Umberto Boccioni
(Reggio di Calabria 1882 -Verona 1916)
Italian painter and
sculptor.
Like other
Futurists,
his work centered on the portrayal of movement (dynamism), speed,
and technology.
Umberto Boccioni studied art
through the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle
Arti in Rome, beginning in 1901. He also studied design with a
sign painter
in Rome. Together with his friend Gino Severini, he became a
student of Giacomo Balla, a
divisionist painter. In 1906,
Boccioni studied Impressionist
and Post-Impressionist
styles in Paris. During later 1906 and early 1907, he shortly
took drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice.
In 1901, Boccioni first visited the Famiglia Artistica, a
society for artists in Milan.
After moving there in 1907, he became acquainted with fellow
Futurists including the famous poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
The two would later join with others in writing manifestos on
futurism.
Boccioni became the main theorist
of the artistic
movement. He also decided to be a
sculptor after he visited various
studios in Paris, in 1912, among which those of
Braque,
Archipenko,
Brancusi,
Raymond Duchamp-Villon and,
probably, Medardo Rosso. While in 1912 he exhibited some
paintings together with other Italian futurists at the
Bernheim-Jeun, in 1913 he returned to show his sculptures at the
Gallerie La Boetie: all related to the elaboration of what
Boccioni had seen in Paris, they in their turn probably
influenced the cubist sculptors,
especially Duchamp-Villon.
In 1914, he published
Pittura e scultura futuriste (dinamismo plastico) explaining the
aesthetics of the group:
“While the impressionists make a table to give one particular
moment and subordinate the life of the table to its resemblance
to this moment, we synthesize every moment (time, place, form,
color-tone) and thus build the table.” He exhibited in London,
together with the group, in 1912 (Sackville Gallery) and 1914 (Doré
Gallery): the two exhibitions made a deep impression on the
young English artists: some joined then the
Vorticism,
led by Wyndham Lewis.
Mobilized in the declaration of
war, Boccioni was assigned at an artillery regiment at Sorte,
near Verona. On 16 August 1916, Boccioni was thrown from his
horse during a cavalry training exercise and was trampled. He
died the following day, age thirty-four
Works: Paintings
- Posters