Giacomo Balla

Giacomo Balla was born in Turin on July 18, 1871. The son of a seamstress and an industrial chemist passionate about photography, he became an orphan at nine. From a young age, he showed interest in art, abandoning music to focus on painting and drawing. He studied at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, where he deepened his knowledge of perspective, anatomy, and geometric composition. He began his artistic career as one of the early protagonists of Italian Divisionism, later becoming a prominent figure of Futurism, signing with Marinetti and other artists the manifestos that defined the movement's theoretical principles. Moving to Rome in 1895, he lived there for life, engaging with artists such as Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, and Mario Sironi. In 1910, he signed the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting and in 1918 published the Color Manifesto, analyzing the role of color in avant-garde art. During World War I, he promoted the idea of total art and in 1914 theorized a futuristic, dynamic male clothing style. In the 1930s, he distanced himself from Futurism and Fascism, returning to figurative painting, but his work was reappraised after the war. Balla was also a set designer and author of 'paroliberi', expressing his creativity across multiple artistic fields.