Sculpture
By 1912, having been so impressed by the works of Medardo Rosso that he had seen in Paris, Boccioni began concentrating on sculpture and, as he put it, became "obsessed with sculpture". On 11 April 1912 he issued his hastily-written, yet prophetic, document Futurist Manifesto of Sculpture in which he presented new techniques for rendering Futurist sculpture; yet at the same time prophetically envisaging that only artists of the future might be able to realise some of the more technologically visionary Futurist ideas. In order to achieve simultaneity in sculpture, he described how the subject must be presented at different points in time as well as from multiple viewpoints. For the next two years Boccioni attempted, through sculpture, to combine subjects with their surrounding space.
Sculpture
Merging soft, fleshy forms with hard geometrical
shapes, and beginning to achieve the compenetration of planes he described
in his manifesto, Boccioni's bold portrait of his mother Antigrazioso (Anti-Graceful)
of 1912 was probably one of his earliest sculptures and combines freely moving
surface planes over a heavy sculptural mass.
Between 1912 and 1914 Boccioni contributed a series of articles to the Futurist
journal Lacerba. One of the more rational theorists of the group, his book
Pittura scultura futuriste - dinamismo plastico (Futurist Painting and Sculpture
- Plastic Dynamism) of 1914 was a benchmark within the movement.