Umberto Boccioni

Oil on canvas
36 x 46 cm (14 3/16 x 18 1/8 in.)

Provenance
Galleria Annunciata, Milan; Galleria dello Scudo, Verona; acquired by the former owner in 1986; Christie's Milan, 11 April 2018.

Literature
M. Calvesi, A. D'Ambruoso, Umberto Boccioni, Catalogo generale, Turin 2016, p. 268, n° 179 (illustrated).

Exposition
Verona, Museo di Castelvecchio, Boccioni a Venezia: dagli anni romani alla mostra d'estate a Ca' Pesaro: momenti della stagione futurista, 1985-1986, catalogue p. 40, n° 20 (reproduced); Milan, Accademia di Brera, 1986; Venice, church of San Stae, 1986; Rome, Galleria Arco Farnese, Divisionismo Romano, 1989, catalogue p. 71, n° 14 (reproduced); Vicenza, Basilica Palladiana, L'arte del XX secolo nelle collezioni private vicentine, 1998-1999, catalogue p. 78, n° 5 (reproduced); Modena, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, La pittura a Venezia: dagli anni di Ca' Pesaro alla Nuova Oggettività: 1905-1940, 1999-2000, catalogue p. 59 (reproduced and also on the cover).

This vibrant Portrait of a Young Man dates to the early career of Umberto Boccioni around the years 1905-1906, while the young artist was progressively freeing himself from the influence of his master Giacomo Balla with whom he had learned the Impressionist and Divisionist techniques in Rome.

It was on 20 February 1909 that the first Manifesto of Futurism written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was published and the movement of which Boccioni would become the theoretician was launched. The works from before this revolution show the development, including a variety of artistic experiences, that brought Boccioni to this point. In Rome in 1901, where he studied first at the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Boccioni was also interested in design. With Gino Severini he became a pupil of Giacomo Balla. From April to August 1906, he joined Severini in Paris to study the Impressionist and post-Impressionist styles that he assimilated and used perfectly. From Paris he undertook a journey to Russia where he remained until November of the same year. In April 1907, he was in Venice and attended drawing classes at the Accademia di Belle Arti. These different types of training formed the basis for a solid cultural background on which the revolution of Futurism was built. In 1908, he met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in Milan, as well as Carlo Carra and Luigi Russolo and was reunited with Balla and Severini with whom he developed this movement of vital momentum and dynamic sensation.

Maurizio Calvesi has dated this portrait to the years 1905-1906; [1] its composition is close in fact to that of numerous portraits created around the middle of the first decade of the 20th century: one of his aunt, dated 1905 (Milan, private collection), of the lawyer Zironda (private collection, made in Paris in 1906) for example. But a comparison can also be made with portraits from the years around 1907, one of his mother (Milan, Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna, collection Grassi) of Cavalier Tramello (Milan, private collection) and especially with one of Virgilio Brochi for both the intensity of expression and the structure: devoid of any element of context, social, family or professional, the portrait concentrates on the sitters' faces which are placed off-centre to the left in front of a horizontal element, in a frame traced with the brush. The portrait of Cavalier Tramello also has a painted frame, in brown this time. This composition, which can be found in the artist's graphic work around 1907-1908 may have been inherited from Boccioni's work as a cartoonist, which dates to around 1904. During the years that precede the arrival of Futurism, Boccioni had periods of doubt about the direction in which his art should evolve; he made several attempts but also went back and forth between different techniques.

This portrait, in its internal structure, reveals the influence of the Old Masters, in particular that of the portraitists of 16th century Florence: we know he studied Pontormo thanks to the existence of a drawing that copies the Portrait of a Young Boy in the Uffizi according to the autograph inscription[2]. The large eyes open with a magnetic gaze, the beautiful oval of the face placed on a neck encircled with white evokes in a way, by its confident drawing and the fullness of the volumes, the Pontormo's portrait or those of Salviati and Bronzino and therefore confirms Boccioni's visual culture.

Boccioni already considered himself Divisionist in the Portrait of the Lawyer Zironda in 1906. Divisionism is fundamental to Futurism, which in a way derives from it. "Divisionism, for the modern painter, must be an innate complementarity" as the Manifesto of Futurist Painters of 5 February 1910 states. However, Boccioni at times appears indecisive, as is the case here, and he practiced several techniques. Without being only Divisionist, the portrait is imagined by means of a few unexpected marks of colour, acid green, purple, red and several brushstrokes juxtaposed recall the Impressionist touch. Although a theoretician, in his practice Boccioni went beyond labels and nourished his manner with different influences in a way that was highly experimental. The result here is superb in this captivating portrait, by its intensity and its contrasts of light but also its atmosphere: the softness and plenitude of youth contrast strangely with the intense and fixed gaze, the graveness of the expression.

[1] Boccioni a Venezia, op.cit., p. 164.
[2] Portrait of a Boy (Private Collection), inscribed Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze Jacopo Barrucio da Pontormo / Giovinetto (illustrated in Calvesi and Cohen, Boccioni. L'opera completa, Milan, Electra, 1983, no. 19).