The sparkle and speed of mechanical civilization

Umberto BOCCIONI, The Forces of a Street, 1911

This masterful painting symbolizes Futurism, a movement born in Italy in the early 1910s. The blue and purple areas of the painting are broken down into geometric planes of color, and strong artificial light shines from the sky. A tram with its headlights on is depicted three times, as if in fast-forward motion, thus expressing the dynamism of a fast-paced city. The people and horse-drawn carriages passing by on the street appear like helpless shadows, as if worshiping the arrival of machine civilization at the dawn of the twentieth century.