Piety and Pragmatism: Spiritualism in Futuristic Art

Despite Marinetti's anticlericalism, futurist engagement with religious themes was attuned to the 1929 Concordat between Church and State, although in reality certain members of the movement had been creating such works for several years, aiming to modernise an obsolete and anachronistic vocabulary.

Futurism - which had initially recognised progress and the machine as its only religions - increasingly felt an impulse to transcend time and matter and to strive for a more spiritual interpretation of modern life.The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented this exhibition - which was the first of its kind - in anticipation of Futurism's centenary in 2009. It provides a comprehensive overview of this little-studied aspect of Futurist art through works by many of the movement's major exponents, including Giacomo Balla, Fillia and Gerardo Dottori.

Written in English and Italian.