their leader, filippo tommaso marinetti, hated the past.e wanted to drag italy into the 20th century with violence. one of his slogans was "war-- sole hygiene of the world." the themes of war and an impending apocalypse can be found in the work of many artists of this time, but their roots lay in the 19th century. as the 19th century progressed, many writers and thinkers-- among them, the visionary german philosopher friedrich nietzsche-- came to believe european culture was in a desperate crisis, that its beliefs and institutions were on the point of dissolution, and that a period of war and revolution would follow, fought out on a hitherto unimaginable scale by the mass armies of the industrial west. these ideas occupied the thoughts of artists, too. among them, vasili kandinski. this is kandinski's apocalyptic composition number 6, painted in 1913. two years before, in munich, kandinski had formed a new group of artists-- der blaue reiter, the blue horseman. this theme of an impending apocalypse was a central concern not only of kandinsk