(Innsbruck 1894–1965 Rome)
Stazione+Treno+Luci, 1918, signed and dated R. M. Baldessari 1918, oil on cardboard, 54.4 x 68.3 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
The work is registered in the Archivio Unico per il catalogo delle opere futuriste di Roberto Marcello Baldessari under the number B18–40, Rovereto 10/10/2010

Provenance:
Galleria Schettini, Milan, archive no. 402 (label on the reverse)
Galleria Arte Centro Milan (label on the reverse)
Private Collection, Italy

The present painting is one of the studies of speed which, from 1916 on, Baldessari executed in pastels and, rarely, in oil paint. The „myth of the machine“, present in the work of many other Futurist artists, is, in Baldessari’s work, especially focused on the image of a moving train, an image which the artist revisits in the ten or so works known to date. The „machine-train“ is analysed, sometimes with an emphasis on the mechanical and dynamic aspects (speed, force, the „new“ which advances), sometimes with an emphasis on the social aspects (an analysis of the waiting crowd along the platforms of a station), or, more emotively, as in the case of the painting „La Tradotta“, 1916. Here, the Italian flags waved by the soldiers heading to the front underline the interventionist spirit typical of Futurism. The artist depicted the same train in a very different light in 1918, as it transports the wounded back from the frontlines after their defeat.