Giacomo
Balla
(Torino 1871-Roma 1958)
Born in
Turin,
in the Piedmont
region of Italy,
the son of an industrial chemist, as a child Giacomo
Balla studied music.
By age twenty
his interest in art was such that he decided to study
painting at local academies and exhibited several of his
early works. Following academic studies at the
University
of Turin, Balla moved to
Rome in 1895 where he met
and married Elisa Marcucci. For several years he worked
in Rome as an illustrator and caricaturist as well as
doing portraiture. In 1899 his work was shown at the Venice Biennale and in the
ensuing years his art was on display at major Italian
exhibitions in Rome and Venice, in Munich,
Berlin
and Düsseldorf
in Germany
as well as at the Salon d'Automne
in Paris and at galleries in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Influenced by
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giacomo Balla adopted the Futurism
style, creating a pictorial depiction of light, movement
and speed. He was signatory to the Futurist Manifesto
in 1910 and began designing and painting Futurist
furniture and also created Futurist "antineutral"
clothing. He also taught Umberto Boccioni. In painting,
his new style is demonstrated in the 1912 work titled
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash. Seen here, is his 1914
work titled Abstract Speed + Sound (Velocità astratta +
rumore). In 1914, he also began sculpting and the
following year created perhaps his best known sculpture
called Boccioni's Fist.
During World War I Balla's
studio became the meeting place for young artists but by
the end of the war the Futurist movement was showing
signs of decline. In 1935 he was made a member of Rome's
Accademia di San Luca. Balla participated in the
documenta 1 1955 in Kassel, Germany, his work was also
shown postmortem during the documenta 8 in 1987
( from Wikipedia )
Works:
Paintings