Capturing movement

Andrew Lambirth

Wednesday, 21st January 2009

Unique Forms: The Drawing and Sculpture of Umberto Boccioni
Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury Square, N1, until 19 April

The year 2009 sees the 100th anniversary of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, celebrated by a major reassessment of Futurism at the Tate in June. Meanwhile, the Estorick Collection has got in first with a small but select show devoted to the leading Futurist Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916). Boccioni is one of those figures we speculate about — would he have developed into an even greater artist had he survived the first world war, or would he have declined into academicism and self-plagiarism? Certainly he was an important figure in his time, perhaps the most significant of the first wave of Futurist artists, which also included Giacomo Balla, Carla Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini. How does he fare here?

Part of the problem is that much of his fame rests on his sculptures, yet most of them were destroyed after his early death. Only four have survived, two of which are in this exhibition. All were shown in a major Boccioni retrospective in Milan in 1916–17, then entrusted to the care of a deservedly forgotten sculptor who stored them in his studio before chucking them out in 1927. Made from plaster, they were fragile and easily broken. A young sculptor called Marco Bisi retrieved the remains of ‘Development of a Bottle in Space’ and rebuilt it, shown here in a bronze version. The other sculpture at the Estorick is the famous bronze from the Tate, ‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space’ (1913), a streamlined striding figure exploring the dynamics of human motion.

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