ABSTRACT
In Italy, as in much of the rest of Europe, the years immediately prior to the First World War saw the first really strong manifestations of those new, dynamic and often disruptive forces which were to shape the 20th century, distinguishing it sharply from the 19th. Nowadays, with hindsight, it has become a commonplace to see in that period clear premonitions not only of the War itself but also of the social and political revolutions that were to erupt in turn in various parts of Europe as the century unfolded. Moreover, it is surely not too fanciful to suggest (as many have done) that the more radically-minded artists of the time were responsive at a deep level to these ominous tensions, almost as a seismograph is responsive to the approach of an imminent earthquake: thus the upsurge, shortly after the beginning of the 20th century, of turbulently new idioms in all the arts was symptomatic of the way the world was going.
