NEW YORK, NY.- Described by the New York Times as “epic” and a “phenomenal show of shows,” Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe is the first comprehensive overview in the United States of one of Europe’s most important 20th-century avant-garde movements. Featuring over 360 works by more than 80 artists, architects, designers, photographers, and writers, this multidisciplinary exhibition examines the full historical breadth of Futurism, from its 1909 inception with the publication of F. T. Marinetti’s first Futurist manifesto through its demise at the end of World War II. The presentation includes many rarely seen works, some of which have never traveled outside of Italy. It encompasses not only painting and sculpture, but also the advertising, architecture, ceramics, design, fashion, film, free-form poetry, music, performance, photography, publications, and theater of this dynamic and often contentious movement that championed modernity and insurgency. For more information, download the press kit at guggenheim.org/presskits.

The final weeks of the exhibition offer a last chance to view the celebrated canvases that compose the Syntheses of Communications (1933–34) by Benedetta (Benedetta Cappa Marinetti). They are being shown for the first time outside of their original location in Palermo, Sicily, and will return to Italy after the close of the exhibition. One of few public commissions awarded to a Futurist in the 1930s, the cycle of five monumental paintings was created for Palermo’s Palazzo delle Poste (Post Office). The mural-like works celebrate multiple modes of communication, many enabled by technological innovations, and correspond with the focus on modernity and the “total work of art” concept that underpinned the Futurist ethos.

The exhibition is organized by Vivien Greene, Senior Curator, 19th- and Early 20th-Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. An international advisory committee composed of eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines provided expertise and guidance in the preparation of this thorough exploration of the Futurist movement, a major modernist expression that in many ways remains little known among American audiences.