Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Umberto Boccioni (1882 to 1916) · 1913, cast 1972
A figure strides forward on two small blocks, its body streaming behind it in curved flanges of bronze like flame or wind blown cloth. It has no arms and no face, only the sweep of motion made solid. This is the most famous sculpture of Italian Futurism, the movement that in nineteen ten declared that a racing car was more beautiful than any classical statue, and Boccioni made it in nineteen thirteen to show a body not at rest but fused with the space it moves through.
Look at the legs. The calves bulge outward and the thighs flare back, as if the air itself were pushing the muscles into new shapes. The chest is hollowed and the head is a crest, cut through by the profile of the space in front of it. Boccioni wanted to sculpt not the object but the trace of its movement, what he called the synthesis of the object and its surroundings. The surface is polished and reflective, so that the gallery lights slide across it as you pass, adding a second kind of motion to the first.
Boccioni made the original in plaster and never saw it in bronze; he died in nineteen sixteen after a fall from a horse during military training, aged thirty three. The casts, including this one made in nineteen seventy two for the Tate, were taken from the plaster in Sao Paulo. The figure is so central to Italian identity that it appears on the Italian twenty cent euro coin. Stand in front of it for a moment and then look at Picasso's Cubist head nearby to see two answers to the same question of how to sculpt a moving world.
Did You Know? The sculpture appears on the Italian twenty cent euro coin, which makes it one of the most reproduced modern artworks in the world.
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