born Dec. 22, 1876, Alexandria, Egypt
died Dec. 2, 1944, Bellagio, Italy
Italian-French writer, the ideological founder of Futurism .
In early poetry such as Destruction (1904), he showed the vigour and anarchic experimentation with form that would characterize his later work. Futurism officially began with the 1909 publication of his manifesto in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro . His ideas were quickly adopted in Italy, and he later elaborated on his theory in a novel and several dramatic works. Arguing that fascism was Futurism's natural extension, he became an active fascist and lost most of his following in the 1920s.