Giacomo Balla

Giacomo Balla was born in Turin in 1871. He was an Italian painter and the most outstanding figure of Futurism. He first rose to prominence with his academic paintings, which were praised by critics at the time. A brief stay in Paris exposed him to Impressionism and Dichromism, and he always showed a fanatical interest in color and light. After returning to Rome, he visited Severini and Boccioni and told them of his new belief.

Chinese name: Giacomo Balla

Foreign name: Giacomo Balla

Nationality: Italian

Birthplace: Turin< /p>

Date of birth: 1871

Date of death: 1958

Occupation: Painter

Main achievements: One of the most outstanding figures of Futurism 1

Representative works: "Workers' Festival" (1903-1904) "Street Lamp: A Study of Light"

Life experience

Giacomo· Born in Turin in 1871, Balla was the oldest artist of the Italian Futurist movement. His father is a professional photographer. Influenced by his father, Bala developed a keen interest in science and technology. But he basically had no formal art training and only took short-term painting lessons. He first rose to prominence with his academic paintings, which were praised by critics at the time. A brief stay in Paris exposed him to Impressionism and Dichromism, and he always showed a fanatical interest in color and light. After returning to Rome, he met Severini and Boccioni and told them of his new belief.

In 1895 Barra left Turin for Rome, where he enthusiastically supported the socialist movement.

In 1900, he traveled to Paris, where he came into contact with the works of French Impressionist and Divisionist painters. The Division painters, including Seurat, were trying to make Impressionist techniques more scientific. They paint small dots or small patches of pure color on the canvas, allowing the audience to create a trembling "visual mixture" when they appreciate it from a certain distance. After returning to Rome, Barra began experimenting with this pointillism technique.

In Bala's works, he made no secret of his sympathy for socialism. An obvious example is his famous work "Workers' Day" (1903-1904). In 1909, Barra met the poet and theorist Philippe Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of Futurism. Most of the Futurist painters were unruly. They denied the art of the past and advocated that artistic practice should reflect modern features and technological progress, such as cars, airplanes, theaters, etc. They strive to express speed and dynamics in their works.

In 1909, Barra exhibited his work for the first time at the Venice Biennale. In the same year, his first futuristic work "Street Lamp: A Study of Light" came out.

In 1910, he signed the "Manifesto of Futurist Painting" together with other painters. Members of the group also included Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini, who frequented Balla's studio from around 1901.

Futurist painters reflected the vitality of modernity by creating a sense of movement in paintings and sculptures. To achieve this goal, Bala looked everywhere for sources of inspiration. Cubism was one of the goals. He greatly appreciated the idea of ??Cubism, abandoning the traditional single perspective, changing his thinking, and viewing an object from multiple angles at the same time. The works of photographers Etienne-Jules Maret and Anton Giulio Bragaglia also inspired Bala a lot. The two photographers tried to use the techniques of exposure time and number of exposures to express the movement of objects. During the experiment, they took continuous or interval shots of moving people or animals, and the final image was combined on a negative film to highlight the impression of movement. Balla's reaction to this is prominently reflected in his work "The Dynamics of a Dog on a Leash" (1912), in which the dog's limbs and tail vividly illustrate this intense movement.

At the end of 1913, Balla's creations became more and more graphic and geometric. In his series of works entitled Abstract Speed ??(1912-1914), the subject matter has become too abstract to be recognized. Bala strives to represent the process of movement, rather than just elaborating on a specific image of the physical world from a single perspective and fixed moment. Of the five signatories of the Manifesto of Futurist Painting, he was the only one who did not participate in the Paris exhibition.

His true meaning of dynamism came after seeing Severini's painting "Sphere Expanding in Space".

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Bala's political stance turned to support militarism. Although he was too old to serve, he enthusiastically supported Italy's entry into the war. After the war he worked for several years in theater and costume design. In 1929, he once again showed his talents in the second wave of Futurism, and once again attracted Marinetti's attention. However, by the late 1930s, Balla turned to portraits and cityscapes, and supported fascism during World War II. Until his death in 1958.

Style of work

Bala advocates the principle of simultaneous juxtaposition in painting, that is, depicting multiple sides of moving objects in order to express movement and speed in the static form of painting. Make the different aspects of vision "a process of interpenetration and simultaneous mixing." Barra seeks to express movement and speed. In the painting "Girl Running on the Balcony", he used the Neo-Impressionist pointillism color separation method to depict a strong sense of light and at the same time show the sense of running motion. In this way, the multiple progressive trajectories left by the moving object as it travels through space are all accommodated in a single form, as if they were the result of multiple shots of a single film. Compared with other young Futurist painters, Balla's art is more peaceful and lyrical, without too much hustle and bustle. He is more concerned with the rhythm of the picture and the abstract processing of light and color, and strives to integrate feelings, movement and inner state.

From 1913 to 1916, he produced a series of creations, including "Mercury Passing in Front of the Sun." These works, inspired by observing nature, are the most abstract works left by the Futurists. He succeeded in giving feelings, movements and mental states a unique and complete shape. It can be said that both analytical futurists and futurists followed his example and integrated feelings, movements and mental states into one way of expression. If we value intention rather than results, we should admit that Bala undoubtedly transcended the boundaries of futurism without self-taught and became one of the original masters of abstraction. Unfortunately, this period of true innovation had no repercussions in a world bent on war and lasted only a short time. His pioneering work was almost unknown for a long time, and was only rediscovered at the end of the 20th century, thanks to exhibitions and a very careful publication.

Appreciation of Works

In 1909, marked by the publication of a manifesto by Philippe Tommaso Marinetti in Le Figaro in Paris, the Futurist movement officially began. Deeply influenced by the Futurist slogan "Resist the past and value the present", Balla created his first purely Futurist work "Street Lamp: A Study of Light" (1909) in a short period of time.

In "Street Lamp: A Study of Light", Barra focuses on depicting an important symbol of modern cities: the electric street lighting that had just been introduced in Rome at that time. He emphasized the blinding light emanating from the electric lamp, giving it a meaning almost equivalent to that of physical existence. The strong light of the electric lamp formed a strong contrast with the pale light of the crescent moon in the upper right corner of the oil painting. Balla's depiction of the moon in the work may have been a reference to Marinetti's published work Let Us Murder by Moonlight (1909). Using this work as a medium, the two hit it off and became new friends of futurism.

At this moment, Bala's creative career has been deeply imprinted with separatist techniques. He used hundreds of V-shaped strokes of red, yellow, and green to construct an image with the electric light as the center of the circle radiating in all directions. The closer to the light source, the more dark red and dark green are faded, replaced by bright yellow and pure white, which gives people a dazzling effect. The surrounding dark area is outlined by several short and scattered strokes, encircling the spherical shape of the electric light, which further reflects the powerful power of street lighting. You must know that "electric light" was a quite modern concept at the time. "Street Lamp: A Study in Light" is just Bala's first step. In his subsequent creations, he has been trying to use pictures to express the light that travels through time and space.

"Leashed Dog Movement" is one of Balla's most famous and interesting works. It depicts a fashionable skirt-wearing woman walking through the streets with her pet beagle. To express a dynamic effect, the artist transformed the dog's legs into a series of legs, almost forming a semicircle, reminding us involuntarily of a wheel in motion.

Women's feet, skirts and dog chains also become a series of combinations, leaving a memory of continuity as they travel through space. Many momentary images at different times are condensed on the same picture at the same time, like a slow-motion movie or a continuous shooting of the same negative. This simultaneous juxtaposition of multiple objects and sides makes the audience strongly feel that the artist has solved the problem of movement. efforts, although the results of such efforts appear humorous and earthy. Reed once commented in his "A Brief History of Modern Painting" that the Futurist painters' solution to the problem of movement was somewhat childish, "They said that a galloping horse does not have four legs, but twenty. Legs, their movements are triangular. So they draw horses, dogs, and people, all with multiple limbs in a continuous or radial arrangement."

In expression. In the process of exploring the sense of movement and power, Balla soon abandoned the simple realistic method used in "The Dynamics of a Chained Dog" and switched to an approach close to abstraction. Based on form and color, he uses symbols with abstract meanings to construct pictures. "Flying Fast", painted in 1913, is exactly such a work. In this painting, vertical lines divide the background into large and small irregular rectangles, while the bird feathers create jagged diagonal lines with their neat arrangement. Against their background, the arc across the picture left by the passing birds in the foreground looks more vibrant and dynamic. Vertical lines, diagonal lines and various curves compete with and depend on each other. The bright and bright red, yellow and white and the calm and stable taupe set off and contrast with each other, giving the work a special sense of power. Here, Bala uses the abstract elements of line, color and shape to evolve the continuity of movement into graphic decoration. Of course, this decoration is still based on the sense of movement.