Antonio Sant'Elia

The work of Antonio Sant'Elia (Como, 1888-1916) falls within the tradition of Viennese Art Nouveau and owes no small debt to the building style of Otto Wagner. Sant'Elia's work, however, also moves into the most radical and absolute modernity. In contact with Marinetti and his group, he will be a co-signer of the Futurist Manifesto on Architecture in 1914. But going beyond adhesion to this vanguardist movement, he will express his architectural ideas by way of a very highly developed concept of the city. His drawings of the Citta Nuova clearly show this. His early death cut off a promising career just when he was beginning to forge a concrete program to meet the uncertainties presented by modernity.