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Futurism was a broad cultural and intellectual movement advocating for the abolition of all things past and embracing modernity and all things future. Founded in 1909 by the Italian-French poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian Futurism was a pivotal force for change not merely in the literary arena, but powerfully transformed the arts as a whole, and spawning comparable movements, such as Surrealism, Dadaism, Vorticism and Zenitism. Futurism’s cultural influence was considerable, and would influence most or all subsequent avant-garde movements. Being eclectic by nature, Futurism experimented in a wide range of artistic and cultural domains - including the creation and format of the book itself. 

Probably the most famous example of this experimentation was Depero futurista, designed collaboratively by Fortunato Depero and Fedele Azari in 1927. This was a landmark avantgarde example of the notion of the “book as object”, filled with bold typographical experimentation and a splendid example of the originality of Futurist books. From the movement’s beginning Futurists had employed books - unreadable, bolted, made of various materials, deliberately spineless and joyous experimentations of graphics and content - as well as bold ideological declarations. As announced in their 1915 Manifesto Riconstruzione futurista dell’universo (Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe), the Futurist’s goal was to make the universe more joyful through an “Integral Recreation”. 

Depero futurista is a wonderful composite of these Futurist graphic innovations. The volume, printed in album format, is also known as libro imbullonato (Bolted Book) because the cover boards were held together by two metal bolts. Azari, a designer and aviator, proposed the bolts, turning the book into a mechanical object that could be disassembled and reassembled to modify the order of its unnumbered pages or to allow for the addition of pages.

Depero Futurista is recognized as the first modern day artist’s book, filled with groundbreaking typographic experiments and explorations in nearly every art and design medium, including advertising. The book anticipates by nearly a century an approach to design and art that can be seen everywhere today, as it breaks down barriers between fine art and popular culture to working across multiple disciplines and the necessity for the artist to promote themselves and their works across multiple media. 

The publishing of manifestos was central to Futurists, and these were produced on many topics, describing their beliefs and appreciation of various methods as well as disdain for traditional Italian Renaissance works of art and their subjects. For Futurists, art should be inspired by marvels of the new technological world. In their ‘Manifesto of the Futurist Painters’ (1910) the Futurists declared a wish to fight implacably against the mindless, snobbish, and fanatical religion of the past, a religion nurtured by the pernicious existence of museums: 

“We rebel against the spineless admiration for old canvases, old statues, and old objects, and against the enthusiasm for everything worm-eaten, grimy, or corroded by time; and we deem it unjust and criminal that people habitually disdain whatever is young, new, and trembling with life”. 

Believing that art should be inspired by the new technologies, they continued: “Just as our forebears took the subject of art from the religious atmosphere that enveloped them, so we must draw inspiration from the tangible miracles of contemporary life." 

Depero futurista was published by the Milanese publishing house Dinamo Azari with an initial print run of 2000 copies, promptly amended to 1000 copies of a limited luxury edition which had a metal cover. An original can be found in the British Library and the rare facsimile in SHL has its own fan page, which allows the reader to leave through the . 

It is fitting that Senate House Library owns a facsimile as the Bolted Book has great cultural significance and a place in book history. It is also relevant to collaborative programmes, such as the forthcoming intercollegiate MA Languages and Cultures Across Borders, which uses objects in teaching and learning we need that suit situationally specific needs. Depero (1892-1960) would probably agree that learning objects are the fundamental elements of a new conceptual model for content creation and distribution.

As the Futurists considered dynamism and movement as new criteria of universal beauty, SAS and SHL are harnessing their promise and beauty to change the shape and form of learning. 

Andrea Meyer Ludowisy, Research Librarian for European Art and Culture in Senate House Library and Katia Pizzi, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies at SAS.

The  (LRBS) at the Institute of English Studies, ������Ƶ runs a series of intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects taught in and around Senate House and online.