painting
Speed
Jules Schmalzigaug
About this work
Object details
- TitleSpeed
- Date1914
- Mediumoil on canvas
- Measurements74 × 108 cm
- Inventory number2099
More about this work
This painting is a classic showcase of the three ingredients of Italian Futurism: the evocation of speed, the simultaneous rendering of the different phases of a movement, and the fragmentation of forms.
Schmalzigaug got his immediate inspiration for this dynamic composition in the spring of 1914 in Rome. In April and May he was there to take part in the Esposizione libera futurista internazionale in the Galleria Sprovieri, where he met the renowned painter Giacomo Balla and for two months visited his studio in the city. While he was there he admired Balla’s Abstract SPEEDS, which was inspired by the reflections of passing cars in the shop windows of the Via Nazionale. The flashing repetitions and contrasts of the reflections made the direction and forms of the cars almost unrecognisable.
So in contrast to other Futurists (and Cubists) like Umberto Boccioni,
Schmalzigaug and Balla did not so much depict the distortion of three-dimensional volumes but the dynamics of immaterial movements. Balla spoke of ‘idea forms’. What is left on the canvas are abstract whirls of lines and forms rendered in chromatic effects. Balla and Schmalzigaug linked such experiments with abstract art to theosophical insights that were popular in Futurist circles. Balla, for example, studied Carlo Ballatore’s theories about a fourth dimension in order to understand the structures of the cosmos, with light as the most intangible source of observation. Schmalzigaug, urged on by the multidisciplinary artist Luigi Russolo, pondered over associations between sounds and colours and the emotional experiences to which they gave rise.
Schmalzigaug did not date the painting. In view of the unmistakable affinity with Balla’s work, it is more than likely that it was made between April and December 1914, when Schmalzigaug hastily left his Venice studio. The war prevented him from taking his paintings with him to his refuge in The Hague. This work was not in the Tentoonstelling van Belgische Kunst/Exhibition of Belgian art in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 16 December 1916 to 16 January 1917, which seems to confirm that it remained in Italy. It was first exhibited in 1923 at Schmalzigaug’s retrospective in the salon of Kunst van Heden. After the war Schmalzigaug’s brother Walter cleared out the Venice studio and repatriated the artworks that had been left there.
References
Copyright and legal
This image may be downloaded for free. For professional use or more information, please fill out the contact form. Read more here.
Download
TIF
