Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasised speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, and the industrial city.
Giacomo Balla
Alive between 1871 and 1958, Giacomo Balla was an Italian painter, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. In his paintings, he depicted light, movement and speed.
His paintings are abstract in a sense, but also futuristic because he plays with the concept of light, speed and movement. A lot of his paintings look as if you were whizzing past an object or a scene at high speeds, and only caught a blurred, stretched out glimpse of it, and then you did this multiple times.
But other paintings, like the one below, explore the dazzling effects of artificial light on your eyes; the painting is beautifully painted, even though it is just paint on a canvas, it is painted in such a way that it appears to glow. It also resembles the art technique pointillism, as the majority of the paintings is made up of hundreds of little V shapes. It is so cool.
It was the Italian Futurist artist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who influenced Balla to begin painting in this futurist style. He also taught divisionism, which is very similar to pointillism. This very clearly influenced his later paintings, like the one above. He was also influenced by the likes of Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini, as well as the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, which captured movement.
Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903. World War 1 between 1914 and 1918. In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead. World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.
It’s not really my thing, but I like his work, it is very bright and colourful. I especially like the first painting I showed, because it looks like twisted slices of glorious watermelon. I’m a sucker for watermelon.
Carlo Carrà
Alive between 1881 and 1966, Carlo Carrà was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number of books concerning art. He taught for many years in the city of Milan.
His earlier, futurist works had elements of abstract art and cubism and explored motion, emotion, and light. He was inspired by contemporary French art.
But Carrà’s Futurist phase ended around the time World War I began. His work, while still using some Futurist concepts, began to deal more clearly with form and stillness, rather than motion and feeling.
Inspired by Trecento painting, children’s art, and the work of Henri Rousseau, Carrà soon began creating still lifes in a simplified style that emphasized the reality of ordinary objects. In 1917 he met Giorgio de Chirico and worked with him for a couple of weeks.
Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903. World War 1 between 1914 and 1918. In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead. World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.
Again, this kind of art isn’t really my thing, but I don’t have anything against it. I just find it kind of uninteresting and boring.
Umberto Boccioni
Alive between 1882 and 1916, he was just 33 years old when he died in a horse-riding accident. But before that, Umberto Boccioni was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach to the dynamism of form and the deconstruction of solid mass guided artists long after his death.
The forms in his paintings don’t exist in a realistic 3-dimensional space, perspective is distorted and nothing feels solid. He used a lot of bright, colourful complementary colours to create stark contrast in his paintings, which draws the viewer’s attention to certain parts, like in the paintings above, the bright oranges and reds of the women’s faces draw your eyes to them, then your eyes slowly move around the other smaller details of the painting, as you piece together the story.
Boccioni painted with oils and acrylics and made sculptures out of bronze, gold and lead.
For a while, he studied under Giacomo Balla, who inspired him greatly. During a visit to Paris, he saw the works of Braque and Picasso, which greatly influenced him and the futurist movement.
Some of the major events around the world in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903, and World War 1 between 1914 and 1918. So Boccioni didn’t live to see the end of ww1.
I like his work, it is very colourful and plays with colour, perception and form, by mixing them all up into a nice soup.
Research
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Balla
Ciaran :3 