Dose of Art #155: Umberto Boccioni – Dinamismo di un ciclista / Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913)

“We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.”

This is the last of the eleven points of the Futuristic Manifesto, that was published in the Gazzetta dell’Emilia in 1909. It was both an artistic and social movement that was largely restricted to at it inspired painters like Boccioni to paint something like Dynamism of a Cyclist. And if you take a good look you will have to agree that it exemplifies all the Futurists stood for (but the cyclist itself can be hard to see).