Giacomo BALLA
1871–1958, Italy
Also known as: Futur Balla
Balla studierte an der Albertina in Turin und ging danach nach Rom. Um die Jahrhundertwende besuchte er Paris, wo er sich mit dem Neoimpressionismus intensiv auseinandersetzte. 1910 verfasste er in Italien das Technische Manifest der futuristischen Maler. Er zählt zu den bedeutendsten und ersten Futuristen.
Source: http://www.hampel-auctions.com/
Born in Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy, the son of an industrial chemist, as a child Giacomo Balla studied music. At 9, when his father died, he gave up music and began working in a lithograph print shop. By age twenty his interest in art was such that he decided to study painting at local academies and exhibited several of his early works. Following academic studies at the University of Turin, Balla moved to Rome in 1895 where he met and married Elisa Marcucci. For several years he worked in Rome as an illustrator and caricaturist as well as doing portraiture. In 1899 his work was shown at the Venice Biennale and in the ensuing years his art was on display at major Italian exhibitions in Rome and Venice, in Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf in Germany as well as at the Salon d'Automne in Paris and at galleries in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Influenced by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giacomo Balla adopted the Futurism style, creating a pictorial depiction of light, movement and speed. He was signatory to the Futurist Manifesto in 1910 and began designing and painting Futurist furniture and also created Futurist "antineutral" clothing. He also taught Umberto Boccioni. In painting, his new style is demonstrated in the 1912 work titled Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash. In 1914, he also began sculpting and the following year created perhaps his best known sculpture called Boccioni's Fist. During World War I Balla's studio became the meeting place for young artists but by the end of the war the Futurist movement was showing signs of decline. In 1935 he was made a member of Rome's Accademia di San Luca. Balla participated in the documenta 1 1955 in Kassel, Germany, his work was also shown postmortem during the documenta 8 in 1987.
Source: http://www.aspireauctions.com
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Italian Futurist painter, sculptor and designer. Born in Turin, son of a chemist and amateur photographer. Largely self-taught as an artist, except for studying at evening classes and for two months at the Albertina Academy. Moved in 1895 to Rome where he spent most of his life. His early works were portraits, landscapes and caricatures, partly influenced by the Italian Divisionists, whose humanitarian socialist theories he shared. Visited Paris 1900-1 and on return taught both Severini and Boccioni. Became increasingly interested in painting aspects of modern industrialised life. Signed the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting in 1910, but took no active part in the movement until 1912. Then rapidly became one of the most original and inventive of the Futurist painters, exploring plastic equivalents for motion, in which he adopted the serial images of cinephotography, and the dynamic expression of velocity in machine forms. After the war assumed leadership of the movement, whose centre shifted from Milan to Rome. First one-man exhibition at the Casa d'Arte Bragaglia, Rome, 1918. From 1931 reverted to an Impressionist-figurative style. Died in Rome.
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/
Giacomo Balla räknas till en av futurismens grundare och var en av dem som undertecknade det futuristiska manifestet 1910. Vid ett besök i Paris 1900 hade han tagit starka intryck av impressionismen och divisionismen. Ballas målning Damen med hunden (1912) är ett försök att framställa rörelse genom att placera flera bilder ovanpå varandra. Detta ligger helt i linje med futurismens idéer, men hans måleri utvecklades i abstrakt riktning och upplöstes i allt högre grad i ett kraftfullt och rörligt linjespel av abstrakt karaktär.
Source: Wikipedia