The Italian painter Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) was one of the founders of futurism, an Italian art movement.

Giacomo Balla was born on July 24, 1871, in Turin. He was already appreciated as an academic painter when he first encountered impressionist and divisionist painting during a visit to Paris at the turn of the century. The problems of light and color intrigued him. On his return to Rome he enthusiastically imparted his new-found postimpressionist theories to the painters Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni. The poet F. T. Marinetti converted Balla to futurism.

Futurism was a movement with a program of belligerent modernism, both in an ethical and esthetic sense. A determined acceptance of the age of the machine and an admiration of speed were its main points. As a style, futurism evolved from the revolutionary tenets of analytical cubism. It brought to modern art an emphasis on the visualization of the...