Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Umberto Boccioni

Encyclopedia : U : UM : UMB : Umberto Boccioni


Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Enlarge
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Umberto Boccioni (October 19, 1882, Reggio Calabria - August 16, 1916, Verona) was an Italian painter and sculptor and a member of the Futurist movement. Like other Futurists, his work centered on the portrayal of movement (dynamism), speed, and technology.

Early Experience

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. In 1902, Boccioni studied Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles in Paris. During later 1906 and early 1907, he took drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti. In 1901, Boccioni first visited the Famiglia Artistica, a society for artists in Milan. There 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.
An image derived from Boccioni's "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" appears on an Italian 20 cent (euro) coin.
Enlarge
An image derived from Boccioni's "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" appears on an Italian 20 cent (euro) coin.

Artwork

Boccioni was both a Futurist painter and sculptor. One of Umberto Boccioni's best known paintings is The street enters the house (La Strada Entra Nella Casa) in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany which featured an exhibition on futurism in 2001. Other important Boccioni works include the bronze scupture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) and the painting, The City Rises (1910). His first solo exhibition was held in 1910 at the Galleria Ca' Pesaro in Venice.

Style

Boccioni expressed the overarching beliefs of Futurism in his Techincal Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture. Other works that he co-authored include Manifesto of the Futurist Painters and Techincal Manifesto of Futurist Painting published around 1910. In 1912, Boccioni shifted to sculpture and published his Manifesto of Futurist Sculpters. All of these writings call for young artists to intensely pursue living, dynamic, and original forms of art. Traditional art techniques and styles were discarded and art critics ignored. Futurists glorified transformations of the world brought on by science.

Boccioni died after falling off a horse during a training exercise for World War I.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
[media]

 


From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: