(Turin 1871–1958 Rome)
Valori plastici, c. 1929, signed Futur Balla, signed on the reverse Valori Plastici (n.21) G. Balla, tempera on canvas, 77 x 77 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Archivio Elena Gigli, Rome, n. 670, Rome, 9 July 2016.

A photograph of this work is in the Archivio Bio-Iconografico of Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome.

Provenance:
Atelier Balla, Rome, listed in the family notebook under the number 309 (original label on the reverse)
acquired from the daughters of the Artist in 1972 by the present owner, thence by heirs
Private Collection, Italy

Comparative literature:
Giovanni Lista, Balla, Fonte d’Abisso (ed.), Modena, 1982, a tempera no. 776 (ill.) and a collage no. 671 (ill.)

Note:
The subject of this work, titled “Valori Plastici” was developed through many other works as: three different collages (family notebook nn. 135 A and 632 and the circular one no. 1349); one model for a lampshade (Biagiotti-Cigna Collection, Rome, inv. BG 483); another tempera, coming from the artist’s atelier (family notebook no. 346) and the “lunar” one in the Pieroni Collection, Pescara (family book no. 457); a large paint ever found (family notebook no. 820); two studies for a carpet decoration (family notebook nn. 900 and 1122) and also an embroidered panel made by the daughter of the artist, Luce Balla.

„Balla, the greatest painter of our day, resembles perhaps a lightning-filled stormcloud, or, better still, a tornado assailing the wrecks“
F.T. Marinetti, from the preface of the catalogue Mostra del Pittore Balla, Galleria del Dipinto,Rome, june/july 1930

In the manifesto ‘The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’ (which Balla co-authored with Fortunato Depero in 1915), the revolutionary and total function of art in redefining the known universe, from landscape to domestic objects, is immediately evident.

Balla’s house was a forge of ideas in which the artist, part artisan and part wizard, invents and brings to life highly colourful (“coloratissimi”), projects and objects , and whose ingenious manufacturing criteria often foreshadow solutions which would later be adopted in modern design.

In 1926 the artist was forced to abandon his home in via Paisiello with great reluctance. Via Paisiello was a green oasis between Villa Borghese and the countryside, on the border between the city and the Ager Romanus, an agricultural area destined to be transformed by intensive development into the present-day district of Parioli in central Rome.

The advancing city swallowed the fields and trees which served as an inspiration for Balla, who had always had a profound relationship with nature in all its forms.
But it was time to leave the past behind, and the Balla family were able to secure a modest apartment in the Delle Vittorie district in Rome, thanks to the intervention of Balla’s friend Michele Biancale. It is 1929, and Balla, driven by an overwhelming desire to “render the useful beautiful”, threw himself into the total transformation of his new home, which he reconstructed in a futurist style.
Thus, while in Germany dwelling models were being studied through a negative lens, a modest apartment in Rome saw the explosion of joyful, unconstrained innovation from a genius who transformed everything. Furniture, objects and walls were totally transformed, no corner was left untouched. The long corridor which led from the entrance hall to the interior of the house was lined with exposed water pipes. Balla decided to cover them, transforming the space into a gallery, but also, and primarily, in an opportunity to contemplate his Futurist work.
Twenty-two rigorously square (77 x 77cm) canvases revisit, in an historical manner, the themes developed by the artist from the 1910s on:
from the study of light in Düsseldorf (Compenetrazione iridescente), to the study of space (Linee spaziali);
from the lines of velocity combined with other factors (Velocità + forme rumore) to Ritmo compenetrato; from the studies of the sky (Dinamismo spaziale) the sea (Linee forza di mare), the light (Ricerca luce ideale), and the word (Buon appetito and Motivo con la parola Balla), to Art Deco (Balfiore), and the idealistic art of the 1920s (Istante, Dramma di paesaggio, Simpatia di contrasti).

Almost in opposition to the Futurist proclamation to destroy museums, which were viewed as cemeteries of art, Balla’s home became a house-museum. “Valori plastici” is one of the best innovations from among the studies of movement and light which line the corridor / gallery of the Balla house; the marble clouds which loom on the horizon move from the past to the skyline of the new city which is rising. The future will be a flash of light.
The debt which modern art owes to the genius of Balla is incalculable.

In the years following his death, many young artists of the new avant-garde were to visit his studio: the Forma 1 group, the young members of the Roman Pop Art movement, and of the Arte Povera movement.
The “Arti Visive” magazine, founded in 1952 by Ettore Colla, dedicated its first major retrospective to Balla. Piero Dorazio and Giulio Turcato studied Balla’s Futurist paintings, and developed a new emotional dimension of lines and colour from the triangles in Compenetrazioni iridescenti. Mario Schifano repeatedly paid tribute to Futurism and used industrial enamel after the example of Balla. The nets of tulle that Balla applied on top of the paint in various paintings (the 1933 portrait of Primo Carnera campione del Mondo is perhaps the most famous of these) are aimed at modernity transforming the painted image into a printed newsreel image, in tribute to, and prophetically evoke the serial renderings of printed images that would be adopted
by the American artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.