Art and design is where it is today because of
its past. Without daring experiments, the pushing of
boundaries, the breaking of rules and the ability to
think critically and conceptually, the art of art would
have faded with time. Like anything else, art has
evolved. It changes with time, people, culture and
situations and although some may disagree there
is no wrong way to create it. Art is expression and
expression is volatile and limitless. Art demonstrates
that every single one of us sees the world differently
and that beauty truly lies in the eye of the beholder.
Futurism is no exception. In the bigger picture
of art Futurism is often overlooked and forgotten
simply because it lacks the fame that some of the
other “isms” have. However, it deserves the proper
recognition because its ideals introduced a new way
of thinking and its artists were heavy influences on
later forms of art such as Suprematism and Con-
structivism.
Futurism came about during a time of dras-
tic change. Europe and North America were in the
middle of an industrial revolution. The idea of mass
production and the use of heavy machinery to per-
form difficult tasks was becoming a reality. It was a
time of fear, rejection, shock, upheaval and war. The
world was moving faster than it was a decade earlier
and many people rejected the change. Futurism
embraced the change. Futurists were fascinated with
the idea of speed, motion, rhythm and the growth
of the city. They supported the rejection of the past,
the acceptance of the future and the idea that war
was a good way to solve problems and clean up
the world. Futurism often illustrated the turmoil of
change that was occurring, the battle between man
and machine. It also was another stepping stone
toward non-objective art and the idea that emotion
could be expressed through line and color.
This exhibit features ten Futurist painters. Five
of them are Russian women and five of them are
Italian men. This group of artists demonstrates how
different expression can be between gender and
culture. All of these artists are classified as Futurists,
however they all have a different style and view. Al-
though Futurism is not as well known as some other
stylistic movements, it is imperative we remember it
and learn from it. It is part of the chain reaction that
got us to where we are today and it deserves to be
recognized as so.
-Annmarie Barlow
Curator
RU
SSIAN
FUTURISM
Alexandra ExterNatalia GoncharovaLiubove PopovaOlga RozanovaNadezhda Udaltsova
ALEXANDRAEXTER
Alexandra Exter was born in the Ukraine and
grew up in Kiev. She also attended art school in Kiev
and although she moved around a lot in her life she
always returned there. The city of Kiev was a large
influence on Exter’s work. Throughout her life there
Exter developed a love for Ukranian folk culture,
which she studied, promoted and even exhibited.
In the fall of 1907 Exter went to Paris. At the
time, Cubism was becoming a notable style and Ex-
ter recognized its potential. She had the opportunity
to meet artists Picasso and Braque. In her encounters
with Braque and Picasso Exter discovered partial
answers to problems surrounding the relationship
between surface and volume, form and texture and
composition and rhythm. However, Exter did not
agree with how Cubists used color.
Color was extremely important to her Exter’s
work. Exter did not introduce the term “Cubo-Futur-
ism” and was not even around Russia when the term
was coined. Nevertheless Exter utilized “Cubo-Futur-
ism” and tried to adapt it to the demands of Russian
art. At the time Russian art leaned toward the artis-
tic styles of Gleizes, Metzinger and Le Fauconnier.
Therefore Exter’s art became a mixture of Cubism
and Futurism combined with Russian and Ukrainian
subject matter.
Although Exter acknowledged the value of Ital-
ian Futurism, she did not fully embrace its doctrine.
Exter was not interested in the “vehicle hurtling
through space that so fascinated Boccioni and his
colleagues”. Exter’s work is characteristic of explo-
sive color and dynamic movement, yet her paintings
do not feel chaotic. Instead, her paintings feel like
careful arrangements of form and color based off of
aesthetic principals.
In Still-Life with Eggs we see that careful ar-
rangement and Exter’s love for Ukrainian folklore.
There is the spirit of folk murals, traditional em-
broideries and Easter table decorations painted in
a non-objective Futurist manner. Exter also heavily
influenced the art of stage and costume design by
bringing Cubism into the discipline of theater.
Ester was more than an artist; she was an
inventor, a discoverer, an intellectual and a teacher.
She was not afraid to go looking for new things
but never forgot where she came from. She will be
remembered not only for her art but also for her
versatility and ambition.
NATALIAGONCHAROVA
Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova was born on
June 21, 1881 in the village of Nagaevo. Her father
was an architect and her immediate family was well
educated. Growing up, Goncharova was educated by
her mother and grandmother. When Goncharova was
twelve she attended the Fourth Women’s Gymna-
sium until she graduated in 1898. Goncharova tried
several different career paths including history, zool-
ogy, botany and medicine. She eventually decided
to become a sculptor and she attended the Moscow
Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in
the fall of 1901.
Spending time in both the country and city,
Goncharova was torn between the two. The contra-
diction between the fast paced urban life of Moscow
and the slow simple life of the country was a heavy
influence on Goncharova’s work. Goncharova’s early
work with pastels and painting reflect the rural
environment of her family’s countryside estate. She
was most intrigued by the peasants and servant’s
daily activities.
Goncharova had training in the visual arts at
both the art institute and in independent studios.
She withdrew from the Moscow Institute in 1909.
However, she completed the studio exercises she
would have needed to finish her schooling at the
Moscow Institute. While at the Moscow Institute
she met Larionov who became her most influential
instructor and eventually her husband many years
later. Larionov showed Goncharova the advent-garde
exhibitions organized in Moscow.
Goncharova’s work as whole incorporated both
Eastern and Western traditions and it initiated mul-
tiple movements and manifestos including Cubo-Fu-
turism. The Cyclist is oil on canvas done in 1913 and
it is regarded as a very conventional Futurist painting
in both Goncharova’s body of work as a whole and in
Russian art of the early 1900s. It has typical Futur-
ist features such as repetition, displacement of the
shapes of the figure and the injection of fragmented
street signs. It differs from Italian Futurism because
the composition of the painting is both horizontally
and vertically balanced.
Goncharova was extremely influential artist in
not only Russian Futurism, but also in Russian Art
because she was more than just an artist of her time.
Her ideals and aesthetics were carried on and her
work is still honored and admired today.
LIUBOVEPOPOVA
Liubove Popova grew up in a well-educated mer-
chant family. Popova always had a strong interest in
art and particularly Italian Renaissance painting. Her
interest in Italian Renaissance painting is seen in her
abstract paintings from 1916 to 1917. Renaissance
characteristics in her abstract paintings include a
highly accurate sense of up and down, frontal focus
in the structure of form, and close attention to fore-
ground and/or surface. The center of Popova’s com-
position is often fixed and relationships are defined
by proportion. One of the most impressive attributes
of Popova’s work was the way she combined the
style of Russian art with the style of Italian Renais-
sance painting.
At the same time she visited St. Petersburg to
study Italian Renaissance painting she also visited
the ancient cities of Russia including Kiev, No-
vogorod, Pskov, Yaroslavl, Rostov and Suzdal. After
studying both styles of art, Popova discovered, using
her own logic based off of color contrast and numer-
ical relationships, that the art of Old Russia and Ital-
ian Renaissance painting shared classical logic on an
abstract level. Popova was inspired by not only the
common logic, but also the religious subject matter,
the wooden boards on which the art was painted,
nature and the human figure. The human figure and
nature underwent rigorous transformations in her
work. However, Popova’s method changed after she
saw Cubo-Futurist paintings such as Malevich’s The
Knife-Grinder and Goncharova’s The Bicyclist.
Popova was extremely interested in the way
those two paintings conflicted two different forms
of energy and combined the perception of the object
with its environment. She began to experiment with
abstract patterns and rhythms and created her on
Cubo-Futurist works. In Popova’s Cubo-Futurist
works we see an adequate balance between the
“centrifugal” and the “centripetal”. These paintings
also demonstrate an agreement between body, ob-
ject and negative space, which set them apart from
French Cubism.
The Pianist demonstrates the difference in
interpretation of Cubist form and space between the
Russians and the French. The Pianist has a fron-
tal view of the face while the hand is shown from
the side and the keyboard is shown from above.
Popova’s work eventually evolved into a Supremist/
Constructivist style in the same way the Malevich’s
did. However her work maintained the “centrifugal”
and “centripetal” nature that was characteristic of
Cubo-Futurism. Popova’s work changed several
times in her life and her diverse body of work stands
today as a reflection of her versatility as both an art-
ist and a person.
ITA
LIAN
FUTURISM
Giacomo BallaUmberto BocciniCarlo CarraLuigi RussoloGino Severini
GIACOMOBALLA
Giacomo Balla was a Futurist but his work
belongs in a category all its own. He was ahead of
his time experimenting with artificial light and its
association with machinery, an attribute that would
become symbolic of Futurism style. In his work we
see everything from pictorial components to the
introduction of an abstract language, all under the
category of Futurism.
Balla was not affected nor inspired by Cub-
ism, nor was he interested in the conflict between
man and machine. He was strictly concerned with
“presenting one fragmented episode in a continuum
of motion. He concentrated on how a dachshund
scurries, a violinist plays and a girl runs”. In his work
you see “units of progression” used to illustrate the
particular activity. Balla was very precise in determin-
ing which elements needed to be repeated and over-
lapped to express “motor activity”. He had a much
more “sensory” approach to imitating force lines as
opposed to an emotional or intellectual one.
Force lines were a standard of Futurism that
Balla had not fully accepted. Patriotic Demonstration,
one of his interventionist paintings of 1915 “brought
a new abstract language to the service of the Futur-
ist desire to capture the simultaneity of everyday
life focused on political aspirations”. Girl Running
on Balcony illustrates Balla’s studies on “how light
dematerializes bodies in action”. The blocks of color
poured over the surface give the painting a mosaic
look. Here we see Balla’s style of repeated fragments
with a serious of repeating heads, legs, railing and
skits. The color blocks distract the viewer from notic-
ing the precise position of the girl’s sprint. Every-
thing that is happening in this scene is occurring
simultaneously, there is no elapsed time. However,
this is contradictory because we as the viewer know
that this event took place over a period of time. As
a result, Balla creates a “generalized space, neither
illusively deep nor palpably flat, lacking planes yet
avoiding openness”.
Balla never fully accepted all the fundamentals
of Futurism but rather molded the fundamentals
of Futurism to meet his stylistic needs. This ability
allowed him to push the boundaries of Futurism as
both a style and a way of thinking.
UMBERTOBOCCIONI
Umberto Boccioni is often associated with and
known for his sculptures. However, his sculptures,
although beautiful and impressive, were not his only
contribution to Futurism. His triptych States of Mind
is among his body of work as a Futurist painter.
States of Mind shown at the first Futurist exhibi-
tion in Paris in 1912 alongside seven other pieces
by Boccioni. The intention of these pieces was to
illustrate the feeling and movement of a crowd using
non-objective shapes. They were done in a Neo-
Impressionistic style. The pieces play off the Futurist
fundamental of simultaneity. Boccioni “renewed
the Futurist enterprise: it was no longer a matter of
merely depicting the speed of a machine or the ef-
fects of light, but of transcribing the movements of
the soul at the heart of a separation punctuated by
three related circumstances”.
The three circumstances that are referred to are
The Farewells, Those Who Go and Those Who Stay,
each one painted on a separate canvas. The railway
station, he train and the journey are all Futurist
themes that show the interaction of man and the
mechanized world. These themes also evoke the
bittersweet emotions associated with leaving. After
the exhibition in Paris, Boccioni painted the second
rendition of States of Mind in a much more Futurism
style. In his second set of paintings there were force
lines and “dynamic compenetration of planes”. How-
ever, there is still implied movement. In his second
version of The Farewells Boccioni created volumes
that appeared to revolve and outline the space oc-
cupied by a couple embracing, the presence of a
sitting locomotive and the heart-wrenching feeling
that often comes with saying goodbye.
In the second versions of both Those Who Go
and Those Who Stay there is a blanket of lines in the
forground creating “prismatic” forms, which hide
the characters. In Those Who Go the diagonal blue
lines produce motion traveling from left to right.
We see the dim lights inside the railway car and the
city fading into the distance through a window. The
painted faces are those of sleeping passengers, and
their expressions reflect sadness. Those Who Stay
is almost monochromatic. The static nature of the
figures is expressed through the use of vertical lines.
The string of figures stretches from the bottom left
corner to the top right indicating the perspective of a
person riding away on the train.
Boccioni’s sculptural contributions to Futur-
ism were masterpieces and were very influential to
the style as a whole. However, one cannot forget
Boccioni’s paintings and his ability to express a vast
array of emotions on a single canvas.
NADEZHDAUDALTSOVA
Nadezhda Udaltsova was surrounded by a lot of
tragedy in her life. Her mother died when she was
twenty-seven, her father was killed by the Bolsheviks
and her husband was killed also. The only thing
that kept Udaltsova going was her passion for art.
Udaltsova was born in 1885. In 1995 at the age of
twenty she enrolled in the art school of Konstantin
Yuon and Ivan Dudin. A few years later in 1908
Udaltsova visited the Shchukin collection. In that
same year she attempted to get into the Moscow
Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but
was not accepted. The following year Udaltsova stud-
ied at La Palette in Paris under the direction of Henri
Le Fauconnier, Kean Metzinger and Andre Dunoyer
de Segonzac. At La Palette Udaltsova studied the
“grammar” of Cubism.
She returned to Moscow in 1914 at the age of
29 where she debuted with fellow Russian Futurist,
Liubov Popova, at an exhibition in Moscow called
Jack of Diamonds. Udaltsova’s education in Cubism
helped her tremendously and she accepted Cubism
as a new way of thinking, making and interpreting
art. Udaltsovas treatment of space in her paintings
from 1914-1915 sometimes resembled beehives.
She stood close by her aesthetic principles. The
Restaurant for example shows Udaltsova’s ability
to incorporate form and lettering, light and shade
and relief and plane without sacrificing the
art of painting.
Although Udaltsova was a Russian artist, the
art of painting which was a European tradition,
remained very important to her throughout her
career. She painted in terms of precise, conceptual,
immense compositions. Udaltsova dwelled in Russia
for the majority of her life, but her love for European
art shows heavily in her work. A particular European
style that Udaltstova was receptive to was French
Cubism. Restaurant is an example of Udaltsova’s
Russian Cubo-Futurism work. However, it is said that
Restaurant has a “distinctive fan-shaped composi-
tion, echoing the volumetric-spatial structures of
Cubism”. Restaurant also has fragmented text, which
is “introduced into the painting with the intention of
evoking a series of sensations associated with life,
noise, pulse and constantly changing impressions of
a large city “. These attributes are characteristic of
Italian Futurism once again we see Udaltsova’s love
and admiration for European art.
Top Related