Swifts: Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequences by Giacomo Balla was created in 1913. The painting is in Museum of Modern Art New York. The size of the work is 96,8 x 120 cm and is made as an oil on canvas.
Transfixed by speed and dynamic motion, Balla learned how to portray movement in his paintings by looking to photography. During prior decades, Étienne-Jules Marey had developed a photographic technique that captured motion through multiple exposures. His photographs of birds in flight directly influenced Balla’s painting, with its curved arcs evoking the rhythmic flapping of wings. Artists and scientists seeking to understand bodily movement would later use Marey’s method to capture humans in motion. (read more in Museum of Modern Art)
About the Artist: Italian painter Giacomo Balla was born in Turin. He was, art teacher and poet best known as a key proponent of Futurism. By age 20, his interest in visual art had developed to such a level that he decided to study painting at local academies, and several of his early works were shown at exhibitions. Following academic studies at the University of Turin, Balla moved to Rome in 1895. For several years he worked in Rome as an illustrator, caricaturist and portrait painter… Read more
