Boccioni autoritratto 1908 Acquabella

Umberto Boccioni (1882—1916), Italian painter, sculptor, and theorist of the Futurist movement in art. Boccioni was trained from 1898 to 1902 in the studio of the painter Giacomo Balla, where he learned to paint in the manner of the pointillists. In 1907 he settled in Milan, where he gradually came under the influence of the poet Filippo Marinetti, who launched the Futurist movement, which glorified the dynamism of modern technology. Boccioni adapted Marinetti’s literary theories to the visual arts and became the leading theoretician of Futurist art. In 1910 he and other painters drew up and published the “Manifesto of the Futurist Painters,” promoting the representation of the symbols of modern technology—violence, power, and speed.