The first exhibition in Italy dedicated to Vorticism, Britain's contribution to the visual avant-gardes that flourished in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. Its distinctive figurative abstraction was a London-based Anglo-American response to Cubism and Futurism. Led by poet Ezra Pound and by artist and writer Wyndham Lewis Vorticism flared up between 1913 and 1918.

Vorticism addresses the seminal innovations in theatre, literature and poetry as well as Vorticist painting, sculpture, print making, and photography that encompassed the Vorticism art movement.

This title was first published in 2000. Founded in 1914 by Wyndham Lewis and christened by Ezra Pound, the Vorticism movement was a sustained act of aggression against the moribund Victorianism seen as stifling to artistic energies. Inspired by the example of F.T.Marinetti and the Futurists, the Vorticists were nevertheless harshly critical of the Futurists' naive enthusiasm for modernity. They created their own style of geometric abstraction to celebrate the new consciousness of humanity in a mechanized urban environment. But their splintered and discordant style also measured the cost of the psychic disruption that modernity caused. This illustrated guide to the movement covers topics including sculpture, painting, literary Vorticism, women in Vorticism and Vorticist aesthetics.

This publication offers for the first time an inter-disciplinary and comparative perspective on Futurism in a variety of countries and artistic media. 20 scholars discuss how the movement shaped the concept of a cultural avant-garde and how it influenced the development of modernist art and literature around the world.