(Turin 1871–1958 Rome)
Spessori di Spazio + Linee andamentali - Motivo per stoffa, 1913 ca., signed Futur Balla, inscribed Motivo per stoffa (vestito del Manifesto ‘Vestito antineutrale’) on the reverse, oil on paper on canvas, 46.5 x 58 cm, framed, (MCC)

Photo certificate:
Archivio Elena Gigli Rome, archive no. 2008–357, Rome 30 June 2008

Provenance:
Atelier Balla, Rome (listed on the family notebook under the no. 127, label on the reverse)
Salvatore Quasimodo collection (1901-1968), Rome, until 1967
Baron Paolo Sprovieri (1936-2003), Rome
sale Finarte, Milan, 26 October 1995, Lot 184
Galleria Dante Vecchiato, Padova (stamps on the reverse)
sale Finarte, Milan, 18 December 2006, Lot 471
there acquired by the present owner,
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibition:
Ferrara, Crinali Palazzo dei Diamanti, (curator Achille Bonito Oliva), October - November 1988, (label on the reverse), exh. cat. Nuova Prearo (Ed.), Milan 1988, p. 11 ill.
Venice, Minimalia (travelling exhibition), (curator Achille Bonito Oliva), Palazzo Querini Dubois, 1997, exh. cat. p. 8 with ill. and Rome Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 1998, exh. cat. p. 8 with ill. and on the cover;

Literature:
Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, Futur Balla, La vita e le opere, Electa, Milano, 1992, p. 138, no. 32 with ill.

Comparative works:
G. Lista, Balla, ediz. Fonte d’Abisso, Modena, 1982, p. 233, no. 421 with ill. (another study for the same decorative motif)

‘Balla saw a subject where others see nothing’. Thus wrote his friend and pupil, Umberto Boccioni, about Balla in 1915. Around the same period, almost at the same time as Futurist research focused on movement, Balla also developed new subjects for further research which would be later theorised in the two manifestos from 1914 and 1915, devoted, respectively, to Antineutral Clothing and the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe. In the former, Balla stresses that ‘Futurist attire will be joyful. Fabrics with colours of thrilling iridescence. The use of muscular colours, the most violet violet, the reddest red, the deepest of deep blues, the greenest of greens, brilliant yellows, oraaaaanges, vermilions’.

In an analysis of artistic research from the years after World War II until the second half of the 1990s, Achille Bonito Oliva, curator of the historic ‘Minimalia’ exhibition, designates Giacomo Balla as the founder of the analytic-conceptual line.

additional pictures:
Manifesto futurista per il vestito antineutrale
Giacomo Balla: ‘studio per vestito antineutrale’, 1914