Campo con alberi

When Umberto Boccioni executed Campo con alberi, in 1908, he had recently moved to Milan, where the electricity and the frenzy of life in the modern metropolis immediately had a strong impact on his unique creative vision. While still embracing the Divisionist technique he had learned from Balla in Rome, Boccioni started to move away from the dense layers of overlapping brushstrokes that had defined this style, and to push the boundaries of his painterly method in new directions, by experimenting with fracture and the luminosity of colour, as evidenced in the present lot.
In 1906 Boccioni had travelled to Paris where he became acquainted with works of Impressionist artists such as Seurat, Signac and Pissarro. While he certainly shared the same passion for nature and painting en plein air, it is thought that pure Impressionism had left him rather dissatisfied. It is from artists such as Cézanne and Van Gogh that Boccioni more likely drew inspiration while living in Paris (M. Calvesi, Boccioni prefuturista, Milan, 1983, p. 23). This is evident in the present lot, where loose brushstrokes create spontaneous overlapping patterns in which the strokes of pigment appear to dance across the canvas, criss-crossing in a multitude of different directions; Campo con alberi thus becomes perfect synthesis of Boccioni’s most iconic styles.
A year after executing the present work, Boccioni met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, poet, editor and founder of the Futurist movement. Marinetti’s bold, rebellious attitude appealed to Boccioni’s own search for a new, modern way of painting, and he threw himself headlong into the movement, becoming one of its principal figures.