Dinamismo de um Jogador de Futebol

By 1913 Umberto Boccioni and the Italian Futurists had been loudly demanding that art keep up with the age of the motor car and the crowd, and this is Boccioni pushing paint as far toward pure motion as he could. The subject is a footballer in mid-action, though you have to hunt for him. A calf sits near the centre and the rest of the body scatters into shards of colour and light, following his own rule that movement and light break down the solidness of things. He painted it the year before the First World War, into which Italy soon threw itself. Boccioni volunteered, and in 1916 he was killed in a fall from a horse during military training, only 33. This was among the last and most abstract things he made.