THE CREATIVE PATH OF A PAINTER – Giacomo Balla: walking toward Futurism

From Turin beginnings, the adhesion to the poetics of Futurism, this is the name of an art exhibition that takes place in Italy. Until February 27, 2017 you can go to Alba, where – in the spaces of Fondazione Piera Pietro and Giovanni Ferrero – are on display one hundred masterpieces, through which it will be possible to reconstruct the creative path of Giacomo Balla, an extraordinary painter who was among the leaders the Futurist movement, the one that at the beginning of the twentieth century formed the link between the Italian Pointillist art and the Futurist avant-garde. To realize this exhibition was Esther, a woman with extraordinary knowledge of that season of Italian creativity.

Before moving to Rome, he lived in Turin. Already as a teenager, Giacomo Balla had shown a fondness for art, pursuing painting and drawing, but getting from his father the passion for photography (a technique that will prove crucial to his artistic training). After high school, he attended the Accademia Albertina, studying anatomy, perspective and geometric composition. Then, he began working as a painter, photographer, creative people knowing that they had further stimulated his stage desire. In 1895, in Rome, he knows the pointillist technique.

Here, creativity and analytical ability, together with the power of light, had embraced the themes of social realism, through studies of light perception. The exhibition in Alba offers you a chance to observe the creative journey of this painter, starting from the works related to his Turin apprenticeship, until accession to the poetics of Futurism. Walking in the halls of the exhibition, you will learn to recognize his choice of bold cuts in perspective, its features rich brushstrokes of bright filaments, and contrasts between light and dark.

Among the works on display, you can pay more attention to something really special, like the “Polyptych of the Living”, or “The Hand of the Violinist”, but also “The Little Girl Running on a Balcony.” If you have enough time, stop a little more, assimilating perceptual stimuli in your heart, those two very special paintings can offer: “Dynamism of a dog on a leash,” and “Flight of swallows.” Yes, you can sit down. Use a pen and paper, pencil and colors, because you too can capture a visual emotion, assimilating and turning what Giacomo Balla had been produced and has given us: the power of light, it is a real thing.