Umberto Boccioni
The sculptor of Futurism.
Umberto Boccioni wanted to show speed and energy. His Unique Forms of Continuity in Space appears on the Italian 20-cent coin.
Umberto Boccioni was born in 1882 in Reggio Calabria in southern Italy. The family moved often, and he grew up in several Italian cities. In Rome he learned the Divisionist technique from the painter Giacomo Balla and met Gino Severini. He also travelled to Paris and Russia.
In 1907 he moved to Milan. There he met the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who had published the Futurist Manifesto in 1909. The movement celebrated speed, machines, big cities and modern life and wanted to do away with the past. In 1910 Boccioni co-wrote the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters.
His painting The City Rises of 1910 shows workers and horses in a whirling force field of light and movement. It is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After a visit to Paris in 1911 he was influenced by Cubism and combined its fragmented forms with the dynamism of Futurism.
From 1912 he devoted himself increasingly to sculpture and wrote a manifesto on Futurist sculpture. His best-known work is Unique Forms of Continuity in Space of 1913. It shows a striding figure whose body seems to be shaped by the air and by speed. The original was in plaster, and bronze casts were made after his death. The sculpture is depicted on the Italian 20-cent coin.
Boccioni advocated Italy’s entry into the First World War and enlisted himself. In August 1916 he fell from a horse during a military exercise and died, aged 33. He is regarded as the foremost artist of Futurism.