This northern Italian city is celebrating Futurism and the influence the Italian-born movement had on 20th century art with a huge exhibition opening in September.
The show, entitled Il Futuro del Futurismo (The Future of Futurism), runs at Bergamo's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (GAMeC) from September 21 to February 24.
It features 200 works by 120 artists, including paintings by Futurism's main protagonists, Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra', Gino Severini and Luigi Russolo.
There are also pieces by an array of modern and contemporary artists influenced by the Futurists, like Britain's Damien Hirst and Gilbert and George.
"The Futurists believed in the need to radically re-design the universe," explained curators Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and Maria Cristina Rodeschini.
"This concept led them to perceive every form of artistic expression in a different way, including music, dance, photography, cinema, theatre and the design of living spaces and furniture.
"Il Futuro del Futurismo provides a rich sample of the vast body of art these ideas generated, linking the works to other areas of the worlds of culture and industry".
The first section, entitled Futurism Revisited, juxtaposes paintings by Futurist big guns with works by artists influenced by them over 50 years later.
Visitors can admire Balla's stylish Numeri Innamorati (Numbers in Love, 1920), Boccioni intriguing painting of a woman in a hat, Modern Idol (1911), alongside Hirst's Beautiful, Chaotic, Psychotic, Madman's, Crazy, Psychopathic, Schizoid, Murder Painting (1995).
Another highlight is photography-painting duo Gilbert and George's 2004 work Pull, which depicts the smartly dressed artists with their fingers in each other's mouths on a bright red background.
The second section, Metropolitan Energy, concentrates on the output of Futurist architects and designers.
There is Antonio Sant'Elia's 1914 plan for a combined train station-airport and Fortunato Depero's avant-garde vision of Skyscrapers and Tunnels.
Another part of the show is called Anarchy and Tradition.
It looks at some of the eye-raising art that followed Futurism, with works by Italian concept artist Piero Manzoni - famed for his cans containing the 'Artist's Shit' - and French Surrealist-Dadaist Marcel Duchamp.
A section called Show Society includes paintings by American modern artists Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.
The Bergamo exhibit is one of many initiatives being organized in Italy in the run-up to the 100th anniversary of Futurism's birth in 2009.
Futurism was officially launched with the publication of a manifesto by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in French daily Le Figaro on February 20, 1909.
The manifesto expressed the Futurists' key ideas - a love of technology, industry and speed, and a loathing of the past.
In art, Futurism's rampant colours and violent energy extolled the merits of a new, technologically advanced age.
