Exhibition 25.04.2015 — 18.07.2015
Show introduction
The two protagonists of Italian Futurism are the author of a selection of works on paper, chosen to document the time anticipating the research on the decomposition of light and the dynamism of moving figures, iconic of the movement born with the well-known manifesto of February 1909. From the etchings by Boccioni portraying his mother in an interior or an athlete at the start of a contest, to the small-sized works with crayons where we catch Balla’s glance on a luxuriant nature, the exhibition path offers a panoramic on one of the most vital season of 20th-century Italian art.
Artists
Giacomo Balla was born in Turin in 1871. In about 1891 he frequented for some months the Albertina Academy, until 1895, when he and his mother moved to Rome where he made friends with Duilio Cambellotti and Serafino Macchiati. He painted in a Divisionist manner with a social bent similar to that of Morebelli and Pellizza. He was interested in the world of marginalised people and took part in the activities of the Scuola della Campagna Romana together with Giovanni Cena. After having spent seven months in Paris in 1900, he returned to Rome. His studio in Via Porpora was a meeting point for Severini and Boccioni. In 1903 he took part for the first time in the Venice Biennale, and in 1909 exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, and the Salon in Odessa.
Umberto Boccioni was born in Reggio Calabria in 1882; his parents were from the Romagna region. As a result of continual changes of home (his father was employed by the prefecture), he went to school in Reggio Calabria and then Forlì, Genoa, Padua, and finally Catania where he gained a diploma from the technical college. He already showed a great interest in literature and, despite his low marks, in drawing too.
