431, 496, 512, 410, 411n, 450, 461, 481, 482, 488–489,
545 491, 532, 544, 547; see also Grammar,
Juxtaposition, 188, 358, 451, 490, 519, 524, 527 phonemes, Star Language, syntax,
Zaumnyi iazyk
Kalevala (Finnish national epos), 280n L’anima: Saggi e giudizi (Firenze, 1911), 303
Kamennie Baby (Scythian stone statues), Lateran Pacts (Patti lateranensi, 1929), 510
524–528 Late-Symbolism, 545
Kartuli Filmi (Georgian film company), 234 Law of Time, 540
KavRost (Kavkazskaia Rosta; Causasian Lay art, see Amateur art
telegraph agency), 243 Le Figaro (Paris, 1826-present), 95, 114, 169,
Keturi vėjai (Four Winds, 1924–28), 488 202, 253, 487
Keturių vėjų pranašas (A Herald of Four Leaflets (fly sheets / broadsheets), 306, 537
Winds, 1922), 488 Lebens-Gesamtkunstwerk, see Art and life
KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti; LEF (Levyi Front Iskusstv; Left Front of the
Committee for State Security), 402, 468 Arts; Russian artists’ association,
Khanty People, 528 1923–29), 482, 484, 554
Khudozhestvenno-pedagogicheskii zhurnal Lef: Zhurnal levogo fronta iskusstv (Leningrad,
(Sankt-Peterburg, 1910–14), 169 1923–25), 554
Killing, 192, 193, 194, 219, 389; see also Leningradskaia pravda (1918–24 as
Assassination Petrogradskaia Pravda; Leningrad,
Kineticism, 14, 120, 145, 147, 148, 152, 154; 1918–1991), 248n
see also Movement Les Soirées de Paris (Paris, 1912–14), 11
Kitāb alf laylah wa-laylah (A Thousand and Lettrisme (French avant-garde movement,
One Nights, 12th C.), 354 founded in 1945), 446
Knave of Diamonds, see Bubnovyi valet Lianozovo (nonconformist art group in Russia,
Književne novine (Beograd, 1948-present), founded in 1953), 406
327 Liberalism, 28, 30n, 139, 228, 274, 308
Književnost (Beograd, 1946-present), 327 Libertarianism (Anarchism), XIII, 49n, 96n,
Kolchuga (artists’ association in Tbilisi, 105, 367
founded in 1918), 229, 230, 234, 235 Libraries, XV, 6, 401, 502; see also Burning
Kollektivnye deistviia (Collective Actions; of books, and individual libraries in
conceptualist goup in Moscow, founded Geographical index
in 1976), 406 Libyan War, see Italo-Turkish war
Koryaki people, 527 Life as performance, see Art and life
Kredo (Tambov, 1992–present), 447 Lighting design, 505, 548
L’impero: Quotidiano politico (Roma,
La lettura: Rivista mensile del Corriere della 1923–29), 484
sera (Milano, 1901–52), 429 Linee-forza (force-lines), 8, 188, 208
La provincia di Ferrara (Ferrara, 1903–22), 542 Linocut, 189–190, 219–220, 481, 551, 554
La tribuna (Roma 1883–1946), 542 L’Intransigeant: Journal de Paris (Paris,
La voce (Firenze, 1908–16), 260, 261, 303, 305 1880–1948), 9
Labelling, 21n, 113, 118, 119, 150, 203, 203n, Liren' (Futurist group in Khar'kov, founded in
431, 492, 493, 520, 532; see also Slogans 1914), 191
Subject Index 647
Lirismo (lyricism), 9, 129, 379, 478, 518 —, Machine aesthetics, 103, 143–144, 155,
L’Italia futurista (Firenze, 1916–18), XVII, 168, 208, 211, 273, 366, 542
XVIIIn, 99n, 106, 297, 302, 313, 314, 316, —, Machine Age, 366, 368, 373, 374, 375
317, 333, 334, 335, 339–344, 347n, 352, —, Machine angst, see Technophobia
359, 451, 455, 456 —, Machine cult, 8, 17, 18, 51, 188, 253, 350,
L’Italia moderna: Rivista dei problemi della 366–378, 379, 380, 386–387, 436, 492,
vita italiana (Portici, 1903–09), 303 528, 538, 539
Literary criticism, X, 47, 371 —, Machine-gun, 546
Literary tropes, 175, 390; see also Metaphor Machinism, see Machine cult
Literaturno-khudozhestvenno obedinenie Madness (insanity), IX, 150–151, 308–311, 439
(LKhO; Society of Literature and Art, Magazines, see Illustrated magazines, Little
founded in Vladivostok. in 1923), 552 Magazines
Lithography, 175, 185n, 185, 186, 187, 188, Magic, 302, 489, 527–529, 538, 547
189, 192, 217, 234, 436 Mail Art (art movement, 1960s–90s),
Little Magazines, 124 395–396, 405–406, 415, 470–471
Little Review (Chicago, New York and Paris, Mainstream, see Conventional culture,
1914–29), 40 traditions
Livres d’artiste, see Artists’ books Man-machine hybrid, see Body and
Locomotive, see Railway technology
Logic, see Rationalism Man of the Future, see New Man
Lombard Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Manifesto, IX, XV, XVI, XX, 26, 49, 50, 75,
Automobilists, see Volontari Ciclisti 87, 89, 90, 95, 115, 127n, 201, 202, 255,
Automobilisti (V.C.A.) 256, 273, 313, 377, 385, 410, 416, 461,
London Group (artists’ association, founded 483–483, 532, 537–540, 542; see also
in 1913), 38 Futurist Group Manifestos
Los contemporáneos (Mexican literary group, —, Performances of, 48, 51, 103, 202n, 497,
active 1928–31), 533 504
Lubok (Russian popular print), 185–187, —, Group Manifestos, Manifesto (Aldington,
192–193, 204, 220, 480, 490, 500 Arbuthnot, Atkinson, Gaudier-Brzeska,
Luchizm, see Rayism Dismorr, Hamilton, Pound, Roberts,
Lukomorie (Sankt-Peterburg, 1914–16), 227n Sanders, Wadsworth, Lewis, 1914), 57n
Luminism, see Rayism —, —, Manifest OBERIU (OBERIU Manifesto,
Lussuria (Luxure), see Lust, Luxuria Bakhterev, Kharms, Vaginov,
Lust, see Eroticism Zabolotsky, 1928), 410
Luxuria (debauchery, extravagance), 102n —, —, Manifesto degli intellettuali
Lyric ‘I’, see ‘I’, literary antifascisti (Manifesto of the
Lyrical obsession for matter, 547 Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, 1925), 308
Lyricism of speed, 379 —, —, Manifest nomer tri (Manifesto
Lyricism, see Lirismo Number Three; Konstriktor, Nikonova,
Segay, 1983), 419
MA (Budapest 1916–19; Vienna, 1920–26), —, —, Manifiesto del Ultra (Ultra Manifesto;
484 Borges, Sureda, Bonanova, Alomar,
Macchinismo, see Machine cult, 1921), 115
Macchinolatria, see Machine cult —, —, Transfur-manifest 1: Deklarama
Machine, 51, 143, 205–206, 369, 372–378; (Transfur-manifesto 1: Declarama;
see also Industry, mechanization, Konstriktor, Nikonova, Segay, 1980),
technology 410
648 Subject Index
—, —, Transfur-manifest 2. Programma Mélusine (Lausanne, 1979-present), 456

(Transfur-manifesto 2: Programme; Memory, 199, 210, 213, 215
Konstriktor, Nikonova, Segay, 1980), Menshevism, 228
410 Mépris de la femme, see Scorn for woman
—, —, Tret'ia poshchechina obshchest- Mercantilism, 385; see also Materialism
vennomu vkusu (Third Slap in the Metaphor, 37, 149, 172, 211, 239, 331, 376,
Face of Public Taste; Konstriktor, 435, 436, 480, 480, 481, 482, 490, 494n,
Nikonova, Segay, 1986), 416 503, 524, 528, 533, 540, 545
—, —, Zelenaia koshka (Green Cat Metaphysics, XVIII, 268, 269, 270, 328; see
Manifesto; Grazhenskii, Liubarskii, also Transcendence
Lvov, Plasse, Nauli, 1919), 555 Methodology, 87, 89, 455, 548
Mannerism (Late Renaissance art, Metronome, 199, 210–213, 384
c.1520–80), 532 Metropolis (Big city), 28, 31, 118, 124, 208,
Manomètre (Lyon, 1922–28), 112n 272–276, 342, 383–384, 479, 543; see
Marinettism, 254 also Urbanization
Marionettes, see under Theatre Militarism, 49n, 96, 168, 188, 172, 189, 190,
Marriage, XVI, 28, 33, 34, 49n, 55, 139, 150, 193, 194, 219, 367, 478, 479, 480, 508;
244, 303, 440 see also War
Martin Fierro (Buenos Aires, 1924–27), 129, Military, 40, 45, 124, 176, 181, 189, 192–193,
130, 131, 132, 436 220, 234n, 248n, 298n, 307, 318, 387,
Marxism, 245, 539 546, 554
Masculinity, 22, 44, 52, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, 64, Mimesis, 31, 210, 544; see also
65, 66, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105n, 175; see Representation
also Patriarchy Minimalism, 329, 404
Mass media, see under Media Mir iskusstva (artists’ group in Saint-Peters-
Masses, see Crowd burg, founded in 1898), 262
Materialism, 279, 351 Mir iskusstva (Sankt-Peterburg, 1899–1904),
Mathematics, 275, 314, 315 280n
—, Numbers, 187, 255, 344, 467, 499 Misogyny, XI, XII, XVII, XVIII, XIX, 61, 105, 172,
Matter (physical matter), 83, 213n, 282–283, 453, 506; see also Scorn for women
302, 316, 369, 384, 547, 548 Mitin zhurnal (Tver, 1985-present), 416
—, Lyrical obsession for matter, 547–548 Mixed media, see under Media
MDP (Moskva, 1987–88), 406 Model T Ford (Tin Lizzie), 368, 369, 376, 380,
Mechanical aesthetics, see Machine art 390, 391
Mechanical Age, see Machine Age Modern Woman, see New Woman
Mechanical art, see Machine aesthetics Modernism, IX, XX, 21, 22, 33, 111, 116, 121,
Mechanical beauty, 373, 377 144, 169, 177, 262, 401, 477, 486–494,
Media, Mass Media, 23, 433, 448; see also 495, 507, 513, 513
Newspapers, popular magazines, radio —, Anglo-American, 21–24, 31, 37, 41, 46–47,
—, Mixed media, 136, 141, 143, 144, 145, 149, 366–391
152; see also Fusion of the arts, Gesamt- —, global, 493–495
kunstwerk, intermediality, synaesthesia —, in Argentina, 111, 129–130
—, Multi-media, 45, 46n, 136, 334, 490 —, in Austria, 266, 271, 337–338, 477
Medieval art, 122, 233, 499 —, in Georgia, 229–243, 492
Mediumship, see Spiritism —, in Germany and Austria, 266, 271
Medny kotel (Copper Pot; avant-garde group —, in France, 94, 513
in Tbilisi, founded in 1918), 232 —, in Ireland, 70–74, 84
Subject Index 649
—, in Portugal, 492 Munka (Budapest, 1928–39), 484

—, in Poland, 492 Museums (art collections), XV, 6, 77, 253, 257,
—, in Ukraine, 292–296 381, 440, 487, 502
—, in Russia, 245–246, 248, 272–275, Music, XV, XVII, 39, 48, 151, 200, 210, 237,
523–529, 550–556 280, 283, 286, 298, 336, 337, 384, 428,
Modernismo (art movement in Latin America, 461, 489, 493, 503n
1888-c.1910), 117n, 532–535 —, Futurist music, XVIII, 141, 151, 383,
Modernismo (art movement in Portugal, 492–493, 512, 542, 547; see also
c.1915–25), 117, 492 Intonarumori, noise music, and under
Modernity (modern culture, modern life), individual composers
3, 4, 7, 28, 31, 48, 51, 82, 87, 90, 92, 94, —, Musical instruments, Intonarumori,
124, 161, 175, 188, 194, 201, 204, 208, 141–142, 151, 383, 542
266, 272, 273, 355, 372, 381, 383, 390, —, —, self-made instruments, 493
391, 441, 487, 489, 490, 492, 493, 494, —, Noise music (Musique bruitiste), 48, 493,
528 542
Molodaia gvardiia (publishing house), 248 Music-hall, 117; see also Variété
Monsignor Perrelli (Napoli, 1898–1991), 428 Musique bruitiste, see Noise music
Montage of attractions, 493 Mutilated soldiers, see War-invalids
Montage, 294, 408n, 493 Mysticism, XVI, 18, 129, 132, 161, 186–189,
Montjoie! (Paris, 1913–14), 11, 91 215, 278, 280, 308, 358, 481, 490, 520,
Moonlight, XIV, XV, 49, 63, 98, 122, 315, 373n, 537–540; see also Cosmic consciousness,
377, 378, 379n; see also Romanticism esotericism, occultism, religion,
Moskovskii kontseptualizm (Moscow spiritualism
Conceptualism; Russian art movement, Myth (Mythology), 32n, 97, 124, 170n, 204,
1970s–80s), 482 247, 268, 330, 440, 489, 539, 547
Moskovskaia gazeta (Moskva, 1910–15), 462 Myth of the machine, see Machine cult
Mother Earth, 282
Motorcars, see Automobile Naïvety, 24, 192, 303n, 400, 525
Mots en liberté, see Words-in-Freedom Narrative theatre, 541
Movement (Motion), 9n, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
49n, 82, 113, 117, 120–121, 122–123, 126, (NUWSS, founded in 1897), 30n
127, 143, 144, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154, 158, Nationalism (chauvinism), 74, 76, 185, 194,
161, 168, 186, 188, 192, 205, 207–208, 204, 247, 262, 367, 513; see also Patriotism
209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 217, 220, 253, Native Americans, 336
263, 264, 281, 313, 314, 330, 372, 376, Naturalism, 89; see also Realism
382, 384; see also Kinetism Nature, 8, 60, 60, 61, 100, 142, 148, 152, 153,
Movimento antropofágico (Modernist 161, 266, 271n, 272–286, 341, 518, 519,
movement in Brazil, founded in 1928), 527
535 Neo-avant-garde, 395, 397, 445, 468, 470,
MUBA: Revue International (Paris & Vilnius, 477, 491
1928), 488 Neo-Futurists (fictitious group in Kazan in
Multichannelled recitation, see Declamation 1913), 431
Multiculturalism, 227, 29, 230, 459 Neologism, 169, 175, 215n, 468, 533, 534
Multidimensional reality, 350; see also Fourth Neo-Primitivizm (Russian art movement,
dimension founded in 1913), 136, 138, 199–200,
Multi-materiality, see Mixed media 202–204, 205, 207, 217, 220, 221, 266,
Multi-media, see under Media 270, 292
650 Subject Index
Neo-romanticism, 280, 436n Nuova sensibilità (new sensibility), see

Net.Art, 532 Sensibility
Networks, 40, 88, 396, 406n, 450, 459, 467, Nuovo futurismo (Milano, 1934–35), XIX
470, 471, 486, 491, 493, 494
New Man, 34, 386; see also New Woman ObeRIu (Obedinenie real'nogo iskusstva,
New Moment: Magazin za vizuelnu kulturu Association for the Real in Art; founded in
(Beograd, 1994–present), 327 1928), 399n, 406, 407, 408, 410, 417, 470
New sensibility, 478 Obiedinenie “Segodniashnii lubok”
New technologies, 436, 545 (“Contemporary Lubok” Company;
New Weekly (London, 1914), 31, 50 publishing firm, founded in 1914),
New Woman, 56, 91–95, 100, 106, 108, 306n, 185–186, 193
347–346 Objects, transformative potential of, 366–367
Newism (Newness, the New), see Novelty Obvodnyi kanal (Leningrad, 1981–93), 418
Newspapers, IX, 23, 30n, 51, 75, 76, 169, Occultism, 94, 146, 278, 302, 328, 333, 335,
173n, 184, 185, 202, 210, 230, 236, 242, 338–352, 359, 412n, 529, 537–540; see
246n, 255, 431, 432, 433, 439, 448, 483, also Cosmic consciousness, esotericism,
513, 542, 545; see also Media mysticism, numerology, religion, spiritism,
Nichilismo: Rivista quindicinale (Milano, spiritualism
1920–21), 306 October Revolution in Russia (1917), 294, 307,
Nobility (aristocracy), 150, 233, 243, 244n, 507, 551, 552
248, 271, 273, 274, 333, 336 Ogonek: Ezhenedel'nyi khudozhestvenno-lit-
Noi: Raccolta internazionale d’arte d’avan- eraturnyi zhurnal (Sankt-Peterburg,
guardia (Roma, 1917–20, 1923–25), 145, 1899–1917), 221n, 248n
571, 578 Old Testament, see Bible
Noise, 143, 144, 160, 272, 281, 383, 383–384, Olfaction, 144, 247, 397, 417, 478
544; see also Noise music Omega Workshops (design company in
Noise instruments, see Intonarumori London, founded in 1913), 35, 39, 48, 51,
Noise Music, see under Futurist music 59
Nomer (Sverdlovsk & Rostov, 1965–75), 396, Onomatopoeia, 543–544, 546
402–403, 467–468, 470 Opera, 62, 143n, 237, 270, 273, 379, 480
Non-figurative representation in art, 146, 147, Opportunism, 98
180, 183, 189, 190, 191, 221, 541, 543, Oratory, XIV, 97n; see also Rhetoric
548 Order (discipline), 31, 39, 63, 100, 257, 544
Non-objective art, 225; see also Abstraction Organic culture, 266–286, 347–349, 352
Nonsense, 21n, 184, 242, 370, 400, 417, 431, Orient / Orientalism, 89, 90, 148, 336, 494,
545, 546 523–529
Nostalgia, 204, 377, 379 Originality, XVI, 89, 136, 137, 160, 194, 195,
Nova generatsiia (Kharkiv, 1927–30), 295 201, 252, 266, 330, 334, 436, 451n, 457,
Novaia vecherniaia gazeta (Leningrad, 458, 467, 509, 519
1925–51), 248n Orion: Literaturno-politicheskii zhurnal
Novels; see Futurist novels (Tbilisi, 1919), 242
Novelty (Newness, the New), 56, 92, 106, 107, Ornament, 142, 155, 354
201, 115, 328, 352, 381, 482; see also Ornithology, 275
Originality Orpheu (Lisboa, 1915), 492
Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (Moskva, 1992– Orphism (French art movement, founded in
present), 447 1912), 6, 7, 9, 117n, 178, 437
Numerology, 328, 499 Orthodoxy, IX, 3, 6, 97, 261
Subject Index 651
Oslinyi khvost (Donkey’s Tail; Russian art Peasantry, 185, 192–193, 248, 272–275, 293;
group, 1912–13), 174, 411, 431–433 see also Agriculture
Ostraneniie (defamiliarization), 368, 386, Pedantry, XV
388, 481 Perception (sensory stimulation), 136, 137,
143, 144, 153, 176, 191, 212, 264, 277,
Pacifism, 93, 490, 542 331, 344, 381, 382, 388, 493, 548
Painting, see also Portraiture Perestroika, 470
—, Aeropittura (Aeropainting), 513, 516, 517, Performance, 30, 48, 66, 77, 141n, 151, 173,
518, 519, 520 271n, 273, 274, 327, 399, 404, 407n, 415,
—, Icon painting, 122n, 136, 204, 269, 427, 446, 447, 488, 493, 495, 498–490,
—, Landscape painting, 5–14, 61n, 72, 541–548; see also Action theatre, serate,
78–81, 83, 126, 239, 240, 272, 280–284, theatre
357, 516–521, 524, 526 Performance art, 30, 48, 141n, 173, 271n,
—, Miniature painting, 148, 269, 270n 274, 327, 399, 404, 407n, 415, 446, 447,
—, Nude, 38, 60–61, 329n, 357, 521 488, 493, 495, 542; see also Action art,
—, Still lifes, 7, 11, 158, 256, 263, 527 happening, Poetry recitation
Page layout, 294, 412; see also Typography Performativity, 541
Palingenesis, see Rebirth Performing gender, 44, 52
Pamphlets, XII, 25, 26, 53, 417n, 428, 432 Periphery, cultural, 494, 550
Panfuturism (artists’ group in Ukraine, Persecution of intellectuals, 229; see also
founded in 1922), 292–294 Exile
Pantheism, 278, 280 Petites revues, see Little Magazines
Papel de Aleluyas (Huelva & Sevilla, Phonemes, 543, 547
1927–28), 112n Phono-chronicles, 493
Paradigma (Moskva, 1987–88), 406 Photography, XVIII, 11, 45–46, 331, 452; see
Para-Futurism, 489 also Chronophotography, Vortography
Parody, 66, 149, 431, 489; see also Physical theatre, 543, 547
Charicature Pietà, 527
Parole in libertà, see Words-in-Freedom, Pilots, see Aviation
Paroxysme (art movement, founded by Pittura metafisica (Metaphysical Painting;
Beauduin in 1911), 489 Italian art movement, founded in 1917),
Participatory art, 117, 428, 495, 498–500, 490
542–546 Plagiarism, 7
Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI), 150 Plamak (Sofiia, 1924–25), 492
Passatismo, see Passéism Planimetrics, 119
Passéism, XVI, XVII, 8, 31, 48, 172, 302, 340, Plurilingualism, 458–459
379–381, 542; see also Conservatism, Poesia: Rassegna internazionale (Milano,
conventional culture, traditionalism, 1905–09), XIV, 75, 94, 311n, 312
Past, enchantment with, XV Poetry, XV, 27, 34, 40, 41, 46, 48, 75, 116,
Patriarchy, XVII, XVIII, 184, 186, 367 122n, 129, 200, 230, 245, 246, 248, 261,
Patriotism, 49n, 96n, 173, 175, 177, 185, 190, 270, 280, 283, 367, 370, 379, 395–397,
193, 319, 367, 481; see also Identity, 400–419, 436, 461, 467–471, 489
nationalism —, Aeropoetry, 518
Pattuglia azzurra (artists’ group in Florence, —, Calligram, 269, 452, 532
founded in 1913), XVIII, 453 —, Concrete poetry, 274n, 401n, 402, 447,
Pattuglia rosa (women Futurists), XVIII, 532
453 —, Conceptualist poetry, 414
652 Subject Index
—, Cubist Poetry, 179, 492 55, 72, 76, 77, 83–84, 139, 141, 146, 147,
—, Expressionist poetry, 112, 124 149, 158, 217, 307n, 333, 346, 354, 357,
—, Futurist poetry, XI, XIII, XVI, 118, 175, 189, 370, 371, 373–376, 388, 432, 438, 440,
191, 203, 216, 217, 226, 227, 232–243, 497, 507, 517–519, 521, 528
246, 255, 266–268, 273, 276, 278, 431, Positivism (philosophical system), 351
445–448, 481, 488, 499, 519, 532–535, Postcards, see Artists’ postcards
543, 547–548; see also Visual poetry, Post-Colonialism, 493
Words-in-Freedom, zaum' Posters, 185, 219, 226, 229, 230, 232, 238,
—, Onomatopoeia, 543–544, 546 240, 242, 243, 294, 294, 427n, 435–436,
—, Pattern poetry (technopaegnia), see 531, 556; see also Advertising, graphic
Calligram design
—, performances of, 17, 48, 141n, 232, 233, Post-Impressionism (French art movement,
237–238, 310–311, 446, 447, 543–544, c.1880–1910), 38, 47, 59, 73, 74, 75n,
548 200, 204, 439
—, Poster poetry (Plakatgedichte; Plakaty), Postmodernism (international art movement
294 of the 1970s), 327, 445, 541
—, Recordings of, 504 Post-Soviet Art, 477, 497
—, Shape poetry, see Calligram Post-Symbolism, 269; see also Late-Symbolism
—, Simultaneist poetry, 17–18 Press, see Media, newspapers
—, Sound poetry, 446, 447, 448, 542, 543 Primeval, see Élan vital, Primitivism
—, Symbolist poetry, 229–233, 235n, 241, Primitivism, 83, 138, 169, 187, 192, 205,
244, 267, 271, 272, 303 283, 437, 486, 528–529, 547, 555; see
—, Transrational / Transmental poetry, see also Barbarogenius, exoticism, folk
Zaum' art, Neo-Primitivizm, Rousseauism,
—, Vacuum poetry, 396, 414, 415 wilderness
—, Versification, Free Verse, 241, 545 Prix Europa (television festival), 327
—, Visual poetry, XVIII, 115n, 294, 313, 372, Proa: Fulla de poesia y de guerra (Barcelona,
396, 402, 403n, 404, 412, 414, 445, 458, 1921; Buenos Aires, 1924–26), 128n
469–470, 488, 508, 532–535, 543 Productivism (art movement in post-Revolu-
Poets’ Guild, see Tsekh poetov tionary Russia), 482, 493
Poet’s Workshop, see Tsekh poetov Progress, see Technological progress
Polish-Soviet War (1919–21), 298n Proletariat of geniuses, 478
Politicization of aesthetics, XIII, 173, 184–185, Proletkult (Proletarskie kul'turno-prosveti-
226, 477 tel'nye organizatsii; Proletarian cultural
Politics, XIX, XIX, 8, 21, 29, 33–34, 41, 48, 70, and educational organization, founded in
73–74, 76, 100, 160, 171–177, 191–194, 1917), 493
228–230, 245, 248, 263, 294–296, Prolog: Časopis za kazuališnu umjetnost
305–308, 314, 317, 327, 427, 440, 453, (Zagreb, 1990–93), 327
461, 477–482, 506–509, 510n, 512, Propaganda (artistic), 48; see also
513, 520, 538, 556; see also Anarchism, Advertising, artists’ postcards, leaflets,
Communism, Fascism, Futurist Political manifestos, pamphlets, publicity, slogans
Party, Ideology, Nationalism, Socialism —, (political), 168, 185–193, 194, 243, 306,
Polovtsian people, 524 479–480, 513
Polymateriality, see Mixed media Propeller, 220, 319, 435, 436
Popular press, IX, 75 Prophecy (Prophets), 46n, 154, 188, 309
Pornography, 174 Prose: Rivista d’arte e d’idee (Roma & Napoli,
Portraiture, XX, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 25, 40, 41, 54, 1906–08), 303n
Subject Index 653
Prostitution, 106, 236, 274, 556 —, Realismo mágico (Magical Realism; Latin
Protestantism, 71, 73, 74, 297, 299n American literary movement, founded in
Provocation, see Shock tactics 1947), 489
Psyche, 137, 145–147, 149, 156, 158, 312, —, Socialist Realism, 247, 401, 467, 492
313, 316, 320; see also States of mind, Rebirth , 33, 343, 344
subconscious Recitation (art of), see Poetry, performance of
Psychiatry, 297, 302, 307–309, 321 Recreation of the word, 370
Psychology, 29, 65, 174, 208, 257, 268, 276, Red Army (Krasnaia Armiia; Raboche-
300n, 347, 371n Krest'ianskaia Krasnaia Armiia), 243,
Publicity stunts, 173, 430–433, 496 307, 554
Publicity, see Advertising, propaganda Reformed Church, 299
Punctuation, 340, 390 Rejuvenation, 385
Purism (French art movement, c.1918–25), 252 Religion, XVI, 100, 104, 113, 118, 121, 148,
Purism (purity), 63, 66, 137, 169, 259, 277, 160, 168, 172n, 173, 174, 215, 229, 239,
380, 283, 547 287, 278, 281, 284, 301, 302, 341, 436,
Pussy Riot (protest group in Russia, founded 480, 509–510, 525; see also Christianity,
in 2011), 482 Islam, mysticism, occultism, paganism,
Puteaux School / Section d’Or (Orphist group, pantheism, spiritualism, Waldensian
founded in 1910), 3, 6n 8, 9, 179, 259 confession
Renaissance (cultural epoch, 15th–16th
Quantum physics, 344 century), 113, 118, 119, 131
Renewal, 94n, 96, 107, 131, 174, 200, 201, 222,
Race (ethnicity), 102, 341; see also Italianità 269, 319, 487, 490, 492, 508, 532, 543
Racing (speed contest), 77, 368, 378–384, Repetition, 117, 131, 143, 264, 370, 417, 469
390, 544 Reportage, 478
Radicalism, 241 Representation (method of depiction), 8, 11,
Radio, 23, 327, 409n, 448, 452, 541 15, 18, 61n, 111, 113, 120, 124, 142, 143,
Radio Sarajevo, 541 146–148, 152–155, 173–175, 190, 231,
Radio Television Belgrade, 327 283, 341–344, 347, 350, 358, 370, 373,
Radio Toronto, 541 376, 385, 490, 543, 547, 548; see also
Radioactivity, 344 Figurative art
Railway, 61n, 158, 175, 208, 211, 220, Respublika: Ezhednevnaia vnepartiinaia
239–240, 25, 261, 273, 314–316, 347, gazeta (Tbilisi, 1917–18), 232
377, 517, 534, 379 Retour à l’ordre, see Rappel à l’ordre
Rannee utro: Eezhednevnaia politicheskaia i Return to Nature, 274; see also Shkola
literaturnaia gazeta (Moskva, 1907–18), organicheskogo iskusstva
173n Revolt (Rebellion), XVI, 96, 248, 257, 274,
Rappel à l’ordre, XIII, XVIII, 128, 460, 436n, 338, 385, 439; see also Subversion
508 Rhetorics, X, 6, 8, 18, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 66,
Rationalism, 345, 458, 470, 478, 503, 352, 168, 171–175, 194, 253, 482
538; see also Irrationalism Rhythm, 8n, 9, 10, 59, 63, 142–144, 161, 180,
Rayism (Luchizm; founded by Mikhail Larionov 255, 266, 277, 282, 315, 316, 327, 328,
in 1912), 180, 203n, 431, 432, 433 330, 384, 517
Razionalismo (Italian architectural movement, Rhythm: Art Music Literature (London,
founded in 1926), 490 1911–13), 37, 59, 60, 61n
Realism, 138, 143, 149, 177, 228, 246, 248, Rhythmists (English Modernist group,
256, 436; see also Mimesis, Naturalism founded in 1911), 59–61
654 Subject Index
Ritual, 527–528, 547 Sculpture, XII, 11n, 26, 46, 61n, 79n, 128, 136,
Roma futurista (Roma, 1918–20), XVII, 106, 138, 141 143–145, 149, 155, 156, 158, 213n,
143, 159, 160, 305, 312n, 313, 317, 319, 221, 239, 333n, 339, 355–358, 478, 504,
320n, 471 505, 523–528, 542, 547
Romanticism, 49, 62, 64, 66, 104, 105, 226, Scythian people, 174, 195
230, 231, 239, 243, 248, 280, 282, 298, Secession, see Art Nouveau
344, 436n; see also Sentimentalism Second World War, see World War II
Rombismo (Latin American Cubism, 1920s), Secondo futurismo (Second-wave Futurism),
113 see under Futurism
Ronsel (Barcelona, 1924), 122 Section d’Or, see Puteaux School
Rotation, 154 Seduction, 328, 342, 453
Rousseauism, 274 Self-advertisement (Auto-Réclame), 397
Russian artists in Georgia, 229–234 Semiotics / Semiosis, 54, 64, 548
Russian artists in Paris, 178–181, 252–265 Sensacionismo (Sensationism; Portuguese
Russian Civil War (1917–20), 229 literay school, founded in 1914), 492
Russian Futurism, see under Futurism Senses (five), 258, 320, see also haptic,
Russian Revolution (1917), 124, 235n, 248, olfaction, perception
292, 294, 304, 307, 330, 482, 527 Sensibilità pittorica moderna (Modern
Russian Silver Age, 227, 235, 248, 523 painterly sensibility), see Sensibility
Russian Writers’ Union, see Soiuz pisatelei Sensibility, 8n, 61n, 97n, 98, 136, 140–141,
SSSR 143, 156, 160, 302, 328, 355, 356n, 478,
Russification, 298 478, 479, 529, 543
Russkie vedomosti (Moskva, 1863–1917), Sensuality, 101, 102n, 104, 106, 373, 377, 478
169 Sentimentalism, XIV, XVI, 32, 49n, 50, 67,
Rykaiushchii parnas (Roaring Parnassus, 98–100, 106, 131, 182, 201, 235, 24, 314,
1914), 266, 276n 377, 436; see also Romanticism
Serate (Futurist soirées), 77, 141n, 427, 505,
Sadok sudei (A Trap for Judges, 1910, 1913), 542–545
266, 270, 433 Set-design, see Stage design
Samizdat (sam izdatel'stvo; underground Seven and Five Society, see 7 & 5 Group
publications), 395–396, 401–406, 416, Sexual stereotyping, XIX
418, 467, 470, 491 Sexuality, 99, 102–105, 311n; see also
Sarajevske sveske = Sarajevo Notebook Eroticism, Free love
(Sarajevo, 2002-present), 327 Sexualization of machines, 373, 375, 377
Satire, see Caricature Shamanism, 204, 547
Savitsky Collection, 550 Shiftology (Sdvigologiia), 410n, 413, 527
Sbornik molodykh pisatelei (An Anthology of Shipovnik (publishing house), 432
Young Writers, 1905), 267 Shkola organicheskogo iskusstva (School
Scandal, IX, 89, 95, 97, 103, 188, 320, 328, of Organic Art; founded in 1912), 266,
330, 432, 495; see also Shock tactics 284–286
Science, 108, 242, 268, 275, 279, 309, Shock tactics (provocation), 48, 188, 244, 386
341, 351, 377, 447, 482, 521n; see also Shrapnels, 328, 386, 544, 546
Technology Simplismo (art movement, founded by
Scorn for women (mépris de la femme, Hidalgo in 1925), 534
disprezzo della donna), XV, XIV, XVI, XIX, Simultaneism / Simultaneity, XX, 7, 11, 15, 17,
30, 49, 96, 97, 98, 172, 367, 378; see also 102, 103, 104n, 117n, 136, 144, 158, 175n,
Misogyny 199, 210, 211, 212, 344, 384, 389
Subject Index 655
Sintesi (Futurist mini-dramas), 544, 547n; see Spark plugs, 369, 374–375
also Theatre, Futurist Theatre of Essential Speech act theory, 537, 538
Brevity Speed (velocity), 31, 82, 144, 146, 168, 175,
Skyscrapers, 81 204, 220, 314–316, 328, 329, 366, 368,
Slavophilia, 274 369, 372, 377, 378–384, 387, 390, 520,
Slavs, 490, 491, 539 528; see also Dynamism, time
Slogans, XV, XVI, 21n, 30n, 100, 294, 296, Speeding, see Racing
313, 481, 490, 502; see also Advertising, Spirit (Geist), 3, 19, 58, 59, 60n, 74, 89, 92,
propaganda 104, 108, 145, 146, 147, 160, 161, 189,
Smell, see Olfaction 200, 276, 318, 354, 452, 482, 534
Snobbism, 97n Spirit (Godhead), 527–528
Social reforms, 319, 508 Spiritism, XIVn, 94, 142, 146, 161, 279,
Socialism, 76, 93, 150, 274, 297, 336n 333–340, 342, 344, 345, 346, 359, 529;
Socialist Realism, see under Realism see also Occultism, spirit, telepathy
Society of Dublin Painters (founded in 1920), Spiritualism, XVIII, 28n, 87, 89, 94n, 95, 106,
74 136, 140, 147, 148, 154–156, 161, 215,
Sofii Giorgievne Mel'nikovoi (To Sofia 259, 269n, 270, 273, 277, 278, 279, 285,
Giorgievna Melnikova, 1919), 231, 240, 587 286, 300n, 338, 350, 380, 458, 480, 512,
Soirées (Futurist theatrical events), see Serate 518, 525, 528, 539; see also Religion
—, literary and musical, 17, 51, 94, 229, 230, Spleen, 538
232–233, 236–238, 310–311, 542, 544 Stage design, 143n, 180, 480, 488, 492, 496,
Soiuz molodezhi (Peterburg, 1913), 202, 212, 519, 525, 526, 548
Soiuz molodezhi (Union of Youth; artists’ Stalin Prize, 234
group in Saint-Petersburg, active Star language (zvezdnyi iazyk), 491
1910–13), 174, 191, 200–203, 216, 217, States of mind (Stati d’animo), 77, 136, 145,
219, 256, 268–271, 285 146, 148, 154, 158, 199, 212, 215, 333, 335,
Soiuz pisatelei SSSR (Union of Soviet Writers, 346–354, 359; see also Psyche
1932–91), 248 Statues, 128, 524–527; see also Sculpture
Soldiers, see Military Stereotype, XIX, 22, 161, 184, 344
Solntse Rossii (Sankt-Peterburg, 1910–17), Stile futurista (Torino, 1934–35), 479
227n Stolichnaia molva: Politicheskaia i
Sound, 141–142, 143, 144, 151, 191, 199, 215, literaturnaia gazeta (Moskva 1908–16),
216, 219, 236, 239, 241, 242, 244, 255, 173n, 431
264, 275, 283, 328, 384, 398, 445, 446, Street festivals, 493
447, 448, 488, 531, 541–548; see also Street performances, 430–433, 496; see also
Noise Action theatre
Sound poetry, see under Poetry Stridentism, see Estridentismo
Soviet Union, see in Geographical index Structuralism (philosophical and literary
Soviet Writers Union, see Soiuz pisatelei SSSR movement), 171
Sovietization, 226, 230, 231, 233 Students’ unrest of 1968, 331
Space, 7, 8, 9, 10, 18, 29, 78, 122, 125, 127, Studiia Khudozhestvennoi Prozy (artists’
158, 188, 191, 205, 207, 209, 210, 210, association in Tbilisi, founded in 1918),
212–213, 220, 222, 255, 258, 259, 263, 235
276, 330, 332, 344, 347, 350, 366, 368, Styk: Pervyi sbornik stikhov Moskovskogo
369, 379, 380, 414, 478, 525, 526, 547; Tsekha Poetov (The Junction: A First
see also Time and space Anthology of Verse from the Moscow
Spanish Civil War (1936–39), 331 Guild of Poets, 1925), 245
656 Subject Index
Subconscious, 147, 341 Tank: Revue internationale (Ljubljana,

Subjectivity, 210, 367, 372 1927–28), 484, 481
Submarine, 82 Tartar people, 307
Subversion, 18, 100, 168, 194, 215, 217, 222, Tate Magazine (London, 1993-present), 23
420, 489; see also Revolt Technological progress, 108, 372, 494
Suffrage, XVII, XVIII, 21, 28, 30, 32, 33, 40, 50, Technology, 74, 96, 204, 276, 372, 373,
93, 98, 229, 439–441 378, 436, 492, 504, 528, 539; see also
Suffragettes, 21, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 40, 50, Industry, machine culture, modernity,
98, 439–441 science
Suffragists, 30, 40 Technophilia, see Machine cult
Supernova, 355 Technophobia, 378; see also Dystopia
Suprematism (Russian art movement, Telegrafia senza fili, see Radio
founded in 1915), 171, 183, 199, 222, 252, Telegraphy, 243, 314, 545, 546n
292, 293, 294 Telepathy, 345
Supremus (Russian avant-garde group, active Telephone, 273, 368, 375, 376, 389
1915–17), 222 Television, 327, 448
Supremus (unpublished journal, planned for Terror, 32, 175, 385, 482
1917), 222 Tertulias, 117; see also Soirées
Surrealism, 46, 70, 330, 334, 347, 457–458, Terzo futurismo, see under Futurism
508, 532, 537, 540 Tetrad ofortov (Print Collection, 1919), 554
Švietimo darbas (Kaunas, 1919–30), 488 Thaumaturgy, 527; see also Magic
Symbolic capital, 537 The Bystander (London, 1903–40), 439, 440
Symbolism (international artistic movement, The Daily Chronicle (London, 1872–1930), 439
1880s–90s), 75, 138, 154, 177, 200, 233, The Egoist: An Individualist Review (London,
240, 241, 247, 266, 334, 359n, 378, 478, 1914–19), 31, 51
517, 537–538; see also Late-symbolism, The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper
Post-symbolism (London, 1869–1932), 440
—, in France, 458 The Observer (London, 1791-present), 31, 51
—, in Georgia, 229, 231 The Tyro: A Review of the Arts of Painting,
—, in Russia, 177, 215, 230, 235, 244, Sculpture and Design (London, 1921–22),
266–291, 303, 431n 37, 39
Synaesthesia, 13, 144, 505, 541, 548; see also The Vote: The Organ of the Women’s Freedom
Fusion of the arts, Gesamtkunstwerk, League (London, 1909–14), 30, 439
intermediality, mixed-media Theatre, 88, 92, 151, 182, 214, 229, 232,
Synchromism (US-American art movement, 233, 241, 242, 269, 273, 292–294, 320,
founded in 1912), 7 327, 354, 427, 428, 461, 499, 556; see
Syntax, 215, 239, 273, 314, 370, 371, 435, also Action Art, Action Theatre, ballet,
545 dance, drama, cabaret, circus, costume
Syntheses (Futurist mini-dramas), see Sintesi design, music-hall, opera, pantomime,
—, (conciseness and brevity), 451, 453, 506, performance, performance art, serate,
507 stage design, street performances
—, (fusion or integration), 9, 219, 231, 242, —, Commedia dell’arte, 510n
283, 436, 505, 517, 518, 519 —, Futurist gallery performances, 48, 141n,
—, (graphic), 359, 452n, 458 564
System theory, 537 —, Futurist Theatre of Essential Brevity
(Teatro sintetico), 137, 544
Tactilism, 320 —, Futurist Variety Theatre, 151
Subject Index 657
—, Futurist, XI, 117n, 270, 489, 493, 505, Transrational poetry, see zaum'
541–548, 553 Travel, 37, 41, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 84, 111–112,
—, Marionette theatre, 489, 505 130n, 178, 181, 202, 210, 211, 253, 257,
—, Mime, 151 263, 274, 316, 336, 371, 376, 379, 380,
—, Teatro del colore, 548 484, 532, 533, 546
—, Théâtre de Cruauté (Theater of Cruelty), Traveleri (The Travellers; Artists’ group in
544 Zagreb, founded in 1922), 484
—, Théâtre de la Pantomime Futuriste, 548 Trecento ‘Primitives’, 139
—, Theatre of the Absurd, 470n Trial (court case), 174
—, Variété (Variety Theatre, Teatro di Troe (The Three, 1913), 266, 270, 285, 418
varietà), 151; see also Music-hall Troe (The Three, 1919–20), 554
Theosophical Society, 300, 302, 339, 341, 359 Tsekh poetov (Poets’ Guild, active in Saint-
Theosophy, 87, 89, 94n, 142, 155, 278, Petersburg, 1911–14), 234n
300–303, 328, 333, 336n, 339–341, 344, —, second Poets’ Guild, active in Saint-
350, 458, 512n Petersburg, 1916–17, 235n
Third sex, 458 —, fourth Poets’ Guild, active in Moscow,
Time, 32, 160, 192n, 201, 210–213, 369, 1924–25, 234, 245
378, 381–383, 384, 499, 540; see also —, Baku branch, 1918, 244
Duration, speed —, Tbilisi branch, 1917–18, 229, 233, 234n,
Time-space nexus, 210, 212–213, 366, 235, 237–238
368–369, 378–380 Tsentrifuga (Futurist group in Moscow, active
Tin Lizzie, 368, 369, 376, 380, 390, 391 1913–17), 189
Total war, 168, 184 Tsisperi Qantsebi (The Blue Horns, Symbolist
Total Work of Art, see Gesamtkunstwerk group in Georgia, founded in 1915), 229,
Totalitarianism, 247, 331, 331, 477, 513 230, 231, 237
Tradition, XV, XVI, XIX, 28n, 46n, 61n, 72, 73, Tuti-namah (The Persian Parrot Book, 14th C.),
74, 95, 104, 105n, 106, 111, 121, 136, 138, 354
138, 139, 145, 147, 149, 158, 160, 168, Tvorchestvo (Futurist group in Vladivostok and
172, 184, 185, 192, 194, 203, 204, 235, Chita, active 1917–22), 553–556
246, 254, 256, 257, 260, 292, 337, 340, Tvorchestvo (Vladivostok, 1920–22), 553–556
342, 344, 352, 356, 379, 384, 401, 410, Typography, 49, 294, 314, 400n, 403, 492,
451n, 480, 494, 500, 525, 527, 532, 545 533, 535; see also Page layout, Parole in
Traditional art, see Mainstream libertà, visual poetry
Traffic, 263, 383–384 —, Lettering (fonts), 128, 210, 211, 214, 216,
Training (professional education), 55, 112, 219, 255, 295, 397–368, 403–404, 414,
178, 482, 516 416, 435, 469
Trains (locomotives), see Railway —, Typographical Revolution, 49
Trams (tramway, streetcar), 124, 126, 183, 237,
383, 535 Uktusskaia shkola (Uktus School; artists’
Transcendence, 300, 538; see also group in Sverdlovsk, active 1965–74),
Metaphysics 395, 396n, 402, 403
Transfurizm (art movement in Leningrad, Ultra [Vltra]: Poesia, critica, arte / Revista
founded in 1980), 395, 397, 401n, 416 internacional de vanguardia (Madrid
Transponans (Leningrad, 1979–87), 395, 396, 1921–22), 112n, 116–117, 119n, 127,
397, 400, 402–419, 470, 491 131
Transportation, 369, 380, 390, 391; see also Ultraísmo (Ultraism, Ultraïsme; literary and
Automobiles, aviation, railway, travel art movement in Spain, founded in 1918),
658 Subject Index
111–119, 125–127, 132, 435–436, 533, Visual poetry, see under Poetry
535, 537 Vita aerea (life in the age of aviation), XVIII
Underground (clandestine art and literature), Vitality / Vitalism, 11, 14, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37,
395–424, 467–473; see also Samizdat 42, 51, 54n, 59, 60, 96, 102n, 105n, 117,
Union of Soviet Writers, see Soiuz pisatelei 123, 195, 204, 205, 262, 263, 266, 276,
SSSR 281, 309, 360, 439, 460; see also Élan
Universal soul, 278 vital
Urban culture, 204, 207–208, 272–278, 342, Volga: Eezhemesiachnyi literaturnyi zhurnal
383–384, 479, 483, 543 (Saratov, 1966–2000), 447
Urban Planning, 490 Volontari Ciclisti Automobilisti (V.C.A.), 478
Urbanism, 273, 276–277; see also Vortex, 14, 21, 26, 31, 33, 45, 58, 67, 502
Architecture Vorticism (British art movement, founded in
Utopianism, 46n, 336n, 478, 490, 500 1914), 21–69, 372, 440
Vortography, 23, 45
Valet de carreau, see Jack of Diamonds Vsechestvo (everythingness), 170, 187, 203,
Vecher (Sankt-Peterburg, 1908–09), 169, 202n 221, 222
Vecherniaia Moskva (Moskva, 1923-present), Vseki (‘Everythings’), 170
248n
Velocity, see Speed Waldensian confession, 299, 303
Veneration of the machine, see Machine cult War, 156, 221, 316, 385, 387, 482, 490, 508n,
Vers libre, see under Poetry 539; see also Balkan Wars, Italo-Ethiopian
Vershini: Zhurnal literaturno-khu- War, Italo-Turkish War, Militarism,
dozhestvennyi (Petrograd, 1914–15), 227n Polish-Soviet War, Russian Civil War,
Vesna: Organ nezavisimykh pisatelei Spanish Civil War, Vietnam War, World
i khudozhnikov s postoiannym War I, World War II
otdelom“Gazeta Sebieva” (Sankt-Pe- —, and gender, 40, 176–177, 453
terburg, 1906; 1908–14), 267, 274 —, Futurist rhetoric of, 18, 172, 174, 175, 176,
Vesy: Nauchno-literaturnyi i kritiko-biblio- 177, 185, 192, 314, 385, 441, 490
graficheskii ezhemesiachnik (Moskva, —, in art, 37, 168–195
1904–09), 303 —, military nurses, 36–37, 40, 176
Vezni: Izdanie za literatura, izkustvo, kultura i —, munitions workers, 176
filosofiia (Sofiia, 1919–22), 492 —, veterans, 305
Vibrations, 8n, 79, 143, 547, 548 —, Volontari Ciclisti Automobilisti (V.C.A.),
Victorian society, 27–29, 32, 64 478
Vienna Secession, see Wiener Sezession —, voluntary Aid Detachment, 40
Vietnam War (Second Indochina War, —, volunteers, 176n, 478, 489, 547n
1955–75), 331 —, War, the Sole Cleanser of the World
Vikings, 204 (guerra – sola igiene del mondo), 49n,
Violence, 33, 101, 106, 143–144, 168, 171–175, 96n, 168, 172, 385, 387, 427, 478, 481,
176, 194, 194, 276, 331, 366, 368, 375, 490, 534
384–390, 440, 478, 480, 493, 508n, 539; —, war-mongering (war propaganda), 168,
see also Terror 480, 508; see also Militarism
Virginity, XVI —, women in war-service, 36–37, 40, 176
Virility, see Masculinity
Virtuoso performances, 544 White Russians (Anti-Bolshevik forces), 554
Visual arts, 70, 170, 255, 479, 495, 496, 532, Wiener Gruppe (Austrian literary association,
535 founded c.1954), 401n
Subject Index 659
Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession; Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU),
Austrian breakaway group of artists, 30, 32
founded in 1897), 336–338; see also Art Woodcut (Xylography), 5, 26, 112, 120,
Nouveau 123–124, 185n, 436
Wiener Werkstätte (art and design workshop, Word coinage, see Neologism
founded in 1903), 336 Word play, 370
Wildness (the wild), 54, 100, 101, 310; see Words-in-Freedom (Parole in libertà), 118,
also Primitivism, savage 312, 313, 314, 333, 342, 435, 461, 478,
Wireless, see Radio 488, 505, 533, 543, 545
Woman-Beauty, see Feminine beauty, literary World Soul, 281
trope of World War I (The Great War, 1914–18), 3, 7,
Woman question, 92, 98, 99n, 105, 313 11, 13–15, 27, 36, 37, 39, 40, 45, 70, 77,
Womanhood, 92, 94, 105n, 440, 456; see also 88, 95, 111, 117n, 130, 168–195, 219, 228,
Femininity 261, 264, 298n, 305, 307, 311, 313, 338,
Women, and art schools, 5, 24, 37, 55, 57, 342, 380, 385, 477–482, 487, 490, 500,
71–73, 111–112, 293, 176, 200, 267, 293, 513, 532, 533
300–303, 337, 339 World War II (1939–45), 36, 72, 331, 376, 385,
—, and suffrage, XVII, XVIII, 21, 28–33, 40, 510n
50, 93, 98, 228–229, 439–441
—, and war, 40, 176–177, 453 Xenophobia, 73
—, economic independence of, 28, 314 X-rays, 344n
—, education of, XVII, 55, 77, 98, 107, 139, Xylography, see Woodcut
271, 298, 328, 336
—, emancipation of, XII, XVI, XVII, 28, 33, 56, Youth (youthfulness), 53, 174, 191, 200–203,
63, 93, 105, 108, 228–229, 314, 328, 440, 216, 217, 219, 235, 256, 268–271, 275,
451n, 453 285
—, Expressionists, X
—, Futurist view of, XII, XIV, XVII, 90–108, Zaum' (transrational poetry), 175, 189, 191,
172, 313–314, 342, 344, 367, 453, 456, 199, 215, 216, 219, 221, 226, 232, 233,
506; see also Scorn for women 238, 241, 242, 243, 244, 255, 398, 400,
—, in avant-garde art, 2, 33–34, 87, 89, 91, 401, 403n, 404n, 410, 413, 415, 416n,
170, 181, 194, 459 417, 419, 445–449, 469, 499, 547
—, in war-service, 36–37, 40, 176 Zaumnikov (‘Zaumniks’), 400
—, marginalized, 24, 29, 54 Zaumnyi iazyk (transrational language), 244,
—, middle-class, 28, 359 547
—, ratio in exhibitions, 26–27, 183–184 Zelenaia koshka (Green Cat; Modernist group
—, traditional rôle of, XV, 104, 105n, 106, in Khabarovsk, founded in 1918), 550,
139, 342, 344 552–556
—, training of, XVII, 5, 24, 37, 55, 57, Zenit (Zagreb, 1921–23, Belgrade, 1923–26),
71–73, 98, 111–112, 139, 176, 200, 484, 491
227, 233, 235n, 256, 267, 293, 298, Zenitizam (Zenitism; art movement in
299, 336, 300–303, 337, 339, Yugoslavia, 1921–26), 537, 539
554 Zerstreuung (diversion, amusement), 383
Women’s Freedom League (WFL), 30, Zhenskii zhurnal (Moskva, 1926–30), 248n
439 Zhiv Kruchenykh (Kruchenykh Is Still Alive,
Women’s liberation movement, 453 1925), 242
Women’s rights, XVIII Zhiznetvorchestvo (life creation), 279
660 Subject Index
Zhovtnevyi zbirnyk panfuturystiv Zhuravl' (publishing house), 270

(Panfuturists’ October Collection, 1923), Zvrk (Croatian magazine, planned in 1914),
292, 294, 295 491
Geographical Index
Addis Abeba (Addis Ababa), 490 —, Soviet Socialist Republic (Azerbaid-
Adrianople (Edirne, Odrin, Adrianopoli), 478, zhanskaia Sovetskaia Sotsialisticheskaia
543, 544, 545, 546 Respublika, 1920–22, 1937–91), 243,
Africa, 87, 89, 237, 318, 455, 486, 489–490, 247
494, 507
African War, see Ethiopian War Baku, 226, 227, 228, 235, 243–245, 246, 247,
Albisola, 356 493
Alsace, 391 —, Bakı Dövlət Universiteti (State University),
Alto Adige (Südtirol), 389 244
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 407n —, Commune (Bakı kommunası, 13 April –
—, Kazimir Malevich and the Russian 25 July 1918), 247
Avant-Garde (19 October 2013 – —, Entire port, Concert in honour of fifth
2 February 2014), 550 anniversary of the October Revolution
—, Khardzhiev-Chaga Cultural Foundation, (Avraamov: Symphony of Sirens, 7
172, 407n November 1922), 493
Amur Krai (Amurskii Krai; Priamur'e), —, University Press, 235n
554n Balkans, 72, 477, 478, 480, 484, 545, 546
Anticoli Corrado (RM), Civico Museo d’Arte Basel, Kunsthalle, Das Neue Leben:
Moderna, 335 Erste Ausstellung (The New Life: First
Argentina, 111, 112, 127, 128–131, 132, Exhibition, November 1918), 15, 17,
436–437, 535 Bavaria (Bayern), 122
Arizona, 167 Belgium (La Belgique, België), 103, 211, 262,
Armenia (Hayastan), 228, 229, 240, 247n 296, 403n, 446, 447
—, as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR Belgrade, 327, 484, 491, 494n
(1922–36), 247n —, Radio-televizija Srbije (Serbian Radio
—, declared independence (26 and 28 May Television), 327
1918), 228 Belorussia (Belarus), 302
—, Haykakan Sovetakan Sotsialistakan Berlin, 137, 172, 173, 178, 180, 181, 447
Hanrapetut'yun (Soviet Socialist Republic, —, Galerie “Der Sturm”, Erster Deutscher
1936–1990), 247 Herbstsalon (First German Autumn Salon,
Asia, 204, 486, 492, 494, 523–526 20 September – November 1913), 180
Astrakhan, 275 —, —, Ausstellung Larionow / Gontscharowa
Astura (Nettuno/LZ), 329 (planned for July 1914), 180–181
Azerbaijan, 227, 243–244 —, Graphisches Kabinett I. B. Neumann,
—, as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR Große futuristische Ausstellung (The
(1922–36), 247 Great Futurist Exhibition, January–
—, Baku Commune (13 April – 25 July 1918), February 1922), 357, 358
247 —, Heimathafen-Neukölln, 1. European
—, declared independence (26 and 28 May Poetry Slam Festival (30 September –
1918), 228 4 October June 2009), 447
—, Democratic Republic founded (28 May —, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut,
1918), 243 Futurismus: Poesie und Texte der
—, independence suspended by the Red Avantgarde in Lateinamerika (Futurism:
Army (April 1920), 243 Poetry and Texts of the Avant-garde in
DOI 10.1515/futur–2015-0043
662 Geographical Index
Latin America (14 June – 12 July 2014), (Saint-Point Lecture on “Women in

531–536 Futurism”, 3 June 1912), 95
—, Kulturforum, 531 —, —, Les Peintres futuristes Italiens (The
—, Literaturwerkstatt, 5. Poesiefestival Italian Futurist Painters, 20 May –
(26 June – 4 July 2004), 447 5 June 1912), 96
—, Potsdamer Straße, 531 Buenos Aires, 127, 128–131, 436, 437, 534
—, Prix Europa television festival, 327 —, Asociación “Amigos del Arte”,
—, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Conferencia de Marinetti “Arte de
(Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), vanguardia” (Marinetti lecture on
531 “Avant-garde Art”, 17 June 1926), 129,
Bern (Berne), 5, 19, 309n 130, 437
Bilignin, 389 —, —, Exposición Norah Borges de Torre
Black Sea, 204, 273 (July 1940), 129
Bologna, Galleria Marescalchi, Gerardo —, Príncipe Restaurant, Dinner in honour of
Dottori: Pittore totale (20 March – 30 April Marinetti (16 June 1925), 130n
1993), 519 —, Sala de Los Independientes de la
—, Teatro Modernissimo, Esposizione d’arte Comisión de Bellas Artes, Exposición de
italiana futurista (Exhibition of Futurist pintores modernos (Exhibition of Modern
Italian Art, 21 January – 21 February Painters, 17–19 June 1926), 129, 130, 131,
1922), 145n, 155, 156, 490 437
Bonn, Bundeskunsthalle, Kasimir Malewitsch Bulgaria, 446, 492, 545, 546
und die russische Avantgarde (Kasimir
Malevich and the Russian Avantgarde, California, 138, 381
12 March – 21 June 2014), 550 Canada, 37, 298n, 447, 541
Bosnia (Bosna), 331 Capodimonte (Naples), 307
Brazil (Brasil), 535 Caporetto, 329
Bremen, University, Forschungsstelle Capri, 156, 305
Osteuropa, 402n, 406n, 424n, 470 Carpathian Mountains, 525
Brighton, Public Art Galleries, Exhibition of Castellaccio (LI), 150
English Post-Impressionists, Cubists and Catania, Lyceum Club, Marinetti lecture
Others (16 December 1913 – 14 January (8 June 1933), XVI
1914), 38 Caucasus (Kavkaz), 227–228
Brittany (Bretagne), 5, 7, 9 Ceret, 9
Brno (Brünn), Klub výtvarných umělců Aleš Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 524
(Club of Visual Artists Aleš), Výstava Chernianka, estate of Count Mordvinov near
moderního umění italského (Exhibition of Kherson on the Black Sea, 170, 273
Modern Italian Art, April 1921), 357 Chicago/IL, 23, 381, 388, 480, 490
Brussels (Bruxelles / Brussel), Sint-Gorik- —, Auditorium Theater, Four Saints in Three
shallen, Fanzine as an … Object Acts (Stein, 7 November 1934), 379
(13–20 September 1990), 403n —, Smart Museum, 52
—, Galerie Georges Giroux, 12 Chile, 446, 532, 535
—, —, Conférence Marinetti et Boccioni China (Zhongguo), 269, 270n, 283, 523–529,
(Round-table discussion with 550
Marinetti and Boccioni, 4 June 1912), Chita, 550, 552, 554, 556
103 Constantinople (Istanbul), 181
—, —, Conférence Valentine de Saint-Point Copenhagen (København), Den Fri Udstillings
“La Femme dans le futurisme” Bygning (Free Exhibition Building),
Futuristernes Udstilling (Futurist Futurism (16 December 1972 – 14 January

Exhibition, 11– [?] July 1912), 486 1973), 516
Croatia (Hrvatska), 477, 477, 491 Edirne, see Adrianople
Czechoslovakia (Česko-Slovensko), 72, 136, Eeklo, De Media (Small Mags Archive),
157, 339, 357 Fanzine as an … Object (October 1990),
403n
Dalmatia (Dalmacija), 491 Egypt (Maṣr, Miṣr), 90, 93, 139, 451n
Dal'nem Vostoke (Far East Russia), 524–528, Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), 402, 467
550–557 England, 21–69, 262, 299, 440, 537; see also
Dalnevostochnaia Respublika (Far-Eastern Great Britain
Republic), 554 Estonia (Eesti), 298, 447, 488–489
Delft, Sociëteit Phoenix (Phoenix Club), Lezing Étaples, 38, 59
van F. T. Marinetti over het futurisme Ethiopia (Ityoppya), 489–490
(Marinetti lecture on Futurism, 23 May —, Ethiopian War (1936–37), 407, 507, 547n
1912), 546 Etruria, 139, 358
Denmark (Danmark), 446, 486, 487 Eurasia, 523–526
Dessau, Bauhaus (1925–1933), 295, 331, Europe, X, 23, 46, 70, 72, 73, 75, 77, 87,
416n, 482, 509, 541 89, 98, 107, 111–112, 114, 115, 118, 119,
Dorpat, see Tartu 126–131, 139, 177, 178, 180, 200, 203,
Dresden, 300 256, 257, 264, 266, 269, 271, 336, 339,
Dublin, 71–72, 75, 77 372, 373, 435, 440, 447, 450, 459, 461,
—, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Analysing 477, 483, 484, 486, 491, 492, 494, 495,
Cubism (19 February – 19 May 2013), 497, 498, 499, 502, 507, 509, 513, 523,
70–71 528, 531, 532, 537, 539, 541, 551, 555
—, Metropolitan School of Art, 71
—, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, 74 Far East Russia, see Dal'nem Vostoke
—, Royal Hibernian Academy, 72 Fiesole (FI), Fondazione Primo Conti, 335n,
—, St. Stephen’s Green Gallery: The Dublin 346n, 356n, 365
Painters Exhibition (20 October – 17 Finland (Suomi), 269n, 273, 274, 280, 282,
November 1923), 74 298, 447
—, Studio of May Manning, 72 Finnish Gulf (Suomenlahti), 282
—, Taylor Galleries, Mary Swanzy HRHA (26 Fiume (Rijeka), 306, 453
October – 6 November 1982), 84 —, Free State of (1920–24), 306, 453
—, United Arts Club, 74, 75n Florence (Firenze), 7, 77–78, 179, 297, 303,
—, —, Modern French Pictures (29 March – 313, 333, 340–342, 346
4 May 1912), 74, 75n —, Biblioteca Filosofica (Philosophical
—, —, Works by Post-Impressionist Painters Lending Library), 303, 341, 345
(25 January – 14 February 1911), 74, —, Galleria Gonnelli, Esposizione di pittura
75n futurista di “Lacerba” (Exhibition of
Durham/NC, Duke University, Nasher Museum Futurist Paintings Organized by Lacerba,
of Art, The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in 13 November 1913 – 18 January 1914),
London, and New York, 1914–18 (30 77
September 2010 – 2 January 2011), 22, —, Giubbe Rosse, 261, 545n
45 —, Libreria Gonnelli, 77
—, Palazzo Strozzi, De Chirico, Max Ernst,
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, Magritte, Balthus: Uno sguardo nell’in-
Futurismo 1909–1919: Exhibition of Italian visibile (De Chirico, Max Ernst, Magritte,
Balthus: A Look into the Invisible, —, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic

26 February – 18th July, 2010), 523 (Sak'artvelos sabch'ota socialist'uri
—, —, L’avanguardia russa, la Siberia e resp'ublik'a; Gruzinskaia Sovetskaia
l’Oriente (The Russian Avant-garde, Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika, 1921–91),
Siberia and the Orient, 27 September 247n
2013 – 19 January 2014), 523–530 Germany (Deutschland), 112–113, 115, 118,
—, —, Picasso, Miró, Dalí: Giovani e 120, 122n, 124, 127, 177, 181, 256, 266,
arrabiati. La nascità della modernità 271, 280, 295, 297, 396n, 446, 471, 477,
(Picasso, Miró, Dalí: Angry Young 507, 523, 529, 537, 542
Men. The Birth of Modernity, —, Weimar Republic (1919–33), 295
12 March – 17 July 2011), 523 Gomel (Homyel'), 302
—, Piazza Donatello, 303, 341n Great Britain, 24, 27, 41, 44, 74–75, 176n,
—, Sala d’Arte Materazzi, Esposizione 211, 477
futurista (Futurist Exhibition, 12 June – [?] Greco (MI), 306
July 1922), 155, 156 Greece (Ellada), 181, 209, 524
—, Teatro Verdi, Serata futurista (12 Groningen, 537
December 1913), 77, 545n
Forlì (FC), 100 Hagen, Osthaus Museum, Fanzine as an …
France, XIV, 38, 41, 59, 72, 73, 76–77, 84, 88, Object (21 – 23 September 1990), 403
95n, 97, 102n, 178, 179, 189, 202, 211, Hakodate, Hokkaidōritsu Hakodate
296, 308, 371, 376, 380, 381, 435, 450, bijutsukan, Kyokutō Roshia no
454, 455, 461, 507, 529, 532 modanizumu 1919–1928-ten zuroku:
Frascati (RM), 305, 311n Roshia avangyarudo to deatta Nihon =
Freiburg, 71 Modernism in the Russian Far East and
Japan, 1918–1928 (16 July – 1 September
Gardone Riviera (BS), Il Vittoriale degli Italiani 2002), 550
(The Shrine of Italian Victories), 306n, Hawaii, 72
326 Helsinki, Helsingin yliopisto (University of
Geneva (Genève), 3–5, 90 14–15, 17, 19, 112 Helsinki), Fourth Bi-annual International
—, Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, 14 Conference of EAM (European Network
—, École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies),
Arts), 111–112 (29–31 August 2014), 486–494
—, Musée Rath, Exposition Alice Bailly —, Seurosaari (Fölisön), 486
(16 October – 14 November 1913), 3–4 Hokkaidō, Daigaku (Hokkaido University),
—, —, Exposition de cubistes français et 550n
d’un groupe d’artistes indépendants Honolulu, Hawaii, 78
(Exhibition of French Cubists and of Hungary (Magyarország), 477, 484
an Independent Artists’ Group, 3–15
June 1913), 4 Iceland (Ísland), 487
Georgia (Sak'artvelo), 226–251, 399n, 492 India, 269–270, 336, 523–525, 529
—, Bolshevik occupation of (25 February Ireland (Éire), 70–86
1921), 227, 228 —, Irish Free State (1922–37), 73
—, declaration of independence (26 and 28 —, partition of (1921), 73
May 1918), 228 —, struggle for independence from Britain, 74
—, Democratic Republic of Georgia Israel (Yisrā'el), 331
(Sak'artvelos demokratiuli resp'ublik'a, Italy (Italia), XII, XIV, XV, XVII-XIX, 70, 72, 75,
1918–21), 228 77, 80, 84, 88, 138, 141–161, 300–321,
327, 338–360, 450–464, 478, 489, 490, Košice, Východoslovenské múzeum, Výstava
505, 507, 510n, 511, 516–522, 543 moderního umění italského (Exhibition of
—, November 1919 elections, 306 Modern Italian Art, May 1921), 357
Ithaca/NY, Cornell University, 35n, 36n, 69 Krasnaia Poliana (Beautiful Glade), near
Iveria (ancient Georgia), 246 Kharkiv, 191
Kuokkala, 273
Japan (Nippon), 447, 492, 484, 523–525, 529,
533, 550–551, 554–556 Latin America, 112n, 129, 494, 531–536
Java (Jawa), 524 Lausanne, 10, 19
—, Librairie du Grand-Pont (Salon Jean
Kama river, 275 Biedermann), Exposition de cubistes
Kamchatka Peninsula, 527–528 français et d’un groupe d’artistes
Karakalpakstan (Qaraqalpaqstan), 550 (Exhibition of French Cubists and of a
Karelia (Karjala), 271–272, 274 Group of Artists, April–May 1913), 4
Kaunas, 487 Leipzig, 300
Kazan' (Kazan), 431 Leningrad, see Saint-Petersburg
—, University of Kazan, 275 Leysin (Canton de Vaud), 148–149, 152, 153,
Khabarovsk, 550, 552, 554, 556 160, 161
Kharbin (Harbin), 550 Libya (Lībyā), Italian invasion of (29
Kharkiv (Kharkov), 191, 192n, 274, 294 September 1911), 76, 487, 546n, 547
Kherson, 273, 274, 275 Liguria, 150
—, Second Vladimir Izdebsky Salon, Internat- Lithuania (Lietuva), 268n, 297–326, 487–488
sional'nuiu vystavku kartin, skul'ptury, —, Wars of Independence (1918–20), 298n
graviur i grafiki (International Exhibition London, 30, 33, 36n, 37–39, 45, 48, 50,
of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints and 52–53, 58, 62, 63n, 72, 75, 439–441
Drawings, 13 – 31 May 1911), 257 —, A.A.A., see Allied Artists’ Association in
Kiev (Kyiv), 176, 179, 256, 257, 273, 275, 494 Subject Index
—, Dytschenko Collection, 192 —, Accademia Italiana delle Arti e delle
—, First Vladimir Izdebsky Salon, Internat- Arti Applicate, Futurism in Flight:
sional'nuiu vystavku kartin, skul'ptury, ‘Aeropittura’ Paintings and Sculptures
graviur i grafiki (International Exhibition of Man’s Conquest of Space (1913–1945)
of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints and (4 September – 13 October 1990),
Drawings, 13 February – 14 March 1910), 516n
257 —, Bloomsbury, 47–48
—, Ivakin Collection, 192 —, Burlington House, Suffragette attack on
—, Kalfa Department Store, Vistavka Kol'tso a portrait of Henry James (4 May 1914),
(Exhibition “The Ring”, February 1914), 440n
179, 257 —, Camera Club, Vortographs and Paintings
—, L’Ecole de Mouvement / Shkola rukhu by Alvin Langdon Coburn (February 1917),
(School of Movement), Anon.: Metr Patlen; 23, 45
chor. Bronislava Nijinska (1919), 293 —, Coliseum, Grand Futurist Concert of
—, Studiia khudozhnytsi Oleksandry Ekster, Noises (15–21 June 1914), 48, 142, 383
bul. Fundukleivska №27 (The A. Exter —, Courtauld Gallery, Jack of Diamond
and E. Pribylskaya Workshop of Art and (18 September 2014 – 18 January 2015),
Design), 293, 294 495
Komsomolsk-on-Amur (Komsomolsk-na- —, —, Jack of Diamonds Disputes (24 October
Amure), 551 and 7 November 2014), 495–501
—, Doré Galleries, Exhibition of the Works of —, —, VI. Allied Artists’ Association Salon
the Italian Futurist Painters and Sculptors (July 1913), 35
(13–30 April 1914), 439, 440 —, Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel (Percy Street),
—, —, Marinetti Lecture/Performance with 25, 36, 53, 58
C.R.W. Nevinson (12 June 1914), 30, —, Sackville Gallery, Exhibition of Works by
50, 51 the Italian Futurist Painters (1 March –
—, —, The First Exhibition of the Vorticist 4 April 1912), 38, 439–440
Group (10 June – July 1915), 26–27, —, Slade School of Fine Art, 38, 55, 59, 61
45, 58 —, Stafford Gallery, The Rhythm Group
—, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, (October 1912), 38
Gerardo Dottori: The Futurist View (9 July —, Tate Britain, The Vorticists: Manifesto for
– 7 September 2014), 516–522 a Modern World (14 June – 18 September
—, Friday Club, 38 2011), 22, 45, 53
—, GRAD (Gallery for Russian Art and —, Tate Gallery, Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism
Design), 500 (6 July 1956 – 19 August 1956), 26
—, Grafton Galleries, Manet and the —, Tate Modern, Futurism (12 June –
Post-Impressionist (8 November 1910 – 20 September 2009), 510
15 January 1911), 38, 439 —, —, Malevich (17 July – 26 October 2014),
—, —, Second Post-Impressionists 550
Exhibition, British, French and —, Thames river, 26, 31
Russian Artists (5 October – —, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Coq d’or
31 December 1912), 38 (Ballets Russes; The Golden Cockerel,
—, Holland Park Hall, VII Allied Artists’ June – July 1914), 132
Association Salon (12 June – 2 July 1914), Los Angeles/CA, Charles E. Young Research
58 Library, 546
—, House of Commons, 439 —, The Getty Research Institute, 154n, 167,
—, Lindley Hall (Royal Horticultural Society 311n, 312n, 326
Old Hall), Third Annual Small Press Fair: Lugano, 112
Fanzine as an … Object (29 September
1990), 403n Macedonia (Makedonija), 447
—, Lyceum Club for Women, 30 Machida, Machida shiritsu kokusai
—, —, Marinetti Lecture: Discours futuriste hanga bijutsukan, Kyokutō Roshia no
aux Anglais (Futurist Speech to the modanizumu 1919–1928-ten zuroku:
English, 2 April 1910), 30, 439 Roshia avangyarudo to deatta Nihon =
—, Mansard Gallery, Group X exhibition Modernism in the Russian Far East and
(26 March – 24 April 1920), 41 Japan, 1918–1928 (6 April – 19 May 2002),
—, Mayor Gallery, Drawings of Jessica 550n, 556
Dismorr (12–28 November 1925), 35n, 39, Macugnaga (VC), 150, 155
40, 41 Madrid, 112, 114, 118, 122n, 125, 435, 436,
—, National Gallery, Suffragettes’ protest 471, 535
action (10 March 1914), 32, 440 Mallorca, 112, 115, 121, 126–127, 372
—, Parliament Square, Suffragettes’ protest Mexico, 194, 532–533
action (18 November 1910), 439 Mézières (Canton de Vaud), 10, 13
—, Rigolo (hat shop), 40 Miami Beach/FL, Wolfsonian-Florida
—, Royal Academy of Arts, 25, 31, 440n International University, 479
—, Royal Albert Hall, V. Allied Artists’ Miami/FL, Sackner Archive of Concrete and
Association Salon (July 1912), 35 Visual Poetry, 402n, 424
Middle East, 331 Decorative Arts of the South of Russia,

Milan (Milano), XIX, 94n, 96, 141, 142, 151, November 1915), 293
297, 306, 307, 310, 311n, 329, 331, 340, —, Gosudarstvennaia Tret'iakovskaia
356n, 510, 516, 521n Galereia (State Tretyakov Gallery),
—, Archivio Marinetti, 146n, 154n, 155n, Archive, 149n, 151n, 153n, 156n, 157n,
160n, 167 161n, 167, 526
—, Carcere di San Vittore, 307 —, Gosudarstvennyi muzei iskusstva narodov
—, Casa Rossa in Corso Venezia 61 (Futurism Vostoka (State Museum of Oriental Art),
headquarters), XIX, 96, 306 Vostok i russkoe iskusstvo (The Orient and
—, —, Demonstration of Russolo’s Russian Art, April 1978), 523
intonarumori (2 April 1915), 141 —, Institut Russkogo Iazyka, Poeticheskii
—, Padiglione Ricordi, Mostra d’arte libera iazyk rubezha XX-XXI vekov i sovremennye
(Exhibition of Free Art, 30 April – 30 June literaturnye strategii (Poetic Language
1911), 261n Abroad in the 20th–21st Centuries and
—, Palazzo Cova, Galleria Centrale d’Arte, Modern Literary Strategy, 16–19 May
Grande esposizione nazionale futurista 2003), 447
(11 March – 30 April 1919), 356, 358 —, Kamernyi Teatr (Chamber Theatre), Famira
Modena, Teatro Storchi, Serata futurista Kifared (Annenskii: Thamira Khytharedes;
(2 June 1913), 383, 542 dir. Tairov, 1916), 293
Moldavia (Moldova), 446 —, Khudozhestvennyi salon (Klavdiia
Montenegro, 477 Mikhailova Art Salon on Ulitsa Bol'shaia
Monza, Belvedere, Mostra degli adornatori Dmitrovka 11), Vtoraia vystavka
del libro (Exhibition of Book Illustrators, sovremennogo dekorativnogo iskusstva
19 May – 21 October 1923), 340 (Second Exhibition of Contemporary
—, Villa Reale, Prima esposizione interna- Decorative Art, 6–19 December 1917),
zionale delle arti decorative (First Inter- 293
national Exhibition of Decorative Arts, —, —, Vystavka kartin Natalii Sergeevni
19 May – 21 October 1923), 340n, 357 Goncharovoi, 1900–1913 (Exhibition
Moscow (Moskva), 138, 156, 169, 170, 171, of Paintings by Natalia Goncharova,
172, 173, 174n, 176, 179, 181, 182, 185, 30 September – 5 November 1913),
186, 191, 200, 226, 228, 229, 234, 243, 156
245–247, 255, 256, 262, 269, 273, 292, —, Kuznetzkii Most Street, Futurist group
293, 298, 303, 329, 403, 407, 462–433, walk (14 September 1913), 173, 430–433,
447, 470, 481, 482, 488, 493, 495, 523, 496
542, 550, 551, 552, 554 —, Muzei V.V. Maiakovskogo (Mayakovsky
—, Dom Lianozova, Kamergerskii pereulok Museum), 407n
3, Voina i pechat (War and the Press, —, Obshchestvo Svobodnoi Estetiki (Society
8 January – 1 February 1915), 185 of Free Aesthetics), Odnodnevnaia
—, Al'penroze (Restaurant Alpine Rose), vystavka kartini N.S. Goncharovoi
171n (One-day Exhibition of Paintings by
—, Dom Soiuzov, Pervy vsesoiuznyi sezd Natalia Goncharova, 24 March 1910), 174n
sovetskikh pisatelei (First All-Union —, Parnis Collection, 192
Congress of Soviet Writers (14 August – —, Politekhnicheskii muzei, Bolshoi
1 September 1934), 248n zal (Polytechnical Museum, Major
—, Galereia Lemers'e, Vystavka Auditorium), Disputi “Bubnovogo valeta”
sovremennogo dekorativnogo iskusstva (Jack of Diamonds Debates, 12, 19 and
Iuga Rossii (Exhibition of Contemporary 25 February, 23 March 1913), 496
—, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv —, Italian Cultural Institute, Feminine Futures

literatury i iskusstva (RGALI; Russian (3 November 2009 – 7 January 2010), XIII,
State Archive of Literature and Art), 238n, 87
407n —, Museum of Modern Art, 80
—, Tsentral'naia teplovaia elektrostantsiia —, Penguin Club, Exhibition of the Vorticists
MOGES (MOGES Central Power Station), (January 1917), 26, 45, 58
Concert in honour of sixth anniversary —, The Ukrainian Museum, Ukrains'kyi
of the October Revolution (Avraamov: modernism, 1910–1930 = Ukrainian
Symphony of Sirens, 7 November 1923), Modernism, 1910–1930 (4 November
493 2006 – 11 March 2007), 294
—, Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi literaturnyi Newcastle Upon Tyne, University of
arkhiv (TsGALI; Central State Archive of Newcastle: Hatton Gallery, Futurismo
Literature), 269 1909–1919: Exhibition of Italian Futurism
—, Unknown location, Berdyaev lecture, (4 November – 8 December 1972), 516
Krizis iskusstva (Crisis in Art; 1 November Nikolaev, Second Vladimir Izdebsky Salon,
1917), 168–169, 204n Internatsional'nuiu vystavku kartin,
—, Vysshii Gosudarstvennyii Khudozhest- skul'ptury, graviur i grafiki (International
venno-Tekhicheskii Institut (VKhUTeIn; Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints
Higher State Artistic-Technical Institute), and Drawings, 11 April – 1 May 1911), 257
482 Nizhni Novgorod, 275
—, Vysshie Khudozhestvenno-Tekhnicheskie North Cape (Nordkapp), 338
Masterskie (VKhuTeMas; Higher Artistic- Norway (Norge), 280, 447
Technical Workshops, 1920–1926), 482 Norwich, University of East Anglia, 39
—, Vysshii literaturno-khudozhestvennyi Nukus (No'kis), Savitskiy nomidagi Qoraqal-
institut imeni V. I. Briusova (Valery pog'iston Respublikasi Davlat San'at
Bryusov Literary-Artistic Academy), 245 Muzey / Gosudarstvennyi muzei iskusstv
Munich (München), 113n, 139, 178, 269, 339 imeni I. V. Savitskogo Nukus Museum of
—, Anton Ažbe Kunstschule, 178 Art (State Art Museum of the Republic
—, Kunstauktionshaus Neumeister, 353n, of Karakalpakstan, named after I.V.
355n Savitsky), 550
—, Simon Hollòsy Kunstschule, 178
Murmansk, 467 Odessa (Odesa), 180
—, First Vladimir Izdebsky Salon, Internat-
Naples (Napoli), 329, 427–429 sional'nuiu vystavku kartin, skul'ptury,
—, Capodimonte, 307 graviur i grafiki (International Exhibition
—, Teatro Mercadante, Serata futurista of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints and
(Futurist Soirée, 20 April 1910), 427 Drawings, 4 December 1909 – 24 January
Netherlands (Nederland), 13n, 211, 309n, 546 1910), 257
New Haven/CT, Yale University, Beinecke Rare —, Second Vladimir Izdebsky Salon, Internat-
Book and Manuscript Library, 137n, 145n, sional'nuiu vystavku kartin, skul'ptury,
158n, 160n, 167 graviur i grafiki (International Exhibition
New York City, 331 of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints and
—, 291 Gallery, 373 Drawings, (6 February – 3 April 1911), 257
—, Guggenheim Museum, Italian Futurism, Orient, 88, 89, 90, 148, 336, 494, 523–529
1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe Ouchy (Canton de Vaud), 142
(21 February – 1 September 2014), 47,
502–515, 520, Pacific, 525
Pacific Islands, 72 —, —, Salon de Section d’Or (10–30 October

Padua (Padova), 518 1912), 8, 259
Palermo, Palazzo delle Poste, Sala di —, Galerie Moderne Clovis Sagot, Exposition
Consiglio, 506 Del Marle (July 1913), 4
Paris, 3–14, 18, 38, 70–73, 76, 83, 89–97, —, Galerie Paul Guillaume, Exposition Natalie
103, 125, 132, 177–181, 211–212, de Gontcharowa et Michel Larionow
252–260, 263–264, 329, 331, 369–370, (17–30 June 1914), 180
376, 380, 382, 384, 532, 535, 544 —, Galeries de L’Esplanade des Invalides,
—, Abbaye de Créteil, 5 Grand Palais, Petit Palais, Exposition
—, Académie Antonio de la Gándara, 76 Internationale des Arts Décoratifs
—, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, 76, et Industriels Modernes, 28 April –
178 25 October 1925), 487
—, Académie de la Palette, 35, 37, 38, 59, —, Grand Palais, Salon d’Automne (15
178 November 1913 – 5 January 1914), 10
—, Académie de la Rose, see Académie —, —, Salon d’Automne (15 November 1914
Filippo Colarossi – 5 January 1915), 3, 13
—, Académie Delécluse, 76 —, Montparnasse, 5, 6, 178
—, Académie Filippo Colarossi, 76, 178 —, Opéra, Le Coq d’or (Rimsky-Korsakov: The
—, Académie Julian, 178 Golden Cockerel, 24 May 1914), 180
—, Bal Bullier, 11 —, Quai d’Orsay, 27ème Salon des
—, Boulevard Raspail, 83 Indépendants (21 April – 13 June 1911), 6,
—, Centre Pompidou, Le Futurisme à Paris: 7,
Une avant-garde explosive (Futurism —, —, 28ème Salon des Indépendants
in Paris: An Explosive Avant-garde, (20 March – 16 May 1912), 6, 179
15 October 2008 – 26 January 2009), 510 —, —, 29ème Salon des Indépendants
—, Closerie des Lilas, 5 (19 March – 18 May 1913), 3, 4, 9
—, École des Beaux-Arts, 76n —, —, 30ème Salon des Indépendants
—, Galerie Barbazanges, Exposition de (1 March – May 1914), 3, 11, 179
Quelques Artistes Indépendants Anglais —, Rue Boissonade, 5, 178, 260
(Some English Independent Artists, July —, Salle Gaveau, Conférence futuriste de
1912), 62 Valentine de St-Point (Saint-Point Futurist
—, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Les Peintres Lecture, 27 June 1912), 95, 103
futuristes italiens (The Italian Futurist —, Salon Gertrude Stein, 366
Painters, 5–24 February 1912), 7, 8, 9, 11, —, Salon Valentine de Saint-Point, Soirée
94n, 201, 260 Apollonienne (Apollonian soirée,
—, Galerie Charles Vildrac, 12 17 February 1912), 94
—, Galerie Kahnweiler, 6 —, Théâtre de la Madeleine, Théâtre de la
—, Galerie La Boëtie, Conférence Guillaume Pantomime Futuriste (Futurist Pantomime
Apollinaire “L’Écartèlement du cubisme” Theatre, 12 May – June 1927), 548
(Apollinaire Lecture on “The Quartering of —, Théatre de l’Œuvre, 320
Cubism”, 11 October 1912), 6n —, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Concerts de
—, —, Première exposition de sculpture bruits (Russolo: Concerts of Futurist Noise
futuriste du peintre et sculpteur Music, 17, 27, and 28 June 1921), 383
futuriste Boccioni (First Exhibition —, Théâtre Edouard VII (Galerie G. L. Manuel
of Futurist Sculpture by the Futurist Frères), Salle XIV: Une exposition de
Painter and Sculptor Boccioni, poèmes de Vincent Huidobro (16 May-
20 June – 16 July 1913), 202 2 June 1922), 535
—, Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower), 125, 535 Priamur (Priamur'e; Amur Krai), 554n
Parkhomovka, 275 Primorskii Krai (Primor'e; Maritime Province),
Pärnu, 488 552
Pegli (GE), 150
Persia (Iran), 148, 269, 270n, 354, 523, 528, Rennes, Université de Rennes II., Centre
529 d’Études des Littératures et Langues
Peru, 112n, 532, 534 Anciennes et Modernes, 494
Perugia, Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Reykjavik, 487
Fine Arts), 516 Riga, Vladimir Izdebsky Salon, Internat-
—, Archivi Gerardo Dottori, 516 sional'nuiu vystavku kartin, skul'ptury,
—, Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie Molecolari graviur i grafiki (International Exhibition
(Institute of Molecular Science and of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints and
Technologies), 521n Drawings, 12 June – 7 July 1910), 257n
Peterburg, see Saint-Petersburg Romania, 507
Petrograd, see Saint-Petersburg Rome (Roma), XIX, 94n, 136–148, 150, 156–158,
Piedmont, 150 160, 179, 203, 262, 297, 300, 303–307,
Pochinok (Pskov region), 267, 275 310, 329, 333, 335, 338–340, 359, 510
Poggio a Caiano (FI), 261 —, Associazione Artistica Internazionale,
Poitiers, Confort Moderne, Fanzine as an … 338–339
Object (November 1990), 403n —, —, Conferenza Umberto Boccioni “La
Poland (Polska), 112, 298n, 299, 310, 447, 492 pittura futurista” (Boccioni lecture on
Poltava (Ukraine), 293 “Futurist Painting”, 29 May 1911), 314
Porto Ceresio (VA), 307 —, Caffè Groppo, 310
Portugal, 117n, 131, 492, 531 —, Campidoglio, Sala degli Orazi e Curiazi,
Prague (Praha), 12, 137, 139 Primo Congresso Nazionale Femminile
—, Mánes Pavilion, Kinsky Garden, Moderní (First National Women’s Congress, 23–30
umění: 45. výstava S.V.U. Mánes v Praze April 1908), 93
(Modern Art: 45th Exhibition of the Mánes —, Casa d’arte Bragaglia, 319n
Fine Arts Association, February-March —, —, Mostra personale di Rugena Zatkovà
1914), 12 (Solo Exhibition of Růžena Zátková,
—, Pražský hrad, Císařská konírna (Imperial November 1922), 137, 154, 155, 157,
Stables at Prague Castle), Růžena: Příběh 158
malířky Růženy Zátkové (Story of the —, Chiesa Valdese (Waldensian Church), 303
Painter Růžena Zátková, 7 April – 31 July —, Circolo Femminile “Lyceum”, Palazzo
2011), 138 Theodoli, Esposizione artistica femminile
—, Rudolfinum (Krasoumná jednota dom (Female Art Exhibition, 1920), 355–356
umělců – House of Artists), Výstava —, —, Esposizione artistica femminile
moderního umění italského k oslavĕ (Female Art Exhibition 1921), 355–356
Dantovĕ / Esposizione d’arte italiana —, Galleria dell’Epoca, Mostra d’arte
d’avanguardia (Exhibition of Modern indipendente pro Croce-Rossa
Italian Art to Celebrate Dante / Exhibition (Independent Art Exhibition in Aid of the
of Avant-garde Italian Art, 8 October – 6 Red Cross, 26 May – June 1918), 356
November 1921), 357 —, Galleria futurista, see Galleria Sprovieri
—, Švandovo divadlo (Švanda Theatre), —, Galleria G. Giosi (Ridotto del Teatro
Syntetické divadlo (Futurist Theater of Costanzi), Prima esposizione di pittura
Essential Brevity, 12, 13 and 17 December futurista (First Exhibition of Futurist
1921), 137 Painting, 11 February – March 1913), 542
—, —, Mostra di pitture e plastici dell´arista —, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Mostra della

boema Rougena Zàtkovà (Exhibition rivoluzione fascista (28 October 1932 –
of Paintings and Sculptures of the 28 October 1934), 505, 507
Bohemian Artist Růžena Zátková, 6 —, Palazzo Theodoli, Circolo Femminile
April – 6 May 1921), 137, 143, 155, 156 “Lyceum”, 355, 356–357
—, Galleria La Feluca, Mostra personale Rosa —, Palazzo Valadier, Mostra d’arte di
Rosà (1957), 357 aderenti all’Associazione Donne
—, Galleria Sprovieri, 310, 338 Professioniste e Artiste (Art Exhibition
—, —, Apertura della galleria futurista of members of the Association of
(Opening of the Permanent Futurist Professional Women and Artists,
Gallery, 6 December 1913), 141n 1932–1933), 357
—, —, Conferenza Valentine de Saint-Point —, Piazza Adriana 11 (Marinetti apartment),
“La donna futurista” (Saint-Point XIX
Lecture on “The Futurist Woman”, —, Porta Pinciana, 307
27 December 1913), 95 —, Scuderie del Quirinale, Futurismo:
—, —, Esposizione libera futurista interna- Avanguardia-avanguardie (Futurism:
zionale. Pittori e sculturi italiani, Avant-garde / Avant-gardes, 20 February
russi, inglesi, belgi, nordamericani – 24 May 2009), 510
(International Free Futurist Exhibition —, Scuola Normale Femminile “Margherita di
of Painting and Sculpture, 13 April Savoia”, 303
– 25 May 1914), 141n, 146, 179, 203, —, Società teosofica, Conferenza di Eva Kühn
262 (Eva Kühn lecture on “Arthur Schopen-
—, —, Pomeriggi futuristi (Futurist afternoon hauer’s Transcendental Optimism”,
performances, 1914), 544 1904), 300
—, Grotte dell’Augusteo, 320 —, Teatro Costanzi, Feu d’artifice (Stravinsky:
—, Istituto Internazionale di Agricoltura Fireworks; chor. Balla, 12 April 1917),
(International Institute of Agriculture), 303 505
—, Mercati Traianei, II Mostra nazionale di —, —, Serata futurista (21 February 1913),
plastica murale per l’edilizia fascista 141, 542
(2nd National Exhibition of Mural Décor —, —, Serata futurista (9 March 1913), 141,
for Fascist Buildings, October-November 542
1936), 489 —, Teatro Argentina, Teatro del colore
—, —, Mostra dell’Associazione Nazionale (Theatre of Colours, dir. Prampolini,
Fascista Donne Artiste e Laureate 21–26 March 1920), 548
(Show of the National Fascist —, Teatro degli Indipendenti, XIX, 319n
Association of Women Artists and —, Terme di Settimio Severo, thermal bath in
Graduates, November 1936), 357 Via degli Avignonesi, 319n
—, Ministero dell’Africa Italiana (Ministery of —, Via degli Avignonesi, 319n
African Italy), 490 —, Via del Tritone, 310
—, Padiglione Colonna, Conferenza con —, Via Margutta, 338–339
declamazioni di versi (Soirée of lectures Rostov-on-Don (Rostov-na-Donu), 243
and poetry recitations, 18 April 1913), Ruhr (Germany), 296
310–311 Russia (Rossiia), XI, XIX, 122n, 123–124,
—, Palazzo della Sapienza, 1. Congresso 132, 136, 138, 139, 142, 151, 160–161,
nazionale d’urbanistica (First National 168–198, 199–225, 226–248, 252–265,
Congress of Urbanism, 5–7 April 1937), 266–291, 292–294, 297–300, 302–304,
490 310, 330, 395–424, 431–434, 445–449,
460, 467–473, 477, 480–482, 484, 487, Exhibition of Futurist Painting 0,10
488, 489, 490, 491, 493, 495–501, 508, [zero-ten], 19 December 1915 –
523–530, 537, 539–540, 541, 542, 547, 19 January 1916), 183
550–557; see also Dal'nem Vostoke, —, Liteinyi Prospekt, Studio of Jan Ciągliński,
Zapadnaia Rossiia 267
—, Civil War (1917–23), 229 —, Liteinyi teatr (Foundry Theatre), Unnamed
—, February Revolution (1917), 482 play by Nina Vasilieva, 233
—, October Revolution (1917), 124, 235n, —, Litseiskaia ulitsa, Apartment of Guro and
248, 292, 293, 294, 307, 330, 527, 507, Matyushin, 270
551, 552 —, Miniatiur teatr; see Troitskii Teatr
—, Russian Empire (1721–1917), 227, 228, —, Ministerstvo zemledeliia i gosudarst-
243, 292, 297, 524 vennykh imushchestv (Ministry of
Agriculture and State Property), 227
Saint Tropez, 77 —, Muzeia khudozhestvennoi kul'tury
Saint-Petersburg (Sankt-Peterburg; Petrograd (Museum of Artistic Culture), Zangezi
in 1914–1924; Leningrad in 1924–1991) (Khlebnikov: Zangezi, dir. Tatlin, 9 and
171n, 174, 200, 203, 227, 234, 235, 262, 11 May 1923), 490, 547
266, 268, 272, 273, 275, 278, 280, 299, —, Nevski prospect 27, Voina i pechat
349, 403, 447, 194n, 542, 550 (War and the Press, 20 November –
—, Bashnia (seventh floor apartment “The 4 December 1914), 185
Tower” in Dernov Apartment House; —, Nevskii Prospekt 48 (Passazh na Nevskom
Viacheslav Ivanov’s Symbolist salon), 267 prospekte; The Passage Department Store
—, Brodiachaia sobaka (Stray Dog), 232 on Nevskii Prospekt), Sovremennykh
—, Dom Literatorov (House of Writers), 285 techeniia v iskusstve (Contemporary
—, Fruit shop under the Hotel “Bristol”, Trends in Art, 26 April – May 1908), 268
Impressionisty (The Impressionists, —, Nevskii Prospekt 73, Soiuz molodezhi (7th
9 March – 12 April 1909), 266, 268n exhibition “Union of Youth”, 10 November
—, Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia biblioteka 1913 – 14 January 1914), 285
imeni M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, 286 —, Obshchestvo pooshchreniia khudozhestv
—, Gosudarstvenny Ermitazh (Hermitage (Imperial Society for the Promotion of the
Museum), Vostochnoe puteshestvie Arts), Pervaia uturisticheskaia vistavka
tsesarevicha Nikolaia 1890–1891 gg. (The Tramvai V (The First Futurist Exhibition
Eastern Journey of Crown Prince Nicholas Tramway V, 3 March – 2 April 1915), 183,
1890–1891, 1893–94), 524 184, 294
—, Gosudarstvennyi universitet (State —, Pesochnaia ulitsa, House of Guro and
University), 235n Matyushin, 270
—, Imperatorskaia akademiia khudozhestv —, Pushkinskii dom. Institut russkoi literatury
(Imperial Academy of Arts), 482 i iskusstva (Pushkin House. Institute of
—, Khudozhestvennaia shkola Zvantsevoi Russian Literature and Art), 286
(Elizaveta Zvantseva Art School), 200, 267 —, Shkola Imperatorskogo Obshchestva
—, Khudozhestvennoe Biuro Nadezhda pooshchreniia khudozhestv (School of
Dobychina, Personal'naia vystavka N. the Imperial Society for the Promotion of
S. Goncharovoi (Goncharova Personal the Arts), 267
Exhibition, 15 March – [?] April 1914), 181, —, Smol'nyi Charm School, 233
433 —, Teatr “Luna Park”, Pobeda nad solntsem
—, —, Posledniaia futuristicheskaia vistavka (Kruchenykh: Victory over the Sun, 3 and
kartin 0,10 (nol-desiat) (The Last 5 December 1913), 270, 547
—, —, Vladimir Maiakovskii: Tragediia Sakhalin Island, 528

(Mayakovsky: Vladimir Mayakovsky: Samoa, 81
A Tragedy, dir. Mayakovsky, 2 and 4 San Gimignano (SI), 81
December 1913), 270 San Sebastian, Teatro Eugenia-Victoria,
—, Teatr V.F. Komissarzhevskoi, Balaganchik Ballets Russes season (21–25 August
(Blok: The Little Showbooth, dir. 1916), 148
Meierkhol'd, 1906), 553n Santo Castello, 329
—, Troitskii teatr miniatiur, Discussion Sarajevo, 327, 541
evening of the Union of Youth on —, Assassination of Grand Duke Franz
“O sovremennoi zhivopisi” (On Ferdinand (28 June 1914), 330, 477
Contemporary Art, 23 March 1913), 174 —, Siege of (1992–96), 327, 331
—, —, Discussion evening of the Union of Scandinavia, 266, 269, 271, 280, 489
Youth on “O noveishei literature” (On Scythia, 170n, 174, 195, 204, 526
Recent Literature, 24 March 1913), Seine-et-Oise, 7
271n Semirotovshchina, near Kharkiv, 274
—, Tsentralnyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Serbia (Srbija), 327, 331, 411, 537, 539
literatury i iskusstva (Central State Seville (Sevilla), 112, 122
Archive of Literature and Art), 282, 286 Siam (Thailand), 524
—, Unknown location, Treugol'nik – Siberia (Sibir'), 204, 523–527, 551
Venok-Stefanos (Triangle – Wreath of Sicily (Sicilia), XVI
Saint Stephen exhibition, 19 March – Skoptsi (Veselinivka), 293
10 April 1910), 268n, 270 Sligo, Sligo Art Gallery, Mary Swanzy (30
—, Vladimir Izdebsky Salon, Internatsion- September – 22 October 1987), 84
al'nuiu vystavku kartin, skul'ptury, Soviet Union (Soiuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisti-
graviur i grafiki (International Exhibition cheskikh Respublik – Union of Soviet
of Paintings, Sculptures, Prints and Socialist Republics), 227, 245, 247n, 296,
Drawings, 2 May – 7 June 1909), 257n 307, 328, 395, 396, 401, 403
—, —, Internatsional'nuiu vystavku Spain (España), 111–128, 131, 148, 331, 435,
kartin, skul'ptury, graviur i grafiki 507, 531–535
(International Exhibition of Paintings, —, Civil War (1936–39), 331
Sculptures, Prints and Drawings, Srebrenica, 331
19 April – 25 May 1910), 257n Saint-Cloud (Hauts-de-Seine), Adrien Sina
—, Vysshii Khudozhestvenno-Tekh- Collection, 91
nicheskii Institut (VKhUTeIn; Higher Slovenia (Slovenija), 491
Artistic-Technical Institute, Leningrad: Stockholm, Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet,
1922–1930, Moscow: 1926–1930), 482 12
—, Zale Tenishevskogo uchilishcha Struga, Various locations, 44 Struški Večeri na
(Assembly hall of Tenishev School), Poezijata (XLIV. Poetry Evenings, 24–29
Lektsiia Il'i Zdanevicha “Futurizm” August 2005), 447
(Zdanevich lecture on “Futurism”, 8 April Sverdlovsk, see Ekaterinburg
1913), 202 Sweden (Sverige), 138, 269n, 278
—, —, Lektsiia Korneia Chukovskogo Switzerland (Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera,
“Iskusstvo griadushchego dnia: Svizra), 3–20, 111, 120, 141, 142, 143,
Russkiie poety-futuristy” (Lecture 148–149, 156, 178, 181, 297, 477
by Kornei Chukovskii on “The Art of
the Coming Days: Russian Futurist Tahiti, 72
Poets”, 5 October 1913), 432 Tambov, Akademiia Zaumi, 445–449
—, Tambovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet —, integrated into the newly formed USSR

imeni G.R. Derzhavina (Derzhavin State (December 1922), 228n
University), 447 —, Zakavkazskaia Demokraticheskaia
Tartu (Dorpat), Tartu Ülikool / Kaiserliche Federativnaia Respublika (Transcaucasian
Universität (Imperial University), 298, 488 Democratic Federative Republic, February
Tbilisi (Tiflis), 226–251, 273, 399n, 400, 404, – May 1918), 228
292 —, Zakavkazskaia Sovetskaia Federativnaia
—, Chika Chai (Chashka Chaia / Mi bazhak Sotsalisticheskaia Respublika
they; Tea House “A Cup of Tea”), 232 (ZSFSR; Transcaucasian Socialist
—, Fantastiuri Duqani / Fantasticheskii Federative Soviet Republic, 1922–36),
Kabachok (Fantastic Tavern), 231–232, 247n
233, 235n, 241, 242n Trieste (Tršt), 75, 329, 330
—, —, Lektsiia Alekseia Kruchenykha —, Teatro (Politeama) Rossetti, Serata
“O zhenskikh stikhakh” (Aleksei futurista (12 January 1910), 543n
Kruchenykh lecture on “Female Tripoli (Ṭarābulus), 76, 546n
Poetry”, 18 June 1918), 230 Troitsa (Perm region), 274
—, —, Vecher Kolchuga (Chain Mail soirée, 18 Turin (Torino), 305, 340
June 1918), 230 —, Galleria Subalpina, Salone del Winter
—, Imedi (Restaurant “The Hope”), Vecher Club, Esposizione futurista interna-
zaumnoy poezii Sindikata futuristov zionale (International Futurist Exhibition,
(Soirée of Zaum Poetry by the Syndicate 27 March – 27 April 1922), 155
of Futurists, 18 January 1918), 232–233 Turkey (Türkiye), 526, 545
—, —, Vystavka Kirilla Zdanevicha Tuscany (Toscana), 77, 81, 139, 261
(exhibition of Kirill Zdanevich,
January 1918), 232 Ukraine (Ukraina), 117, 178, 179, 256, 275,
—, Ioseb Grishashvilis sakhelobis Biblio- 292–296, 437, 446, 497, 551
teka-muzeumi (Ioseb Grishashvili —, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
Library-Museum), 238n (1919–91), 292
—, Konservatoriis Darbazi / Zal Muzykal'nogo Uktus (Uktuss), 395, 396n, 397n, 398n, 402,
uchilishcha (Conservatory Hall / Academy 403, 467
of Music Auditorium), Vecher Tsekh poetov Umbria, 516, 518, 519, 521
(Artistic soirée of Poets’ Guild, 23 October Union of Soviet Socialist Republics / USSR,
1918), 236–238 see Soviet Union
—, Mefisnatsvlis Sasaxle / Dvorets United Kingdom, see Great Britain
vitse-korolia Kavkazskogo (Palace of the United States of America, XII, 37, 369, 461,
Caucasus Viceroy), 228 211, 262, 477, 511, 551
—, Pervaia Velikoi Kniagini Ol'gi Fedorovny Utsunomiya, Utsunomiya Bijutsukan, Kyokutō
zhenskaia gimnaziia (First Grand Duchess Roshia no modanizumu 1919–1928-ten
Olga Feodorovna Women’s High School), zuroku: Roshia avangyarudo to deatta
227 Nihon = Modernism in the Russian Far
Tokyo (Tōkyō), 489, 551 East and Japan, 1918–1928 (26 May –
Toronto, XVIIIn, 489, 451 7 July 2002), 551
Transbaikalia (Trans-Baikal, Dauria), 554 Uusikirkko, Pervyi vserossiiskii siezd baiachei
Transcaucasia (Zakavkaz'e, South Caucasus), budushchego (First All-Russian Congress
227, 228, 247n of Bards of the Future, 18–19 July 1913),
—, independent government formed 274, 285
(November 1917), 228 Uzbekistan (O'zbekiston), 550
Valais (Wallis), 5 —, Primorskaia gosudarstvennaia kartinnaia

Valldemosa (Majorca), 121 galereia (Primorskaia National Art
Veneto, 319, 338n Gallery), 552
Venice (Venezia), Guggenheim Collection, I —, —, Khudozhniki Vladivostoka pervykh let
vorticisti: Artisti ribelli a Londra e New Sovetskoi vlasti (Artists of Vladivostok
York, 1914–1918 (The Vorticists: Rebel during the First Years of Soviet Power,
Artists in London and New York, 1914–18, 1972), 552
29 January – 15 Mai 2011), 45 —, Teatr-kabare Bi-Ba-Bo (Futurist cabaret),
—, Palazzo Grassi, Futurismo e futurismi 553
(Futurism and Futurisms, 3 May – Volga River, 204, 447, 500
12 October 1986), 511–512 Vologda, 467
Verbivka (Ukraine), 293
Verona, 329 Warsaw (Warszawa), 235n
Versailles, 71 Wilno, see Vilnius
Vicenza (VE), 518
Vienna (Wien), 333–338, 359 Yeisk, see Eisk
—, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Yekaterinburg, see Ekaterinburg
(Academy of Fine Arts), 337 Yugoslavia, 330, 331, 477; see also Croatia,
—, Kunstgewerbeschule (Academy of Applied Dalmatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia
Arts), 337
—, Künstlerhaus (House of Art), 336 Zadar (Croatia), 327, 477–485, 491
—, Kunstsalon Gustav Pisko, 13 Zagreb (Zagabria), Institute of Avant-garde
—, Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen Studies, 477, 483, 484
(Art School for Women and Girls), —, Klasična gimnazija (Classical Grammar
337 School), Tamburo di fuoco (Marinetti: The
—, Universität für Musik und darstellende Drum of Fire, 16 December 1922), 484
Kunst (University for Music and —, —, Vengono (Marinetti: They Are Coming,
Performing Arts), 337 16 December 1922), 484
—, Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und —, —, Zenitističko pozorište (Zenitist Theatre
Künstlerinnen in Wien (Association of Soirée, 16 December 1922), 484
Female Writers and Artists in Vienna), —, Muzeja avangarde / Kolekcija Marinko
337n Sudac (Museum of the Avant-garde /
—, Wiener Frauen Akademie (Vienna Marinko Sudac Collection), 477, 483, 484
Academy for Women), 337 —, Muzeju suvremenue umjetnosti (Museum
Vietnam (Việt Nam), 331 of Contemporary Art), 177, 483
Villepreux (Seine-et-Oise), Villa Médicis-Libre, —, —, Prvi svjetski rat i avangardna
5 umjetnost: Dekonstrukcija –
Vilnius (Vilniaus, Wilno), 297–303, 307, 310, konstrukcija (First World War and
328, 487–488 Avant-Garde Art: Deconstruction
—, Futurist exhibition (announced in 1922), – Construction, 26 June –
488 28 September 2014), 483–484
—, Realschule (Technical secondary school), Zapadnaia Rossiia (Province of Western
298, 303 Russia), 297
Vilnius, Stepono Batoro universiteto (Stefan Zurich (Zürich), 3, 15–19, 300
Batory University), 310 —, Cabaret Voltaire, 477, 542
Viterbo (LZ), 307 —, —, A Futurist comedy (planned for April
Vladivostok, 550, 556 1916), 542
—, Kunsthaus, Alice Bailly (May 1912), 7 12 January – 5 February 1919),

—, —, Alice Bailly (12 April – [?] 1919), 15, 17
17–18 —, Universät, Eva Kühn Vortrag “Arthur
—, —, Conference Tristan Tzara “Sur l’art Schopenhauers Transzendentaler
abstrait” (Tzara lecture on Optimismus” (Eva Kühn lecture on
“Abstract Art”, 16 January 1919), “Arthur Schopenhauer’s Transcendental
17 Optimism”, 1907), 300n
—, —, Das Neue Leben: Erste Ausstellung —, Zum Kaufleuten, Dada Soirée (9 April
(The New Life: First Exhibition, 1919), 17

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International Yearbook of Futurism Studies

With the assistance of Mariana Aguirre, Selena Daly,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bibliografic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Section 1: Women Artists and Futurism

Section 2: Caricatures and Satires of Futurism in the

Natalia Budanova and Helen Higgins

Irene Chytraeus-Auerbach and Lisa Hanstein

Section 7: Back Matter

List of Illustrations and Provenance Descriptions 591

von Heider-Schweinitz, Marie von Malachowski-Nauen, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Gustava

movimenti d’avanguardia fu notoriamente il meno femminista, anzi il misogino per eccellenza.”

15 Marinetti: “Interview sur le futurisme”, Poupées électriques, pp. 32–33, translated as “Futur-

Silvia Contarini offers a very useful contextualization of the Futurist attitude

Keywords: Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, Parisian Futurism, hybridization, selective

based his argument both on modernity and contemporaneity (“as advanced as it

Bailly’s Fauvist beginnings and move towards Cubism (1907–10)

The assimilation of Futurism

interest regarding the evocation of movement can be seen in these staccato

Fig. 2. Alice Bailly: Le Thé (Tea Party, 1913–14).

From an objective standpoint, Alice Bailly’s integration into cosmopolitan avant-

17 See Cérusse: “Chronique mensuelle.”

The War Years

19 Alice Bailly to Gertrud Müller, 27 June 1914. Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Dübi-Müller-Stiftung,

Cooperation with Dada

depression. As a result of Bailly’s intervention, Picabia bounced back from his

24 See Bolliger, et al.: Dada in Zürich.

25 According to Sanouillet, “Vlan les photographes morts-nés” (which can be translated as

Basel, Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, PA 888 Archiv des Basler Kunstvereins.

Apollinaire, Guillaume: “À travers le Salon des Indépendants.” Montjoie! 18 March 1913.

Cérusse, Jean: “Chronique mensuelle.” Les Soirées de Paris, 15 June 1914. 301–302.

Keywords: Vorticism, women in avant-garde art, Futurism and Feminism

the masculinity the movement seemingly espoused? Or are we constantly falling

3 See Felski: The Gender of Modernity, or Deepwell: Women and Modernism.

or usual in Vorticism shows. Three works by Helen Saunders, presumed lost

4 Peppin: “Women that a Movement Forgot.”

William Roberts’ representation of Vorticism

Homosociality in the Edwardian art world

classes and ranks. It was against these Victorian/Edwardian ideas of separate

Another example is the scant attention given to Nevinson’s mother, a suffra-

Margaret Wynne Jones Nevinson’s characterization of Marinetti reveals her

The publication of Vital English Art, a manifesto signed by Marinetti and

29 Huyssen: After the Great Divide, p. 8.

Vorticist women artists

30 Tickner: “Men’s Work, Masculinity and Modernism”, pp. 1–38.

Much of the question of women artists’ rôle or relevance centres on their

Women artists in Edwardian London

Taking the metaphor of the conversation, which is suggested by Dismorr’s 1922

46 See Deepwell: Women Artists between the Wars.

Female Vorticists in the 1920s

52 Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art in the Machine Age, p. 417.

53 Isaak: The Ruin of Representation in Modernist Art and Texts.

—: Letters. Ed. by William Kent Rose. London: Methuen, 1963.

Keywords: Vorticism, Futurism in Great Britain, gender, feminism, masculinity

critics have shown a “literary-critical shyness regarding” the “import” of the

Futurism and Vorticism

12 Edwards: Foreword, Blast 1, p. vii.

Accordingly, Blast 1 would hail the “suffragettes”, although ambivalently,22

netti and Christopher Nevinson launched a manifesto in the name of an English

29 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, pp. 110–111.

– concerned with cultivating, deploying, and guarding a certain model of mas-

The women artists of the Vorticist group in London

15 Marinetti: “Interview sur le futurisme”, Poupées électriques, pp. 32–33, translated as “Futur-

29 Huyssen: After the Great Divide, p. 8.

30 Tickner: “Men’s Work, Masculinity and Modernism”, pp. 1–38.

52 Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art in the Machine Age, p. 417.

12 Edwards: Foreword, Blast 1, p. vii.

29 Wees: Vorticism and the English Avant-garde, pp. 110–111.

75 Cork: Vorticism and Abstract Art, pp. 416, 418.

1 Breton: “Le Monde au temps des surréalistes,” pp. 26–27.

2 Kennedy: Irish Art and Modernism, p. 35.

7 Marshall: “Women and the Visual Arts in Ireland”, p. 28.

11 O’Byrne: “Irish Modernism”, p. 13.

20 Somigli: Legitimizing the Artist, p. 173.

22 Campbell: “Art Students and Lady Travellers”, p. 20.

28 See Berghaus: Italian Futurist Theatre, p. 122.

32 Boccioni: “The Plastic Foundations”, p. 141.

34 Murphy: A Passion for Collecting, p. 78.

35 Murphy: A Passion for Collecting, p. 267.

37 Boccioni et al: “Manifesto of Futurist Painters”, p. 62.

38 Campbell: “Art Students and Lady Travellers”, p. 143.

41 Kennedy: Irish Art and Modernism, p. 1.

29 Saint-Point: “The Manifesto of Futurist Woman”, p. 110. Saint-Point: “Manifeste de la femme

37 Re: “Scrittura della metamorfosi e metamorfosi della scrittura”, pp. 311–327.

39 Dorlin: Sexe, genre et sexualités, p. 5.

19 Davidson: “Norah Borges, the Graphic Voice of ‘Ultraísmo’”, p. 13.

21 Davidson: “Norah Borges, the Graphic Voice of ‘Ultraísmo’”, p. 18.

Fig. 4. Rusia (Russia), from Grecia 3:48 (1 September 1920), p. 7.