Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism & Abstract Art: At the Galleria Nazionale dArte Moderna di Roma (Part 2)

The Art of: Balla, Archipenko, Martini, Carra, 
Kandinskij, Miro, & Bill

Giacomo Balla Espanzione dinamica + velocita

Ezpanzione dinamica e velocit. 1913 (circa). oil on canvas. 65,5 x 108,5 cm. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

The painting is a part of a series called ‘auto in corsa’ from 1913-14 during a period of experimentation and representation of velocity. The painting is a monochromatic work of different shades of the same color, considered a Bragaglia influence, to represent a type of dance as a form of understanding speed and futuristic ideas about modernity.

Giacomo Balla Works:

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1. Velocità d’automobile. 1914. Oil on canvas. 49.5 x 66.5 cm.
2. Velocità astratta n. 2. 1914. oil on canvas. 28.5 x 44.1 cm


‘ Espansione dinamica + Velocità’ in Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (online)
http://www.gnam.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/23/gli-artisti-e-le-opere/83/espansione-dinamica-velocit [last sited: 19:35, 01/02/2014]

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Alexander Archipenko's Minimalist Expressions

Camminando (Woman Walking). 1912-20. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Roma

Alexander Archipenko, born in Kiev when the city was part of the Russian Empire, today in Ukraine, was a part of the emerging Russian painters who lived in the artist colony La Ruche in the early 1900s. At a young age, in the year 1910, he had exhibitions at Salon des independents and Salon d'Automne; which were iconic signs of success. 

Other international exhibitions were the 12th Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte di Venezia of 1920, First Russian Art Exhibition in the Gallery van Diemen in Berlin in 1921, Russian Paintings and Sculpture in Chicago, in 1923’s Century Progress World's Fair of Chicago, Cubism and Abstract Art in New York in 1936 and many others. To state his international mark on art, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1962.

What art goers know most about Archipenko is his relation to Picasso and the cubist movement. The artist is in fact known to be the artist after Picasso to have applied cubism in 3D. His creative production applied negative space as a major tool to artistic representation. The voids, or absence of materiality, is just as important as the object itself. Movement is described through form, curves, and materials. Minimalizing the object to express a grander concept of artistic expression.

Other Alexander Archipenko's:

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1. Woman Combing Her Hair. 1914. bronze. 178.5 x 40 x 40 cm

2. La Lutte (The Boxer). 1914. Milwaukee Museum of Art, Wisconsin. 

i. ‘Alexander Archipenko’ in Encyclopedia Wikipedia (online). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Archipenko [last sited: 20:05, 01/02/2014]

ii. Marter, Joan. ‘Alexander Archipenko’ Grover Art Online. Oxford University Press, 2009.  http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=209 [last sited: 20:11, 01/02/2014]

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Arturo Martini's Condition of Sleep

Il dorminente. 1921. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Naztionale di Roma

Martini is known for figurative sculptures produced in a diversity of both styles and materials. It took training in diverse cities before settling in Munich, Germany, to study under the academic sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand in 1909. His art was very impressionistic until the 1922 exhibition entilted ‘Valori plastici’ where Martini’s influence became more interested in nature. Il dorminente represents that second phase of artistic ideology where the sculpture studies the metaphysical of sleep, as a condition of suspending existence. The end result is a humorous representation of a state of mind.

Martini's Marbles:

1.2.

1. Livy (Titus). 1942. Marble. University of Padova. 

2. Fanciulla verso sera, 1919. Marble. 55 x 51 x 33. Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna

‘Arturo Marini’ in Encyclopedia Britannica (online). http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/367068/Arturo-Martini [last sited: 20:31, 01/02/2014]

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Carlo Carra's Illusion

L’ovale delle apperizioni. 1918. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna di Roma

Carra is considered to be on Italy’s most influential painters of the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his metaphysical paintings. Though Martini is considered to be a part of the same group of artistic production, their works are completely different. 

He, like many others of the time of experimental art, was self taught. In 1909 he became influenced by Futurism when he encountered the poet Filippo Marinetti and the artist Umberto Boccoioni. The new aesthetic creative path experimented with expressions of modernity in relation to technology reflected by movement, dynamism and speed. 

L’ovale delle apperizioni was published in 1918 in Valor plastici. Carra described the ‘uomo elettrico’ 9electic man) as a manikin without legs, a ‘statua arcaica della mia infanzia’ (an archaic statue of my childhood), a female manikin with ball and rachet. Carra was quoted as saying ‘Che sia evaso dal museo?” (Let it escape the museum?) in regards to works being exhibited within a processed interior layout.
 

Other Carlo Carra Illusions:

The Pursuit. 1915. Charcoal, collage, tempera. 39 x 68 cm. Peggy Guggenheim Foundation, Venice, Italy

i. ‘Carlo Carra’ in Encyclopedia Britannica (online). http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/96840/Carlo-Carra [last sited: 21:31, 01/02/2014]
ii. ‘Carlo Carra’ in Peggy Guggenheim Collection (online) http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/inglese/collections/artisti/biografia.php?id_art=170 [last sited: 21:40, 01/02/2014]

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Kandinskij’s Political Dialogue

Wassily Kandinsky. Linea angolare. 1930. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma. 

‘I applied streaks and blobs of color onto the canvas with a palette knife and I made them sing with all the intensity I could...’-Wassily Kandinsky

Vasilij Vail’evic Kandinskij, more easily known as Wassily Kandinsky, was a painter and theorist, famous for his purely abstract art actually started as a an intended professor of law and economics. Fascinated by anatomy at age 30, his life objective diverted and he enrolled in Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts.

It was the politics of the era, the beginning of WW1, that sparked an artistic reaction. His anti communist theories, especially in relation to art, inspired a psychological and physical alteration in artistic expression that was communicated through art. This period is what Kandinskij is most famous for and what led to his original intentions as professor. This time, not in economics nor law, but in art and architecture at the most renown school of European modern history, the Bauhaus. The Nazi intervention and closing of the school took the artist westward in 1922 to France where his work evolved even further.

Linea angolare is a part of Kandinskij’s French evolution in abstract impressionism that is an accumulation of his artistic theories that cherished concepts of universality of all the arts, including music, science and philosophy. The painting is actually a very careful study of line, space, depth, plains, forms figures, and colors; filled with intricate construction of symbolism and architectural skill. Art goers and analysts particularly like interpreting his works for its possibilities of interpretations.

Some of Kandinskij’s Compositions:

12 

1. Composition IV. 1911 (170 Kb); Oil on canvas, 159.5 x 250.5 cm (62 7/8 x 98 5/8 in); Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfallen, Dusseldorf
2. Composition VIII. 1923 (140 Kb); Oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm (55 1/8 x 79 1/8 in); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

ii. Ronald Alley. Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists. Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.379
i. ‘Wassily Kandinsky’ in Wikipedia (online). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky [last sited: 21:52, 01/02/2014]

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Joan Miro’s Lamentation of lovers

Il Compianto degli amanti.1953. 45,0 x 37,0 cm. Oil on canvas. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma. 

“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”

It took Miro til 1919, when in Paris to be influenced by cubism and geometric forms. This phase along with Dadaism of 1924 brought about the formation of his manifesto on surrealism. Along with Klee, the spirit of Miro was created, a freedom of invention of spatial studies and visions.

“I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.”

Il Compianto degli amanti reveal's Miro’s ability to narrative in abstraction established him as an artistic genius of modern art. His childlike figures, that appear doodle-ish, framed in a classical cornice, can easily be a discourse over what is art. Miro was an artist that helped alter and transition how a viewer seeing the world expressed through artistic representation.

Miro Abstracts:

1 2 

1. Sonnens. 1955
2. Carnival of Harlequin. 1924-25. print.

‘Le vie dell’astrazione’ in GNAM (online). http://www.gnam.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/210/sala-22-le-vie-dellastrazione [last sited: 21:52, 01/02/2014] 

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Max Bill's Mathematical Sculpture

Max Bill is a Swiss architect/designer know for producing concrete art that is based on mathematical concepts. His concepts derive from a study of geometric forms that ultimately create an object of expression. Nothing is left to randomness, everything is calculated. This process shows that artistic expression can derive from something concrete. 

Unita tripartita is an example of the artist's ideology of applying logic and calculations to production. With the application of 3 ribbon-like shapes that continuously intertwine, the steel structure is given shape. The forms that ultimately twist and turn with a traceable beginning has a title that remains a mystery.

    

Max Bill. Unita tripartita. 1958. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma

The metal sculpture won the first prize of the first Bienal de São Paulo in 1951.The original work is on display in Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. Another sculpture was produced and now displayed at Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna of Roma.

Max Bill Mathematical Objects:

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1. double surface with six rectangular corners. 1948-78. Granite, 165 x 163 x 120 cm

2. halbe kugel um eine achse. 1965-66. black swedish granite. diameter 100 cm.

i. Marar, Ton. ‘Projective planes and the Tripartite Unity’ in Departamento de matemática aplicada e estatística – ICMC. Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. http://www.mi.sanu.ac.rs/vismath/marar/ton_marar.html [last sited: 15:52, 01/12/2014]
ii.‘Max Bill’ in LACMA (online). http://www.lacma.org/beyondgeometry/artworks1.html [last sited: 15:52, 01/12/2014]