(Turin 1871–1958 Rome)
Studio per mosaico (con motivo compenetrato), c. 1929, signed Balla, tempera and gold on cardboard (executed on the reverse of a photograph), 16 x 23.2 cm, framed, (MCC)

Photo certificate:
Archivio Elena Gigli, Rome, 14 March 2016, archive no. 2016-642

Provenance:
Atelier Balla, Rome
Prof. G. Corsi Collection, Rome
Private Collection, Italy

In 1912, when he was a guest of the Lowensteins in Düsseldorf in order to decorate their house near the Rhine, Giacomo Balla developed the subject of what would later be called Compenetrazioni iridescenti (Iridescent interpenetrations). The starting point are his iris studies. Immense expanses of plants and meadows interpose themselves in the long, vast planes; as a result of the quality of light, everything becomes more mysterious and veiled, and matter is less real (...). Through a pictorial path of analysis and synthesis, in which he examined the subject of interpenetrations, Balla created the present project for a mosaic by developing the blue and yellow (or pink and blue) lines in a number of studies, until he reached the current one, where the scheme of yellow triangles and blue parallelepipeds is framed within a golden rectangle, in a way that is similar to the small mosaic created in 1929 and displayed in Edinburgh by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco (….). The present project appears to be the final one, as the similarity of colours of both the internal geometrical structure and the frame suggest. The historical photograph of the project for a mosaic analysed above is preserved at the Bio-Iconographic Archive of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

From the critical text by Elena Gigli, Rome, 14 March 2016

Photo certificate:
Archivio Elena Gigli, Rome, 14 March 2016, archive no. 2016-642

Provenance:
Atelier Balla, Rome, Prof. G. Corsi Collection, Rome
Private Collection, Italy

In 1912, when he was a guest of the Lowensteins in Düsseldorf in order to decorate their house near the Rhine, Giacomo Balla developed the subject of what would later be called Compenetrazioni iridescenti (Iridescent interpenetrations). The starting point are his iris studies. Immense expanses of plants and meadows interpose themselves in the long, vast planes; as a result of the quality of light, everything becomes more mysterious and veiled, and matter is less real (...). Through a pictorial path of analysis and synthesis, in which he examined the subject of interpenetrations, Balla created the present project for a mosaic by developing the blue and yellow (or pink and blue) lines in a number of studies, until he reached the current one, where the scheme of yellow triangles and blue parallelepipeds is framed within a golden rectangle, in a way that is similar to the small mosaic created in 1929 and displayed in Edinburgh by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco (….). The present project appears to be the final one, as the similarity of colours of both the internal geometrical structure and the frame suggest. The historical photograph of the project for a mosaic analysed above is preserved at the Bio-Iconographic Archive of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

From the critical text by Elena Gigli, Rome, 14 March 2016