| Dynamism of a Human Body: Boxer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Umberto Boccioni |
| Year | 1913 |
| Type | Ink on paper |
| Dimensions | 29 cm× 25 cm(11 in× 9.8 in) |
| Location | Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Dynamism of a Human Body: Boxer is a dynamism drawing created by the futurist Italian artist Umberto Boccioni. The work was intended to show a subject in between a state of motion and stillness.
Painter Umberto Boccioni, one of the earliest members of the school of futurism, had in 1912 found an interest in sculpture. During the early stages of his pursuit, Boccioni found himself working on the dynamism of forms. Boccioni wanted to find a single form which would capture all movement, as opposed to having a series of images. [1] Viewing the past as a constraining force, Boccioni wanted to separate Italian art from the old methods and techniques. Boccioni had declared that "plastic dynamism is the simultaneous action of the motion characteristic of the object, mixed with the transformation which the object undergoes in relation to its mobile and immobile environment". Ultimately, Boccioni sought a form that was caught between spatial and temporal components. [2]
According to Ester Coen, Boccioni's primary aim with the painting was the "exploration of spatial solutions". The work departs from Boccioni's more usual style into three dimensions. [3] Boccioni wrote that the painting is meant not to be viewed in any type of motion or fixed presence, but rather in such a way that it would "decompose according to the tendencies of its forces". [3] Despite the abstractness of the painting, the viewer can make out movement by view of the contours and bundles of muscles. In general, the series of Boccioni's dynamisms attempt to document progressive movement through its various elements. [3]
The work was part of a forty-six drawing series. These drawings were displayed in the spring of 1914 at Florence. [1]
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures included the Italians Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. Italian Futurism glorified modernity and according to its doctrine, aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past. Important Futurist works included Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Balla's 1913–1914 painting Abstract Speed + Sound, and Russolo's The Art of Noises (1913).
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. His works are held by many public art museums, and in 1988 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City organized a major retrospective of 100 pieces.
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. He was concerned with expressing movement in his works, but unlike other leading futurists he was not interested in machines or violence with his works tending towards the witty and whimsical.
Francesco del Cossa was an Italian Renaissance painter of the School of Ferrara, who after 1470 worked in Bologna. Cossa is best known for his frescoes, especially his collaboration with Cosimo Tura on a cycle of the months in the Palazzo Schifanoia of the Este family, rulers of Ferrara. Otherwise, his paintings are mostly of religious subjects, with some portraits and drawings attributed to him. He also designed stained glass.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of the city's main boulevards. It is known as part of the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofía national galleries. The Thyssen-Bornemisza fills the historical gaps in its counterparts' collections: in the Prado's case this includes Italian primitives and works from the English, Dutch and German schools, while in the case of the Reina Sofia it concerns Impressionists, Expressionists, and European and American paintings from the 20th century.
Jan Provoost, or Jean Provost, or Jan Provost was a Belgian painter born in Mons.
Alexander Bogomazov or Oleksandr Bohomazov was a Ukrainian painter, cubo-futurist, modern art theoretician and is recognised as one of the key figures of the Ukrainian avant-garde scene. In 1914, Oleksandr wrote his treatise The Art of Painting and the Elements. In it he analyzed the interaction between Object, Artist, Picture, and Spectator and sets the theoretical foundation of modern art. During his artistic life Oleksandr Bohomazov mastered several art styles. The most known are Cubo-Futurism (1913–1917) and Spectralism (1920–1930).
Robert Salmon was a maritime artist, active in both England and America. Salmon completed nearly 1,000 paintings, all save one of maritime scenes or seascapes. He is widely considered the Father of American Luminism.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space is a 1913 bronze Futurist sculpture by Umberto Boccioni. It is seen as an expression of movement and fluidity. The sculpture is depicted on the obverse of the Italian-issue 20 cent euro coin.
The Street Enters the House is an oil on canvas painting by Italian artist Umberto Boccioni. Painted in the Futurist style, the work centres on a woman on a balcony in front of a busy street, with the sounds of the activity below portrayed as a riot of shapes and colours.
Head of a Catalan Peasant is an emblematic sequence of oil paintings and pencil made by Joan Miró between 1924 and 1925. Miró began this series the same year that André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism. The series was made partly in Paris. For Joan Miró "a peasant" symbolized rural knowledge, and also reflected his Catalan identity.
Development of a Bottle in Space is a bronze futurist sculpture by Umberto Boccioni. Initially a sketch in Boccioni’s "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture"," the design was later cast into bronze by Boccioni himself in the year 1913. Consistent with many of themes in Boccioni’s manifesto, the work of art highlights the artist’s first successful attempt at creating a sculpture that both molds and encloses space within itself.
Baigneuses: Deux nus dans un paysage exotique is an oil painting created circa 1905 by the French artist and theorist Jean Metzinger (1883–1956). Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape is a Proto-Cubist work executed in a highly personal Divisionist style during the height of the Fauve period. The painting is now in the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Spain.
Girl Running on a Balcony is a 1912 painting by Giacomo Balla, one of the forerunners of the Italian movement called Futurism. The piece indicates the artist's growing interests in creative nuances which would later formally be realized as part of the Futurist movement. The artist was influenced heavily by northern Italians' use of divisionism and the French's better-known pointillism. Created with oil on canvas just on the brink of World War I, the Futurist movement is embodied by a dark optimism for a future of speed, turbulence, chaos, and new beginnings. Most of Giacaomo Balla's pieces allude to the wonder of dynamic movement, and this painting is no exception. The oil painting is currently housed at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM) in Milan.
Les Joueurs de football, also referred to as Football Players, is a 1912–13 painting by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. The work was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, March–May 1913. September through December 1913 the painting was exhibited at Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin. The work was featured at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, 29 November – 12 December 1916, Gleizes' first one-person show. The work was again exhibited at Galeries Dalmau 16 October – 6 November 1926. Stylistically Gleizes' Football Players exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective laid out in Du "Cubisme", written by himself and French painter Jean Metzinger. Guillaume Apollinaire wrote about Les Joueurs de football in an article titled "Le Salon des indépendants", published in L'Intransigeant, 18 March 1913, and again in "A travers le Salon des indépendants", published in Montjoie!, Numéro Spécial, 18 March 1913.
Dynamism of a Cyclist is a 1913 painting by Italian Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) that demonstrates the Futurist fascination with speed, modern methods of transport, and the depiction of the dynamic sensation of movement.
The See-Saw is an oil-on-canvas painting by French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, created c.1750–1752 during the artist's early career. It is currently in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. The painting forms a pair with another Fragonard work entitled Blind Man's Bluff. Blind Man's Bluff focuses on courtship while The See-Saw, and the metaphor of the rocking motion of the seesaw, suggests the relationship has been consummated.
Landscape with Venus and Adonis is an oil on canvas painting by Flemish painter Tobias Verhaecht. The work was probably painted in the 1600s, and is now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.
Rue Saint-Honoré, dans l'après-midi. Effet de pluie is an 1897 oil painting by Camille Pissarro. The work was made towards the end of Pissarro's career, when he abandoned his experiments with Pointillism and returned to a looser Impressionist style. It is part of a series of works that Pissarro made in 1897-98 from a window of the Hôtel du Louvre, looking down across the edge of the place du Théâtre Français and along the rue Saint-Honoré, portraying the people, carriages and buildings, the trees, fountains and streetlamps, in an early afternoon shower of rain. Other paintings in the series depict a similar scene in morning sunlight, or in the shadows of the evening. The painting measures 81 cm × 65 cm.
Cyclist is a 1913 Cubo-Futurist painting by the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova. The painting is considered an "archetypal work" of Futurism by its current holder, the State Russian Museum.