Feu d'artifice
(Firework), 1917

Born in Turin in 1871, Giacomo Balla moved to Rome when he was still young and died there in 1958. He joined the Futurist movement in 1910, when he signed both the "Manifesto of Futurist Painters" and the "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting."

Balla's first works are characteristic of the Divisionism of Pelliza da Volpedo and Giovanni Segantini as well as French Post-Impressionism, an interest he delved into during a stay in Paris in 1900.

In 1912 Balla's art took on decisively futuristic characteristics with his celebrated painting Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, an early affirmation of his way of objectively analyzing details, something that he had surely carried over from his strong interest in photography