The City Rises

Umberto Boccioni

Download hi-res image TITLE The City Rises
AUTHOR Umberto Boccioni
DATE 1910
OBJECT TYPE AND MATERIAL Tempera on paper
DIMENSIONS cm 36 × 60
INVENTORY 5057
ROOM XV
FIRMA Boccioni
Work on display
Donation

After a period spent in Rome, the artist decided to move to Paris in 1906, driven by poverty and disillusioned with the artistic climate of the capital, where the ferments and innovations at work in Europe found no echo. Thus he embarked on a series of journeys that included a stay in Russia and concluded with a move to Milan, where he settled, attracted by the new technological spirit that animated the city, and where he met the founders of the Futurist movement, the men who signed its first Manifesto as early as 1909. He promptly joined the movement, becoming perhaps its main interpreter and theorist.

However, the work that first represented the Futurist spirit in full was The City Rises, begun in 1910 and finished in 1911, for which numerous studies have survived: the painting revolves around the motif of the horse, a symbol of progress, which here is replicated several times and on different planes, using the technique of the multiple image, against the background of a scene of the outskirts of the city. The motif was one of which the artist was very fond long before he became a Futurist.