While walking around Moma I noticed a painting by Umberto Boccioni named “The city Rises”(1910). Umberto Boccioni was one of the most successful and influential Italian painters among Futurist, which emerged as an art form before the outbreak World War I. After “futurist manifesto” was published many artists started following this movement that depicted modernization, new technology and violent break up with the past. This painting is considered one of the first futuristic paintings. Central theme are blurry looking horses who are running wild and workers who are trying to gain control over them. The name of the painting suggests that the new city is being build, but painting shows conflict between humans and horses, like a struggle between new and old. Horses are depicted as mystical, ancient creatures. Boccioni developed effects of dynamics and action, which were associated with his style. While horses and the humans depicts majority of the painting, urbanization f the city is evident. Upper area of the painting has clearly recognizable factories and the walls of the new city that has being build. Boccioni wants to break up with the past by showing us chaotic struggle between humans and animals. Horses have wings in the painting symbolizing past and contrasting it with new world that is rising. Horses are moving but they are not very distinctive at first while the walls of the city are much more clear. The painter sees the progress of the human kind through speed up industrialization and urbanization of the new raising city.

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/79865?locale=en

Marija Krasojevic