Giacomo Balla: “Futurist Genius”

Gallerie d’Italia, Milan

Balla’s futurist masterpiece
The oil on tapestry canvas, displayed in the decorative arts pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of 1925, was considered by critics and the artist himself to be his pivotal contribution: its presence played a highly symbolic role in the origin and development of Art Deco.

The Paris exhibition consecrated the extensive and by then widespread development of Futurist concepts across the world which, interpreting the theories of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, had already triggered a true ideological and artistic revolution the previous decade, giving voice to the impulse that would pave the way for the international avant-garde.

At the time, the mythical quality of speed and dynamism became linked to a new concept of art that the Futurists saw no longer as a mere representation of reality but a concrete action in the world; it resulted in a tribute to modernity, progress and machines, embodying the optimistic and progressive outlook of the new century.

The canvas was later displayed at the exhibition of Amatori e Cultori di Roma (a Fine Arts Society in Rome) in 1928, hung on a central section of a wall in the grand retrospective hall dedicated to the work of Giacomo Balla. It is here that the artist presented a selection of the key works of his career, beginning with those of divisionism from the beginning of the century.

An anthropomorphic symbol of Italy
Featuring the Italian national colours (red, white and green) which are superimposed on a dark blue and sky-blue background, the “prismatic” arrangement focuses on a schematic male figure with a star-shaped head, symbolising Italy.

This abstract figure, which is only vaguely anthropomorphic (the ‘Futurist Genius’, in fact a self-portrait of Balla himself), radiates ”noise-forms” that take the artist’s varied experiences of Futurist painting and synthesise them into an artistic encapsulation: from the piercing ‘Speed and Sound’ shapes to the abstract volumes of Feu d’Artifice (Firework, 1916-1917); from the patriotic Italian tricolour of Forme-grido Viva l’Italia (Forms-shout, Viva Italia, 1915) to the theoretical and theosophical representations of the “fourth dimension” in Trasformazioni forme-spiriti (Forms-spirits transformations, 1918), of Pessimismo contro Ottimismo (Pessimism versus Optimism, 1923), right up to the intersecting triangles of Compenetrazioni iridescenti (Iridescent Permeations) (1912-13).

The Futurist Genius is the thorough and recapitulatory depiction of an ingenious process that takes the artist to a plane of understanding of dynamic relationships of the universe, expressing these as pure forms and colours; avant-garde not only in form but also and primarily in intellectual insights, of dimensions that surpass the visible and give shape to the invisible, as Balla himself claimed in his Manifesto of the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (1915).

 

Date
from 09.05.2019 to 12.05.2019
Past
Opening hours
from 9:30 am to 7:30 pm
Open until 10:30 pm on Thursdays.
Last admission: 1 hour before closing.
Closed on Mondays.
Prices

Combined tickets valid for the exhibitions and permanent collections may be purchased directly from the ticket office:
– full-price: €5.00
– reduced: €3.00
– free entry: every first Sunday of the month.

Where?