Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe, Giacomo Balla

Bottegantica Gallery, Milan

In 1910, Giacomo Balla, animated by anti-academic positions and a spirit of rebellion, adhered to the new Futurist ideas and signed - along with Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini – both manifestos of the Futurist group (Manifesto dei pittori futuristi, February 11, 1910; Manifesto tecnico della pittura futurista, April 11, 1910).

"The other Futurists were young - Elica Balla recalls - and it was good for them to throw themselves into the new adventure, without having any works to forget." Balla, on the other hand, ten years or more their senior, had many works to forget, being at the time a man of thirty-nine and a painter for fifteen years. The adhesion to futurism comes from a mature artist, eager to get back into the game and strengthened by his experience. He did not hesitate to dedicate himself fully to the revolutionary enterprise that he undertook.

The ideas about dynamism advocated in the two manifestos certainly helped bring him closer to the new futurist creed. For years, he used oblique brushstrokes and rapid touches of color, and made his paintings vibrate with the tremor of light. But there's more! In the Manifesto Tecnico della Pittura Futurista (Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting) the artists proclaim that “there can be no painting without divisionism”, and then, immediately afterwards, they specify that “divisionism [...] is not in our concept a technical means that can be methodically learned and applied.”

Among the signatories of the manifesto, Balla is certainly the one who has the most in-depth knowledge of the pointillist technique and of the principles that animate it; dued to this experience, he decides to attempt the new futurist adventure.