“Marinetti is foreign to us”: Polish Responses to Italian Futurism, 1917–1923 Przemyslaw Strożek The history of Polish modern art begins with the establishment of the groups of the Poznań Expressionists Bunt (Poznań), the Formists (Kraków), the Polish Futurists (Krakow-Warsaw) and the circle around the magazine Zwrotnica (Railway Switch, edited by Tadeusz Peiper). These art associations were active during the years 1917– 1923. Although the programme of each group was different, they shared a similar antipathy towards the art of the past and formulated programmes of artistic and liter- ary renewal in Poland. Despite the fact that Marinetti had published his Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism almost ten years before these groups came in to existence, it still exercised a profound influence and provided them with an ideological base that determined the subsequent development of the Polish avant-garde. At the same time, Marinetti’s programme of renewal could not act in every respect as a model for Polish art and literature. Polish artists appropriated the label “Futurism” for their own activities, but they also wanted to act in opposition to it. The phrase “Marinetti is foreign to us”, coined by the informal leader of Polish Futurists, Bruno Jasieński, in A Nife in the Stomak, summed up the stance of the Early Polish modern art groups towards the Italian avant-garde movement. Keywords : Polish early modern art, Formism, Polish Expressionism, Zdrój, Zwrotnica, Group Bunt Introduction Almost eight years lay between The Foundation and Manifesto of Futur- ism, published by F. T. Marinetti on 20 February 1909 in Le Figaro, and the first appearance of a modern art group in Poland. In 1917, an associa- tion called Polish Expressionists (from 1919 onwards known as Formists) entered the scene in Krakow; the same year, the Poznań-based magazine Zdrój (Spring) was launched and developed in the years to come into the mouthpiece of the Expressionist group Bunt (The Revolt). 1 Two years 1 Between 1917 and 1920, Zdrój published 67 issues. They were arranged in volumes with 6 issues each (some of these were double issues). Most years were made up of several vol-