(ANSA) - Bergamo, September 21 - The shock waves that crashed through the art world from Italy's hugely influential Futurist movement are registered in a massive new show in this northern city.
The exhibit features 200 works by 120 artists including Futurism's protagonists Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra', Gino Severini, Mario Sironi and Luigi Russolo.
An array of modern and contemporary artists influenced by Futurism's iconoclastic energy includes America's Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and John Cage as well as Britain's Damien Hirst and Gilbert and George.
The show has a vast cultural scope and extends into the world of literature, showing the influence of Futurist founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti on tragic Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.
"The Futurists believed in the need to radically redesign the universe," explained curators Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Maria Cristina Rodeschini.
"This concept led them to perceive every form of artistic expression in a different way, including music, dance, photography, cinema, theatre and the design of living spaces and furniture.
"The show provides a rich sample of the vast body of art these ideas generated, linking the works to other areas of the worlds of culture and industry".
The first section, entitled Futurism Revisited, juxtaposes paintings by Futurist big guns with works by artists influenced by them over 50 years later.
Visitors can admire Balla's stylish Numeri Innamorati (Numbers in Love, 1920), Boccioni's intriguing painting of a woman in a hat, Modern Idol (1911), alongside Hirst's Beautiful, Chaotic, Psychotic, Madman's, Crazy, Psychopathic, Schizoid, Murder Painting (1995).
Another highlight is photography-painting duo Gilbert and George's 2004 work Pull, which depicts the smartly dressed artists with their fingers in each other's mouths on a bright red background.
The second section, Metropolitan Energy, concentrates on the output of Futurist architects and designers.
There is Antonio Sant'Elia's 1914 plan for a combined train station-airport and Fortunato Depero's avant-garde vision of Skyscrapers and Tunnels.
Among the modern architects shown is the acclaimed Massimiliano Fuksas.
Another part of the show is called Anarchy and Tradition.
It looks at some of the eyebrow-raising art that followed Futurism, with works by Italian concept artist Piero Manzoni - famed for his cans containing the 'Artist's Shit' - and French Surrealist-Dadaist Marcel Duchamp.
A section called The Entertainment Society includes paintings by American contemporary artists Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.
The Bergamo exhibit is one of many initiatives being organized in Italy in the run-up to the 100th anniversary of Futurism's birth in 2009.
Futurism was officially launched with the publication of a manifesto by Marinetti in French daily Le Figaro on February 20, 1909.
The manifesto expressed the Futurists' key ideas - a love of technology, industry and speed, and a loathing of the past.
Futurism's rampant colours and violent energy extolled the merits of a new, technologically advanced age.
The show, entitled Il Futuro del Futurismo (The Future of Futurism), runs at Bergamo's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (GAMeC) from September 21 to February 24.
