Giacomo Balla

Marlborough Gallery, Monaco
Galleria Fonte d'Abisso, Milan
Private Collection, Switzerland
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2004

Sao Paulo, Pinacoteca do Estado & Santiago de Chile, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Giacomo Balla 1894-1946: da Io Balla a Ball'io, 2000-2001, no. 76, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Canvas is not lined. There do not appear to be any signs of retouching visible under UV light examination. There is a small spot of dull fluorescence to the central white band probably pertaining to the artists application of paint. The canvas is gently undulating. The edges are reinforced with tape. There is a fine line of craquelure to the lower most white section. Overall this work is in very good condition.
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‘Modern man is inclined towards colour. The more or less Parisian fashions demonstrate it. Let us look at the hats, the umbrellas, our wives clothes and the handkerchief and the tie we are wearing. And what has futurist painting been from its beginning up until today if not a research of abstract chromatic decorativism?’ (Giacomo Balla, quoted in Giovanni Lista, Balla, Modena, 1982, p. 89).

This remark of Balla’s, from an interview in 1920, reveals his thinking for the decade to come. By 1931 he would have parted with the Futurist movement altogether, pursuing instead an impressionist-figurative style until his death. The present work falls squarely in the middle of this final futurist decade, when Balla’s style became increasingly geometric. Whilst seeming to fulfil the notion of abstract chromatic decorativism, this painting does in fact contain the barely legible letters of its title: buon appetito. Indeed, it is one of a number of works which begin with the title ‘motivo con parola…’ (motif with the word…). Others have as their subject: forse [maybe], luce [light], vetri [glass] and grazie [thank you]. It is unlikely that we would ever find these words - such is the distortion of their forms - were it not for the artist's guiding titles. The words are gifted to us, only for us to see how blinded we had been, but also how inconsequential the presence of the word buon appetito is to the overall composition.

Indeed, Balla’s interest in words as abstract devices is in fact not concerned with their painterly capability, but in the abstract concept of words themselves. As Maurizio Fagiolo observes, ‘Many of Balla’s masterpieces depict nothing but brightly coloured words (significant as well, of course) or else striking, slogan-like phrases. Coins and banknotes are other forms of abstraction, but language is supreme. We all understand one another thanks to something abstract. This fact may be compared to the way a Persian carpet seems merely decorative in use, whereas in reality it contains invocations to Allah; a Japanese makemono may appear delightfully “informel”, but in fact it sings the praises of nature or love. In other words, to the ignorant (and the blind) everything appears as abstract’ (quoted in Balla: The Futurist (exhibition catalogue), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1987, p. 130).