(Turin 1871–1958 Rome)
Ispirazione del Poeta, c. 1925, signed Balla, oil on wooden panel, 15 x 10 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Elena Gigli, archive no. 531

Provenance:
Gift from Giacomo Balla to his friend,
the artist Sante Monachesi, in 1926
Private Collection, Italy
Dorotheum, Modern Art, 28 November 2012, lot 1245
acquired from the above by the present owner –
European Private Collection

The present work represents a study for the central figure of the painting illustrated above. Balla gave it to his friend, the painter Sante Monachesi, in 1926. “Who could still believe in the opacity of the body, while our sharpened and augmented sensibility makes us feel the dark manifestations of medial phenomena?” This is how Balla expressed himself in 1910 when signing the Manifesto of Futurist painting. During the following years, Balla became increasingly interested in theosophical thinking and was strongly attracted by psychological phenomena. Between 1916 and 1917 the pictorial cycle, Trasformazione Forme Spiriti, took shape, and in 1925 the artist painted the large-format composition, Ispirazione del Poeta. (Compare: M. Drudi Gambillo/T. Fiori, Archivi del Futurismo, Rome 1962, no. 382; G. Lista, Balla, Modena 1982, no. 905).