Title of Artwork: “Dynamism of a Cyclist”
Artwork by Umberto Boccioni
Year Created 1913
Summary of Dynamism of a Cyclist
Dancing Cyclist is a 1913 painting by Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916), an Italian Futurist who was preoccupied with speed, modern transportation, and capturing the dynamic sensation of movement in his paintings.
All About Dynamism of a Cyclist
During the first half of the twentieth century, the Italian Futurist movement aimed to liberate Italy from the yoke of its classical past. During the time of the Futurists, modern technology and dynamism fascinated them. Literature and art were the primary means of expression for the movement.
Futurist “force lines” and echoing curves are used in Boccioni’s preparatory drawings to show the movement of a racing cyclist who is lying on his back with his head down. They show how an object would resolve itself if it followed the tendencies of its own forces and reflect the interest of Futurists in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, who believed that material objects are constantly in flux. The Futurists claim to have invented force lines. An attempt was made to convey the dynamic sensation of cycling through time and space, rather than just a single moment. In this image, the bicycle, figure, and surrounding space appear to merge into one. Even though the bicycle was invented in the early 1800s, it wasn’t until the 1890s that it became widely used. The bicycle, with its high speeds, was still one of the Futurists’ idealised modes of transportation even in 1913.
The preparatory drawings are transformed into curves and cones in the final piece, which are outlined in Boccioni’s distinctive divisionist technique. Giacomo Balla was the primary source of inspiration for this technique. After seeing the avant-garde painters of Paris, Boccioni brought new elements to the style, such as the typical Cubist segmentation of planes. Boccioni. Discordant colour choices reflect the Futurists’ failure to develop a coherent colour theory to match their theories in other fields.
The Dynamism of a Human Body, The Dynamism of a Soccer Player, Dynamism of a Footballer, and Plastic Dynamism: Horse + Houses are all examples of his 1913 “dynamism” paintings. While Boccioni’s colour palette was the same as in previous works, he applied the paint thicker and denser in this series.
The Italian Futurists influenced the Russian Futurists in many ways. The Cyclist (1913) by Natalia Goncharova uses some of the same techniques as Boccioni and the other Futurists to depict movement, but it is far more directly representational and far less ambitious than Dynamism of a Cyclist.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
