Giacomo balla biography
Giacomo balla dog on a leash.
Cars, dogs and ‘cheering up’ the universe: the Futurist visions of Giacomo Balla
The Italian artist’s career, currently being celebrated in Rome on the 150th anniversary of his birth, was impelled by Divisionism, Futurism and socialism — but perhaps above all, by movement
Giacomo Balla at his studio, 1930.
Artwork: © DACS 2021
Born in Turin in 1871, Giacomo Balla lost his father, an industrial chemist, at the age of nine.
Giacomo balla biography
The family’s financial position soon became precarious, and young Giacomo was obliged to take up work in a lithography workshop.
He would go on to study at Turin’s Accademia Albertina before moving to Rome in the mid-1890s, where he made his living as a caricaturist and portrait painter.
In 1900, he travelled to Paris to see the Exposition Universelle. Fascinated and confused in equal measure by that metropolis, he ended up staying for the best part of a year. It was there, fatefully, that he saw the chronophotogra