C.R.W. Nevinson’s pre-war association with the Italian Futurists profoundly affected his art but led to an irreparable split with the rest of the English avant-garde. [...] The Futurists’ philosophical basis lay in revolt and in the total rejection of the past. Marinetti, described as ‘The Caffeine of Europe’, was setting out to rid European art of its lethargy and retrospection in a new movement that demanded room for youth, violence and daring.
The most distinctive and significant alliance between Marinetti and Nevinson was in the joint declaration of ‘A Futurist Manifesto: Vital English Art’, in early June 1914. The document began in typically polemic mode:
I am an Italian Futurist poet, and a passionate admirer of England. I wish however, to cure English Art of that most grave of all maladies – passe-ism. I have the right to speak plainly and without compromise, and together with my friend Nevinson, an English Futurist painter, to give the signal for battle.
It then went on to attack: worship of tradition, effeminacy, decorativeness, sentimentality, snobs, the New English Art Club, the King, sham revolutionaries, indifference, the ‘right of the ignorant to discuss…Art’, passeiest filth and the ‘mania for immortality’. Instead it demanded an ‘English Art which would be strong, virile and anti-sentimental’ and lobbied for the inclusion of optimism, heroism, creativity, excitement, genius, courage, and pioneering spirit, to save English art. It concluded: ‘So we call upon the English public to support, defend, and glorify the genius of the great Futurist painters or pioneers and advance forces of Vital English Art
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