Financial Times FT.com

The outbreak of the first world war was greeted in startlingly different ways by avant-garde artists across Europe. The Italian futurists, whose militant movement had been launched with the alarming promise that “we will glorify war – the only hygiene”, were hugely excited. But they also felt enraged by the Italian government’s initial reluctance to join the conflict. The futurists were convinced that their national pride was humiliated by neutrality and artists such as Giacomo Balla staged pro-war demonstrations as well as making belligerent paintings. They even volunteered to fight in a particularly zany, futurist-style regiment called the Lombard Battalion of Cyclists.

Jacob Epstein’s “Torso in Metal” from “The Rock Drill” (1913-14)

Over in Paris, the cubists reacted to war with far less collective enthusiasm. Picasso and Braque, who had collaborated so closely in the prewar years, were separated by the conflict. Braque, who was sent to the front as early as November 1914, was wounded and underwent a slow, painful convalescence. But Picasso, since he was a Spaniard, was never summoned to fight. One evening, he was walking through Paris with his friend Gertrude Stein. Suddenly, they saw the first-ever camouflaged cannons.