A rare original printed copy of the “Manifesto of Futurism” by the poet and artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), published on the front page of the Parisian newspaper “Le Figaro”, was sold at auction at Sotheby’s in Paris for 20,160 euros. February 20, 1909, shocking the whole academic world of the art of the time and presenting the avant-garde movement on the world stage.
Displayed in museums around the world, including the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the one sold by Sotheby’s is the only copy on public display and one of very few surviving.
Specimen sold at three times the starting price
The specimen was estimated at 8 thousand euros and was finally awarded, almost three times the starting price, to a private collector. The Parisian auction included other relics of the Futurism movement, which at the beginning of the 20th century invited artists to reject the past and celebrate the energy and dynamism of the modern and mechanical world. Among them stood out a group of about 30 drawings, letters, collages and manuscripts all from the same collection (20 of these were already in the collection of Marinetti himself).
Among the works offered also the important collage of 1915 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti entitled “Zang Tumb Tuuum” (sold for 138,600 euros, starting from an estimate of 75 thousand), a work that contains his views on the glorification of modernity, speed, violence and the machine.