BOCCIONI, UMBERTO

(1882–1916)

   The most important futurist painter and sculptor, and the most subtle theoretician of the futurist movement, Umberto Boccioni left his native Reggio Calabria before he was 20 years old to live in Rome and Paris, where he was greatly influenced by the work of Georges Seurat. Upon returning to Italy, he was one of the founders of the futurist movement: his Tumult in the Gallery (1909) was the first major work produced by a futurist artist. Boccioni’s paintings, with their emphasis on urban, industrial themes, and their remarkable ability to capture movement, faithfully reflect the ideas of the “Manifesto of Futurist Painters,” published in 1910, which Boccioni cowrote with Carlo Carra, Luigi Russolo, and Giacomo Balla. The City Awakes, painted in 1910 and currently housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is arguably the finest example of his early work. Boccioni also published a “Manifesto of Futurist Sculptors” in 1912 and produced a number of powerful bronzes that attempt to portray the human form in the context of its environment.

   Boccioni’s style became increasingly abstract after 1911 and was greatly influenced by cubism. Dynamism of a Human Body (1913), in which no obvious figure is visible, is a good example of his later work. He fought in World War I and died, tragically young, in 1916 in Verona after a heavy fall from a horse.

   See also Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso.