Casa Futur/Balla

In Rome, Giacomo Balla’s extraordinary home has opened its doors to the public. This house sums up his entire pictorial universe, from the dynamism and the magic of light effects through the shapes and colours. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the fathers of Futurist painting, MAXXI (the National Museum of 21st Century Arts) is opening the doors of the extraordinary flat in Via Oslavia, where Balla lived from 1928 until his death.

1. Abstract; 2. Dynamic; 3. Extremely transparent; 4. Brightly coloured and luminous; 5. Autonomous, that is, resembling itself alone; 6. Transformable; 7. Dramatic; 8. Volatile; 9. Odorous; 10. Noisy; 11. Explosive. These are the fundamental points that Balla, together with Depero, summarised for the Manifesto of the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe. He wrote them down, explained them and emphasised them, and then interpreted them with the creation of his house. 

“We Futurists, Balla and Depero, wish to achieve a total fusion to reconstruct the universe and render it more joyful, that is to say undertake a complete re-creation”. Not just a house, then, but a laboratory of art and experimentation where everything had a precise, technical and extremely beautiful purpose. In the manifesto, the painter did not forget to mention materials that were fundamental to their goal, such as stained glass, metal wires, mirrors, mechanical and electronic devices, metal sheets and gaudy materials (colours). Plastic and pictorial complexes that build themselves and lend themselves to giving meaning and life to his dwelling.

Instead of “in the lower right corner”, the painter puts his signature on the door: “FuturBalla”. The work begins in the hallway, and then unfolds from the living room to the kitchen, to the rooms of his daughters – Luce and Elica, who are also painters – to the bathroom.  Colourful walls with square or round futuristic shapes, containing furniture, paintings, sculptures, clothes and accessories designed by the artist.

“In destroying the immobility of everything, Futurist painting is transported in the shocking chaos of universal dynamic action by painting not only the succession of movements in their displacement, with objective analysis, but immediately overcoming these difficulties, it has gone into the great quest and dominion of the state of mind with new abstract and equivalent forms”. 

The subjects of the canvases change and turn into three-dimensional forms that can be used by the painter and his family, leading them to live the “commandments” of the Futurist movement, of which Balla was one of the founding fathers. From the house emerges the eccentricity that has always characterised the painter’s style, as well as the overwhelming interest in progress of which Balla, and all the Futurists, were great supporters.
Everything tells of knowledge, ideas, fantasy. Everything highlights what the artist is thinking, articulating the evolution and dynamism to which he aspired. A time capsule that opens and offers itself, like his works of art, to the general public.