Speeding Automobile

Giacomo Balla · 1912

This is Speeding Automobile, painted on wood by Giacomo Balla in nineteen twelve. Balla was preoccupied with how to make speed itself visible. The car dissolves into the wedges and arcs of its own motion, so what you see is less a vehicle than the disturbance it leaves in the air.

Medium Oil on wood · Dimensions 21 7/8 x 27 1/8" (55.6 x 68.9 cm) · Credit Purchase

Hanging beside it in Gallery 503: Rayonist Composition: Domination of Red, Young Man in a Gray Sweater (Jacques Lipchitz)

Works like this one elsewhere in the museum: Dynamism of a Soccer Player, Composition, Jar, Bottle and Glass, Painterly Architectonic, Still Life with Flowers, Composition

More by Giacomo Balla here: Swifts: Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequences