Lot No. 12


Giacomo Balla *


Giacomo Balla * - Modern Art

(Turin 1871–1958 Rome)
Primavera a Villa Borghese, c. 1918, titled and signed on the reverse, tempera, pastel, oil on natural canvas, 186.5 x 107 cm, framed

We are grateful to Elena Gigli for the assistance with cataloguing this work

Provenance:
Private Collection, Perugia 1997
Tornabuoni Arte, Florence
Galleria Arte Centro, Milan
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Padua, Giacomo Balla 1895–1911, Verso il Futurismo, curated by M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Palazzo Zabarella, 14 March – 28 June 1998, exh. cat. p. 55, with ill. no. 7
Florence, Maestri Contemporanei. Antologia scelta, 1999, Tornabuoni Arte, December 1998, exh. cat. p. 25 with ill.

In 1915 in Milan Balla and Depero published the manifesto “The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe”, a proposal born out of a provocation which impacted every aspect of experience and which established a marked inventiveness of shapes and colours. “This proposal envisions a total art that aspires to influence all aspects of existence through a radical transformation of the environment: from furniture to fashion, from cinema to theatre, from music to dance, from advertising posters to the design of objects.”
The manifesto of the Futurist Reconstruction would forever change the direction of travel of the Futurist movement, steering it towards activity that was reconstructive, laborious and far from the pars destruens of the first phase of Futurism. 

We Futurists, Balla and Depero, seek to realise this total fusion in order to reconstruct the universe by making it more joyful, in other words by an integral recreation. We will give flesh and bones to the invisible, the impalpable, the imponderable, the imperceptible. We will find abstract equivalents for all the forms and elements of the universe, and then we will combine them according to the caprice of our inspiration, to shape plastic complexes which we will set in motion. (Manifesto of the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe)

Indeed, Balla himself would begin with the Löwestein house in Düsseldorf in 1912 and with the first participation in a public building – the Bal Tik Tak in Rome in 1921. He would develop studies for decorating interiors, projects for furniture and patterns for clothing. They all involved decorations and focused on lively colours and shapes, perfect for creating beauty and enlivening daily life. In an interview with Enrico Santamaria in 1920 he stated that, “it is because our art is essentially decorative that today we are directing ourselves towards art as applied to industry. This type of art brings us much closer to the masses and can be understood and felt by all”.

In 1904 Balla moved to Rome with his wife and from his house at 6 via Parioli he regularly painted what he could see, either from the balcony of his studio or immediately outside the door of the building. Villa Borghese, where he often went for long walks in search of hidden places or unexpected views, reoccurs many times in his works from this period.

Primavera a Villa Borghese (Spring in Villa Borghese) “is a key piece of the puzzle for reconstructing
Giacomo Balla’s landscape painting which developed in three stages: 1) his youthful studies in the Art Nouveau style; 2) his Futurist experience;
3) his recent theory of the ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’ […] Two batons in lively colours open and close the canvas, which is painted in the Japanese kakejiku style and, in this way, Balla revisits a great tradition of the period between the centuries. In terms of the painting itself, it presents […] two abstract stripes at the top and one abstract stripe at the bottom which is as tall as the others. They enclose three sinuously curved trees which frame the field with trees in front of his house, a foreground in which nature transforms into organic-geometric shapes (very similar to Kandinsky’s experimentation).
Ultimately, a point of arrival for all pre-Futurist and Futurist research in terms of the Futurist Recons-truction of the Universe.” (M. Fagiolo Dell’Arco, Maestri Contemporanei. Antologia scelta 1999, Tornabuoni Arte, Florence 1999, p. 24)

If the “youthful studies in Art Nouveau” are recognisable in the choice of the fabric backing, the wooden strips placed at the top and bottom edges with their vibrant colours and sculptural shapes re-evoke an idea of the dynamism of Futurism and confirm the artist’s adhesion to the theory of the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe. This is further evidenced by the intention to overcome the two-dimensional space of the painting.
The influence of Japanese art (also a source of inspiration for Art Déco) is evident moreover in the format of the work, with its vertical orientation, and also in the choice of subject and in the way the natural element is portrayed. The pictorial rendering of nature is, in fact, indebted to the Japanese nihonga technique which uses Indian ink. This technique allows a very wide modulation of tone due to the dilution of the ink and it searches for a simplification and stylisation of natural forms by eliminating the superfluous. Its aim is to represent the essence of natural subjects and to appreciate the dynamic aspect that all natural things embody, characteristics which it has in common with Futurism.

Returning to the concept expressed twenty years earlier by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco to present an exhibition in Padua which examined the artist’s pre-Futurist period, Elena Gigli asserted that:

Villa Borghese represented the same thing for Balla as Montagne Sainte Victoire did for Paul Cézanne.

A subject, therefore, that the artist experimented with in many of his early works, attracted by the truth of nature hidden in the leaves of a tree, in the trickle of water falling into the pool of a fountain or in the shadows of tree trunks which frame the sky’s dazzling light.

“Villa Borghese represented the same thing for Balla as Montagne Sainte Victoire did for Paul Cézanne.”
E. Gigli

Specialist: Alessandro Rizzi Alessandro Rizzi
+39-02-303 52 41

alessandro.rizzi@dorotheum.it

04.06.2019 - 17:00

Estimate:
EUR 300,000.- to EUR 400,000.-

Giacomo Balla *


(Turin 1871–1958 Rome)
Primavera a Villa Borghese, c. 1918, titled and signed on the reverse, tempera, pastel, oil on natural canvas, 186.5 x 107 cm, framed

We are grateful to Elena Gigli for the assistance with cataloguing this work

Provenance:
Private Collection, Perugia 1997
Tornabuoni Arte, Florence
Galleria Arte Centro, Milan
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Padua, Giacomo Balla 1895–1911, Verso il Futurismo, curated by M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Palazzo Zabarella, 14 March – 28 June 1998, exh. cat. p. 55, with ill. no. 7
Florence, Maestri Contemporanei. Antologia scelta, 1999, Tornabuoni Arte, December 1998, exh. cat. p. 25 with ill.

In 1915 in Milan Balla and Depero published the manifesto “The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe”, a proposal born out of a provocation which impacted every aspect of experience and which established a marked inventiveness of shapes and colours. “This proposal envisions a total art that aspires to influence all aspects of existence through a radical transformation of the environment: from furniture to fashion, from cinema to theatre, from music to dance, from advertising posters to the design of objects.”
The manifesto of the Futurist Reconstruction would forever change the direction of travel of the Futurist movement, steering it towards activity that was reconstructive, laborious and far from the pars destruens of the first phase of Futurism. 

We Futurists, Balla and Depero, seek to realise this total fusion in order to reconstruct the universe by making it more joyful, in other words by an integral recreation. We will give flesh and bones to the invisible, the impalpable, the imponderable, the imperceptible. We will find abstract equivalents for all the forms and elements of the universe, and then we will combine them according to the caprice of our inspiration, to shape plastic complexes which we will set in motion. (Manifesto of the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe)

Indeed, Balla himself would begin with the Löwestein house in Düsseldorf in 1912 and with the first participation in a public building – the Bal Tik Tak in Rome in 1921. He would develop studies for decorating interiors, projects for furniture and patterns for clothing. They all involved decorations and focused on lively colours and shapes, perfect for creating beauty and enlivening daily life. In an interview with Enrico Santamaria in 1920 he stated that, “it is because our art is essentially decorative that today we are directing ourselves towards art as applied to industry. This type of art brings us much closer to the masses and can be understood and felt by all”.

In 1904 Balla moved to Rome with his wife and from his house at 6 via Parioli he regularly painted what he could see, either from the balcony of his studio or immediately outside the door of the building. Villa Borghese, where he often went for long walks in search of hidden places or unexpected views, reoccurs many times in his works from this period.

Primavera a Villa Borghese (Spring in Villa Borghese) “is a key piece of the puzzle for reconstructing
Giacomo Balla’s landscape painting which developed in three stages: 1) his youthful studies in the Art Nouveau style; 2) his Futurist experience;
3) his recent theory of the ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’ […] Two batons in lively colours open and close the canvas, which is painted in the Japanese kakejiku style and, in this way, Balla revisits a great tradition of the period between the centuries. In terms of the painting itself, it presents […] two abstract stripes at the top and one abstract stripe at the bottom which is as tall as the others. They enclose three sinuously curved trees which frame the field with trees in front of his house, a foreground in which nature transforms into organic-geometric shapes (very similar to Kandinsky’s experimentation).
Ultimately, a point of arrival for all pre-Futurist and Futurist research in terms of the Futurist Recons-truction of the Universe.” (M. Fagiolo Dell’Arco, Maestri Contemporanei. Antologia scelta 1999, Tornabuoni Arte, Florence 1999, p. 24)

If the “youthful studies in Art Nouveau” are recognisable in the choice of the fabric backing, the wooden strips placed at the top and bottom edges with their vibrant colours and sculptural shapes re-evoke an idea of the dynamism of Futurism and confirm the artist’s adhesion to the theory of the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe. This is further evidenced by the intention to overcome the two-dimensional space of the painting.
The influence of Japanese art (also a source of inspiration for Art Déco) is evident moreover in the format of the work, with its vertical orientation, and also in the choice of subject and in the way the natural element is portrayed. The pictorial rendering of nature is, in fact, indebted to the Japanese nihonga technique which uses Indian ink. This technique allows a very wide modulation of tone due to the dilution of the ink and it searches for a simplification and stylisation of natural forms by eliminating the superfluous. Its aim is to represent the essence of natural subjects and to appreciate the dynamic aspect that all natural things embody, characteristics which it has in common with Futurism.

Returning to the concept expressed twenty years earlier by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco to present an exhibition in Padua which examined the artist’s pre-Futurist period, Elena Gigli asserted that:

Villa Borghese represented the same thing for Balla as Montagne Sainte Victoire did for Paul Cézanne.

A subject, therefore, that the artist experimented with in many of his early works, attracted by the truth of nature hidden in the leaves of a tree, in the trickle of water falling into the pool of a fountain or in the shadows of tree trunks which frame the sky’s dazzling light.

“Villa Borghese represented the same thing for Balla as Montagne Sainte Victoire did for Paul Cézanne.”
E. Gigli

Specialist: Alessandro Rizzi Alessandro Rizzi
+39-02-303 52 41

alessandro.rizzi@dorotheum.it


Buyers hotline Mon.-Fri.: 10.00am - 5.00pm
kundendienst@dorotheum.at

+43 1 515 60 200
Auction: Modern Art
Auction type: Saleroom auction
Date: 04.06.2019 - 17:00
Location: Vienna | Palais Dorotheum
Exhibition: 25.05. - 04.06.2019