Giacomo Balla was born on July 18, 1871 in the piedmont region of Italy, the son of an industrial chemist, as a child Giacomo Balla studied music. By age twenty his interest in art was such that he decided to study painting at local academies and exhibited several of his early work. Balla moved to Rome in 1895 where he met and married Elisa Marcucci. For several years he worked in Rome as an illustrator and caricaturist as well as doing portraiture. Influenced by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giacomo Balla adopted the futurism style creating a pictorial depiction of light, movement and speed. He was signatory to the futurist manifesto in 1910 and began designing and painting furniture and also created futurist “Antineutral” clothing. In painting, his new style is demonstrated in the 1912 work titled dynamism of a dog on a leash. During World War 1 Balla’s studio became the meeting place for young artists but by the end of the war the futurist movement was showing signs of decline. Nevertheless, in the 1920s Giacomo Balla was still a commanding influence alive until the end of the decade. Balla and fortunate Depero (1892-1960) were primarily responsible for the artistic development of futurism in its post-war phase. By the 1930s, his art had moved toward abstraction and eventually into figuration. He continued to exhibit throughout Europe as well as in the United States and in 1935 was made a member of Rome’s academic Di san Luca. Giacomo balla died in Rome on March 1, 1958.
Bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
