We publish a chapter of Gino Zaccaria‘s book The Enigma of Art (Brill, 2021).
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In this essay, Zaccaria offers a genitural elucidation of Umberto Boccioni’s artistic thinking, which is elaborated in his treatise entitled Pittura e scultura futuriste: Dinamismo plastico (1914).
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«The treatise, composed of seventeen chapters written in a compact and no-frills style, traces the foundation of art by drawing from universal dynamism both the constitutive design (the model) of the artwork and the creating stance (the will to carry out plasmation) of the artist.»
Boccioni writes: «What we Futurist painters and sculptors want, instead, is the opposite — but it is an opposite that is grounded on their [i.e. the Impressionists’] bases, namely the resumption and logical continuation of the Impressionists’ research before its degeneration and decadence».
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Umberto Boccioni, Dinamismo di un corpo umano (1913)