Sculpture

The catalog for the “Bottega di Poesia” (1924) exhibition of Umberto Boccioni’s works shows not only paintings but also photographs of the artist in his Milan studio. The dedication in Marinietti’s “Battersi ma ridendo come Boccioni” paid homage to his friend, who died too young in 1916. Already very successful at painting, Boccioni tried his hand at sculpture for the first time at the end of 1911. Here as well, he sought to render the impression of vitality and movement with the help of interpenetrating layers and the portrayal of simultaneity. In his work “Fusione di una testa e di una finestra” (1911-12), a female head and a window frame have merged into a single figure. Equally revolutionary were Boccioni’s striding figures, such as “Forme Uniche della Continuità nello Spazio” (1913). Their striding pose and turbulent contours make them fuse with the surrounding space. Also notable is that as early as 1912, Boccioni already referred in one of his works to the use of different mediums, “such as glass, wood, cardboard, iron, cement, horsehair, leather, material, mirrors, electric light and so on”, in the “Manifesto tecnico della scultura futurista”. The catalog for the exhibition at the “Galerie de la Renaissance”, the two-tone cover picture of which Ugo Pozzo designed for “Le cahiers jaunes”, shows 28 photographs of futurist works of art, including Thayat’s already seemingly very abstract portrait of Mussolini.