To mark the centenary of the death of Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), the city of Milan is celebrating this great artist with a major exhibition, resulting from research conducted by the city museums and promoted by the Soprintendenza of Castello Sforzesco and the Royal Palace.
The catalogue of the exhibition contains more than 300 works, including drawings, paintings, sculpture, engravings, period photographs, books, magazines and documents from important museums and private collections worldwide. Having been conceived with a completely new critical slant, this book offers a specialists and the public at large a layout geared to highlighting the visual sources that contributed to the artistic evolution and the gradual development of Umberto Boccioni’s style. This catalogue with a chronological layout is based on an exceptional corpus of 61 drawings by Boccioni from the Castello Sforzesco and on hitherto unpublished writings recently discovered in the Civic Library in Verona, which, together with articles from the Press, various notes and photographs, form a highly original document created by Boccioni as he was reaching maturity: an unusual album of models which the artist used to study and learn, but also a sort of visual diary providing a fluid, dynamic intersection with his intimate memories, and a reconnaissance of both earlier artistic forms and contemporary art. In other words, a kind of “atlas of memory”.