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Lot Essay
Professor Maurizio Faggiolo del'Arco will include this work in the forthcoming Catalogo Generale Raggionato dell'Opera di Giacomo Balla, under number 21.
It was in the first Futurist Manifesto of the 20th February 1909 that Marinetti wrote: "We declare that the world's splendor has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing motor car, its frame adorned with great pipes, like snakes with explosive breath...a roaring motor car, which seems to run on shrapnel, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace..."
This famous comparison between a roaring motor car of modernity and the ancient classical statue "The Victory of Samothrace" forms the essence of Futurist philosophy. For the Futurists, motion, and more particularly, speed, as manifested in spectacular new machines that ranged from locomotives to aeroplanes, was not only the most dynamic, but also the ultimate force at work in the universe. Nothing symbolised man's unique ability to interact with this dynamic force more than the automobile.
Executed circa 1914, Vortice + spazio belongs to a number of analytical studies of "speed" as a vital and abstract force that Balla made as a key part of his studies on the dynamics of what he considered to be the three most fundamental forces of the cosmos:
light, speed and material.
It was in the first Futurist Manifesto of the 20th February 1909 that Marinetti wrote: "We declare that the world's splendor has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing motor car, its frame adorned with great pipes, like snakes with explosive breath...a roaring motor car, which seems to run on shrapnel, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace..."
This famous comparison between a roaring motor car of modernity and the ancient classical statue "The Victory of Samothrace" forms the essence of Futurist philosophy. For the Futurists, motion, and more particularly, speed, as manifested in spectacular new machines that ranged from locomotives to aeroplanes, was not only the most dynamic, but also the ultimate force at work in the universe. Nothing symbolised man's unique ability to interact with this dynamic force more than the automobile.
Executed circa 1914, Vortice + spazio belongs to a number of analytical studies of "speed" as a vital and abstract force that Balla made as a key part of his studies on the dynamics of what he considered to be the three most fundamental forces of the cosmos:
light, speed and material.