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Umberto Boccioni
1882-1916
One of the Greatest Painters Of All Time
Italian Futurist Artist, Founder of the Futurist Movement
Stylistically influenced by the following painters and art movements;
Cubism,
Pointillism,
Duchamp,
Picasso,
Braque and
Juan Gris
Cause of Death - Boccioni enlisted in the army during World War I and
was trampled to death after falling from a horse on August 16th 1916.
He was 34.
Umberto Boccioni Quotation
"A portrait, to be a work of art, neither must nor may resemble
the sitter . . . the painter has within himself the landscapes he
wishes to produce. To depict a figure one must not paint that figure;
one must paint its atmosphere" -- Umberto Boccioni
‘Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto’, by Umberto Boccioni, 1910,
We declare:
1. That all forms of imitation must be despised, all forms of originality glorified.
2. That it is essential to rebel against the tyranny of the terms
“harmony” and “good taste” as being too elastic expressions, by the
help of which it is easy to demolish the works of Rembrandt, of Goya
and of Rodin.
3. That the art critics are useless or harmful.
4. That all subjects previously used must be swept aside in order to
express our whirling life of steel, of pride, of fever and of speed.
5. That the name of “madman” with which it is attempted to gag all innovators should be looked upon as a title of honor.
6. That innate complementariness is an absolute necessity in painting, just as free meter in poetry or polyphony in music.
7.That universal dynamism must be rendered in painting as a dynamic sensation.
8. That in the manner of rendering Nature the first essential is sincerity and purity.
9. That movement and light destroy the materiality of bodies.
We fight:
1. Against the bituminous tints by which it is attempted to obtain the patina of time upon modern pictures.
2. Against the superficial and elementary archaism founded upon flat
tints, and which, by imitating the linear technique of the Egyptians,
reduces painting to a powerless synthesis, both childish and grotesque.
3. Against the false claims to belong to the future put forward by
the secessionists and the independents, who have installed new
academies no less trite and attached to routine than the preceding
ones.
4. Against the nude in painting, as nauseous and as tedious as adultery in literature.
We wish to explain this last point. Nothing is immoral in our eyes; it
is the monotony of the nude against which we fight. We are told that
the subject is nothing and that everything lies in the manner of
treating it. That is agreed; we too, admit that. But this truism,
unimpeachable and absolute fifty years ago, is no longer so today with
regard to the nude, since artists obsessed with the desire to expose
the bodies of their mistresses have transformed the Salons into arrays
of unwholesome flesh!
We demand, for ten years, the total suppression of the nude in painting.
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