Street Light _{(Giacomo Balla, Futurism)}

Painted around the time of the organization of the Futurist artists, Street Light may be seen as a response to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, in which Marinetti writes, "three hundred electric moons wiped out with their dazzling rays of plaster the ancient green queen of love." Balla's this painting is an analytical study of the patterns and colors of a beam of light; it typifies his exploration of light, atmosphere, and motion as a member of the Italian Divisionism movement, in which he was inspired by the Neo-impressionism of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Bella stated of his painting, decades later, that it "demonstrated how romantic moonlight had been surpassed by the light of the modern electric street light. This was the end of Romanticism in art. From my picture came the phrase (beloved by the Futurists): 'We shall kill the light of the moon'."

Balla's Other Works