(Turin 1871–1958 Rome)
I tre alberi di Villa Borghese, c. 1904, signed, pencil and pastels on thick paper, 23 x 31 cm, framed

This work is registered in the Archivio Gigli under the no. 2006–265 and it is accompanied by a photo certificate issued by Elena Gigli

Provenance:
Giacomo Balla Collection, Rome
Riccardo Tessarolo Collection, Brescia (c. 1930)
Giuseppe Amedei Collection, Brescia (2006)
European Private Collection

Giacomo Balla lived his whole life in close contact with nature, which for him always represented a kind of gospel. In 1904 the Balla family moved to the Parioli district of Rome, which at the time was on the outskirts, to a former convent at the corner of via Parioli 6 (today called via Paisiello) and via Nicolò Porpora. From the long balcony that joined the rooms (which in 1912 was chosen as the setting for the film “Girl running on a balcony”), Balla observed the trees, colours and fountains of the Villa Borghese park. He notes in a biographical notebook: “I gain nourishment from the exceptional purity of nature”. And in another notebook he writes: “The complete painter who loves the eternal truth in the expression of nature, when he is pictorially influenced by it, the transmissive currents are innocently free from any school, method, rule, style etc. Rather, they have a virginal sincerity and arise only.