Umberto
Boccioni (Italian pronunciation:
19 October 1882 – 17 August 1916) was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He
helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal
figures. Despite his short life, his approach to the dynamism of form and the
deconstruction of solid mass guided artists long after his death. Umberto
Boccioni was born on 19 October 1882 in Reggio
Calabria, the southernmost tip of mainland Italy.
His father was a minor government employee, originally from the Romagna region in the north, and his job
included frequent reassignments throughout Italy.
His critical and rebellious nature, and overall intellectual ability, would
contribute substantially to the development of the Futurism movement. After building a foundation of skills, having studied the classics through Impressionism, both he and Severini became students of Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), a painter focusing on the modern Divisionist technique, painting with divided rather than mixed color and breaking the painted surface into a field of stippled dots and stripes. Severini wrote "It was a great stroke of luck for us to meet such a man, whose direction was decisive of all our careers.
Lorem In 1906, he briefly moved to Paris, where he studied Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles, before visiting Russia for three months, getting a first-hand view of the civil unrest and governmental crackdowns. Returning to Italy in 1907, he briefly took drawing classes at theAccademia di Belle Arti of Venice. He had first visited the Famiglia Artistica, a society for artists in Milan in 1901. After moving there in 1907, he became acquainted with fellow Futurists, including the famous poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti the two artists would later join with others in writing manifestos on
Boccioni
became the main theorist of the artistic movement "Only when Boccioni, Severini and
a few other Futurists traveled to Paris and saw what Braque and Picasso had
been doing did the movement begin to take real shape." He also decided to be a sculptor after he visited various studios in
Paris, in 1912, including those of Braque, Archipenko, Brâncuși, Raymond
Duchamp-Villon and, probably,Medardo Rosso.
In 1912 he exhibited some paintings
together with other Italian futurists at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, and the
following year returned to show his sculptures at the Galerie La Boétie: all
related to the elaboration of what Boccioni had seen in Paris, they in their
turn probably influenced the Cubist sculptors, especially Duchamp-Villon.
Artwork description & Analysis: The City Rises is
often considered to be the first Futurist painting. Here, Boccioni illustrates
the construction of a modern city.
The chaos and movement in the piece resemble
a war scene as indeed war was presented in the Futurist Manifesto as
the only means toward cultural progress. The large horse races into the
foreground while several workers struggle to gain control, indicating tension
between human and animal. The horse and figures are blurred, communicating
rapid movement while other elements, such as the buildings in the background,
are rendered more realistically. At the same time, the perspective teeters
dramatically in different sections of the painting. The work shows influences
of Cubism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism, revealed in the brushstrokes
and fractured representation of space.