Saturday, December 8, 2018

Umberto Boccioni and Futurist Delusions

Umberto Boccioni
Self-portrait
1910
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Self-portrait
1905
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
States of Mind: Those Who Go
1912
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was the leading artist of Italian Futurism.  During his short life, he produced some of the movement's iconic paintings and sculptures, capturing the color and dynamism of modern life in a style he theorized and defended in manifestos, books, and articles.  Born in Reggio Calabria, Boccioni attended technical college in Catania, Sicily, and began his artistic career as a talented draftsman.  He moved to Rome in 1899 to train as an artist, first taking drawing lessons with Giovanni Maria Mataloni, an artist who specialized in publicity posters.  Boccioni's skill  in creating compelling compositions in cartoons and posters stayed with him throughout his career.  . . .  Wanting to discover a city with a more established artistic avant-garde, Boccioni went to Paris in 1906; he found the city and its modern artists exhilarating.  The following year, he moved to Venice (with stops in Russia, Warsaw, Vienna, and Padua), where he learned printmaking.  His prints of this period depict friends, neighbors, and his mother.  They also hint at his burgeoning interest in the industrial city, which became a more constant subject after his move to Milan in August 1907."   

Umberto Boccioni
Man Laying Paving Stones
(study for The Street Pavers)
1914
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Composition study for The Street Pavers
1914
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
The Street Pavers
1914
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Boccioni was a member of the Futurists, Italian artists who announced their existence in 1909 with a manifesto published on the front page of the French paper, Le Figaro.  The group called for the abandonment of the past in favor of celebrating modern life and aimed to celebrate the metropolis in "multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution."  Such canvases as The Street Pavers offered Boccioni the opportunity to revolutionize this scene of backbreaking work and to celebrate the powerful form of the modern laborer.  Through his inventive use of pulsating color and rhythmic brushwork, the artist activated the surface of the canvas, making the faceless figures of workers almost indistinguishable from the urban context."

Umberto Boccioni
Man Lying in a Field
1907
etching and drypoint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Landscape with Industrial Plants
1909
drypoint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Head of the Artist's Mother
1915
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
The Artist's Mother at a Table
1910
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
The Artist's Mother
1915
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Development of a Bottle in Space
1913, cast in 1950
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"In March 1912 Boccioni wrote, "These days I am obsessed by sculpture!  I believe I have glimpsed a complete renovation of that mummified art."  A month later he published the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture and by June 1913 he had produced eleven sculptures, including Development of a Bottle in Space.  Rather than delineating the contours of his subject, a bottle, Boccioni integrated the object's internal and external spatial planes, which appear to unfold and spiral into surrounding space."  

Umberto Boccioni
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1913, cast in 1950
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"The Futurists' celebration of the fast pace and mechanical power of the modern world is emphasized here in the sculpture's dynamism and energy.  The figure's marching silhouette appears deformed by wind and speed, while its sleek metal contours allude to machinery.  World War I broke out the year after Boccioni created this work.  Believing that modern technological warfare would shatter Italy's obsession with the classical past, the Futurists welcomed the conflict.  . . .  

Boccioni was killed in action in 1916, at the age of thirty-four."

Umberto Boccioni
The Athlete
1907
drypoint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Umberto Boccioni
Study of a Man's Forearm
ca. 1908
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

– quoted texts from curator's notes at the Metropolitan Museum