The City Rises is Umberto Boccioni's first Futurist work
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The City Rises is Umberto Boccioni's first Futurist work

The City Rises is Umberto Boccioni's first Futurist work

Posted on 19 October, 2020

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USA

Material/Technique

Oil on canvas

A first glance, the figures of The City Rises (La Città che sale) seem to emerge from a background that looks like television static. With this work, Umberto Boccioni officially took his place in 1911 in the school of Futurism. Yet his technique still owes much to Divisionism, a movement to which he had until then belonged, together with Gaetano Previati and Giovanni Segantini. This represented views of the suburbs of cities which were then on the road towards industrialization. 

Drawning the viewer

In this first Futurist work, the setting is the same, and the brushwork looks fragmented, made up of little commas, in the same manner as in Divisionism. What has changed radically is the point of view that interprets the landscape. It is no longer just real-life social criticism; the viewer is drawn into and involved in the frantic action represented, in the work of the construction site, the violent force of horses and men, caught by a whirling, ascending force. The only elements which remain motionless are the buildings under construction in the background. Everything that is alive moves precisely because it’s full of vitality. 

Primary colors

This scenario overwhelms human beings and sweeps them away in a flow of animal energy, which manifets itself through a red mass in the center of the composition. Along with red, the other predominant colors are also primary ones, yellow and blue.

The first owner of this seminal work of art was the composer Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto Ferruccio Busoni, an Italian pianist and composer who made his fortune abroad. By buying the work in 1912 he demonstrated his lively artistic sensitivity, in step with the zeitgeist of the early 20th century.

Art and music at the beginning of the century

In comparison with then-contemporary music and experimentations therewith,  Ferruccio Busoni was incredibly curious and attentive. This was all the more noticeable when one considers that the music scene was then opening up to Arnold Schönberg’s innovative dodecaphony and Igor Stravinsky. His Rite of Spring has several similarities with The City Rises: and not only chronologically, as they share the same rhythm of composition and the same disorienting effect for the audience.

A dynamic and frenetic representation of a new city and its citizens.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain

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