12-29 FUTUR FRAME, GIACOMO BALLA PT.3

After the heroic era of Futurism, Balla is once again interested in the problem of the sky. An amateur astronomer from the beginning, in the 1910s he explored the mysteries of celestial dynamism with masterpieces such as Celestial Orbits or Atmosphere Thicknesses; in 1914 he made a dozen experimental works starting from the vision of the passage of the planet Mercury in front of the sun. Two years later, also following the meetings at the theosophical society of General Ballatore in Rome, through a geometric construction of pyramids that rise from the curvature of the earth towards the sky, Balla creates a cycle of works entitled Transformations Forms and Spirit. Also in this circumstance we are faced with works where the painting continues and is completed on the frames created directly by the artist.As soon as the Great War ended, the Bragaglia Gallery in Rome hosts a large solo exhibition by Balla: among the 35 works there are also three Sunday Rifle shots24. The version presented in the 2008 Milan exhibition (n. V.3) 25 - now re-proposed in the exhibition Balla Painting Balla Scultura at the Fonte d'Abisso Gallery in Milan - presents a frame painted by the artist with the same colors as the composition created on paper and then directly canvassed by Balla for the exhibition by Bragaglia. In fact, the composition and drawing coincide with the image (note the detail of the tricolor ribbon) in the line published in the exhibition catalog by Bragaglia (Rome 1918). The same painted frame-composition construction is found in two canvases titled Shot of a Rifle26 and Volumes of Landscape27 on the back, the latter exhibited at the Central Art Gallery of Genoa in 1919.
Parallel to this research, Balla develops and exhibits works related to the theme of the panic energy of nature, and in particular to the cycle of the seasons, also characterized in a psychological sense.

19.07.2021