Professor Versari’s essay, titled “The Letterhead,” appears in Futurism: A Microhistory (Oxford: Legenda, 2017).
This book presents a microhistory or ‘history from below’ of Italian Futurism, one of Europe’s most famous avant-garde movements. Microhistory, the idea for which partly arose in Italy with the work of Giovanni Levi and Carlo Ginzburg, is the intensive historical investigation of a well-defined smaller unit of research (most often an event, an object, a small community or a village). Microhistory explores large questions in small places. Applying this perspective to the study of Italian Futurism, this book casts new light on the work of eminent Futurists such as F.T. Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Antonio Sant’Elia, while further highlighting the unexpected significance of beds, playing football and letterheads to the more general development of the avant-garde movement.