Estorick Collection in London Opens Exhibition Devoted to Umberto Boccioni

Monday, 19 January 2009 21:47

 

LONDON - As part of its celebrations to mark the centenary of the Futurist movement, founded by F. T. Marinetti in 1909, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is proud to be hosting the first exhibition in Britain to focus solely on the work of Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) for many years. Comprising some twenty dynamic works, Unique Forms: The Drawing and Sculpture of Umberto Boccioni on view at 39a Canonbury Square, London N1, through April 2009 incorporates work from the Estorick’s permanent collection as well as loans from museums in Italy, France and the United Kingdom.

A signatory of the 1910 ‘Manifesto of the Futurist Painters’, Boccioni was perhaps the most significant of the five artists associated with the first wave of Futurist art. Born in the south of Italy, Boccioni later settled in Rome where he experimented with the languages of Divisionism, Symbolism and Expressionism prior to his move to Milan and association with Marinetti’s movement. Equally articulate with verbal and visual imagery, Boccioni went on to become the foremost theorist of Futurist aesthetics, which he expounded with tremendous energy and rigour in his tract Futurist Painting and Sculpture published in 1914, two years prior to his untimely death during a military exercise.

Like all Futurists, Boccioni was fascinated with speed and movement, although he eschewed the influence of experimental photographers such as Etienne-Jules Marey which led other members of the movement to create their famous images of objects repeated in such a way as to suggest their passage through different points in time and space. Inspired by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, who maintained that movement may be analysed but never experienced in this fragmentary manner, Boccioni’s goal was to capture the indivisible flux of life, an ambition that led to the creation of arguably his greatest masterpiece, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, which is being loaned to the exhibition by Tate.

A number of the works in the exhibition reflect these themes. Drawn from the Civiche Raccolte d’Arte Moderna in Milan, a series of works on paper capture the explosive dynamism of muscular energy in densely worked pieces whose sombre tones and volumetric character recall the vocabulary of Cubism, although here used to achieve quite different ends. 

It is an unfortunate fact that very few of Boccioni’s sculptures have survived, having been destroyed after the death of the artist. One of the earliest of these, Empty and Full Abstracts of a Head, a portrait of the artist’s mother in which Boccioni undertook an exploration of positive and negative space, was also the subject of several preparatory studies, two of which will be included in the exhibition. Displayed alongside the version belonging to the Estorick will be another from the The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which once belonged to Eric Estorick. Reuniting these two works will provide an insight into the radical evolution and reworking of this iconic image.

Running concurrently and complementing this exhibition will be a show focusing on the contemporary Italian artist Luca Buvoli, whose work directly engages with Futurist ideas and themes. The power and energy of Boccioni’s thought and work remains exhilarating to this day, and familiarisation with his ideas and imagery makes it clear that the First World War deprived modernism of one of its most talented and promising artists. Visit :  http://www.estorickcollection.com/home.php

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