Biography of Umberto Boccioni

Edge Dynamics

19 October 1882 17 August 1916 Umberto Boccioni, futurist painter, sculptor and inventor of plastic dynamism was theoretician and leading exponent of futurism, as well as most of southern Italian Futurist art. Born in Reggio Calabria on 19 October 1882 by Raffaele Boccioni and Cecilia Forlani, parents romagnoli who moved in Calabria. He spent his childhood and adolescence in different cities because of her father's job with it being a civil servant, he is forced to regular shifts. The family moved to Genoa in 1888 in Padua and afterwards in 1897 in Catania, where he obtained a Diploma in a technical school and begins to cooperate with some local newspapers. In 1899 Umberto Boccioni moved to Rome where he attended the Scuola Libera del Nudo and works in the Office of a cartoonist. In this period the painter realist style, Gino Severini and with him knows he attended the studio of Giacomo Balla which is considered a very important teacher, and Umberto divisionist techniques used to develop research: both will become disciples of dances. From 1903 to 1906 Umberto Boccioni participates in the annual exhibitions of the society Amatori and Cultori, but in 1905 in controversy with the conservatism of official juries, organizes with Severini, in the foyer of the Teatro Costanzi, the "exhibition of the rejected". To escape the Italian provincial atmosphere, in the spring of 1906 Boccioni went to Paris, where he remained fascinated by the modernity of the metropolis. From Paris, after a few months, makes a trip to Russia before returning to Italy and settling in Padua to enroll at the Academy of fine arts in Venice, where he graduated. Get to know the new trends of painting, derived from the evolution of Impressionism and symbolism, Boccioni embarks on another trip stopping in Munich, meeting the German "Sturm und drang" movement and observes the influence of the British pre-raphaelites. Upon returning draw, paint actively, while being frustrated because they feel the limits of Italian culture that considers it still essentially "provincial culture". Meanwhile faces his first experiences in the field of engraving. The Italy of the early twentieth century has an artistic life still tied to old traditions, but Milan has become a dynamic city, and this is where Boccioni settles upon returning from his last trip to Europe to experiment with various techniques, especially under the influence of pointillism and symbolism. In the fall of 1907 he moved then in Milan, the city that at that time more than others is on the rise and responds to its aspirations. Become a friend of Romulus Romans and begins to attend Gaetano Previati, which suffers some influence in his painting that seems to turn to symbolism. Becomes also member of permanent. From January 1907 to August 1908, Umberto Boccioni keeps a detailed diary in which he notes the stylistic experiments, doubts and ambitions that shake the artist who only goes between the pointillism, symbolism, Futurism, painting portraits, paintings in symbolic character and some view of the city. After meeting Marinetti, Boccioni approaches the garde movement in 1910 writes with Carlo Carrà, and Luigi Russolo, the "Manifesto dei pittori futuristi" and the "technical Manifesto of Futurist painting", also signed by Severini and dances. The goal of the modern artist should be, according to the authors, get rid of figurative traditions from the past, models to turn resolutely to the contemporary world, dynamic, lively, constantly evolving. In his works, Boccioni expresses perfectly the movement of the shapes and the concreteness of matter through the multitudes of subjects in the city from the machines to the chaotic frenzy of everyday reality. Become the artist who best knows how to portray the modern life, hurried and stressful the machine in motion is the main symbol. Although influenced by Cubism, which admonishes excessive immobility, Boccioni avoids in his paintings the straight lines and uses complementary colors. In paintings like "dynamism of a cyclist" (1913), or "dynamism of a football player" (1911), the representation of the same subject in stages over time suggests the idea of moving into space. Similar attention and study also dominates the sculpture by Boccioni, for which the artist often neglects the noble materials like marble and bronze, preferring wood, iron or glass, beginning to incorporate fragments of objects in plaster casts of sculptures. His commitment is focused on the interaction of a moving object with the surrounding space. Unfortunately very few sculptures have survived. Among the most important paintings of Boccioni are "brawl in Gallery" (1910), "moods # 1. Goodbyes "(1911) and" forces of a road "(1911). Boccioni modernizes pictorial style using its own language, while actively participates in all the initiatives most representative of this current became the Futurist painter. Serves in various European capitals exhibitions of Futurist painters and writes the "Manifesto of Futurist sculpture", where he exhibited his theories on simultaneity and dynamism, already partially expressed in the "technical Manifesto of Futurist painting." Since 1912, the year of the first Futurist exhibition in Paris at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Boccioni applies the concept of "plastic dynamism" to the sculpture, while continuing to study the dynamics of the human body, through a long series of drawings and watercolours. From 1913 he collaborated to the magazine "Lacerba", organized by the Florentine Futurist group headed by Ardengo Soffici, but plastic dynamism meets hostility from some cultural backgrounds futurists and public disinterest. At the outbreak of the first world war Umberto Boccioni, like many intellectuals, is in favour of Italy enters the war: enlisted as a volunteer in the Lombard Battalion cyclists and part for the front with Marinetti, Russolo, Sant'Elia and Sironi. During his war effort is believed about the Futurist theory enunciated by Marinetti, that war is "the world's only hygiene". Coins then his famous equation "war = insects + boredom". During the war Umberto Boccioni collaborates with the magazine "Happenings" and returned to his old master dances. In December 1915 his battalion is dissolved and in July the following year Boccioni is assigned to the field artillery and intended to Verona. Apply the plastic dynamism his paintings and abandons the traditional approach by combining internal and external, real-world data and those of remembrance, into a single image. With this in mind develops the characteristic "guidelines" that trace the trajectory of a moving object in space. His very personal style, looking for dynamism, led him to approach to Expressionism and Cubism in order to put the viewer in the center of the picture to make it feel involved and engaged. On August 17, 1916 Umberto Boccioni dies at random (Verona), following a trivial falling from his horse, in the prime of his pictorial revolution that took him from Futurism to plastic dynamism.

Translation authorized by the website: Biografieonline.it under Creative Commons License.