Art movement launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. On 20 February he published his Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Among modernist movements Futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past. This was because in Italy the weight of past culture was felt as particularly oppressive. In the Manifesto, Marinetti asserted that 'we will free Italy from her innumerable museums which cover her like countless cemeteries'. What the Futurists proposed instead was an art that celebrated the modern world of industry and technology: 'We declare … a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing motor car … is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.' (A celebrated ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre museum in Paris.) Futurist painting used elements of Neo-Impressionism and Cubism to create compositions that expressed the idea of the dynamism, the energy and movement, of modern life. Chief artists were Balla, Boccioni, Severini. Boccioni was a major sculptor as well as painter.