GIACOMO BALLA (Turin, 1871 - Rome, 1958)
Luce Balla portrait in red, 1925
Oil on board, 48 x 74,5 cm
Signed lower right: Balla
Good conditions, framed without glass; restorated to close little woodworm holes

Expertise and certificate of authenticity by Doc. Elena Gigli on photograph:”One of the main sources of Giacomo Balla's pictorial production is the female portrait. In the 1910s we find the beautiful Elisa, fiancée until 1904, then bride and mother, portrayed in large pastels with veils or standing leaning against the door in joyful expectation. On 13 December 1904, the eldest daughter Lucia was born in the convent house in Via Paisiello: in the years of Futurism, her name would become Luce. On 30 October 1914, Elica was born at the Policlinico in Rome: in his name, the movement painter fixed the dynamic idea of speed and the warlike idea of flight. Francesco Sapori dedicates an entire article to Balla as a portrait painter, focusing on the portraits he painted of his daughters: "In the portraits his noble fever is quenched, because he not only understood how to recognise the main characteristics of the chosen figures, but instead of posing the subjects, he captures and represents them in their natural atmosphere, amidst the things they love. These details, chosen and caressed, do not remain as accessories in the painting, but through reflections, transparencies, refractions and combinations of light, take on the force of dogmatic, dominant pictorial motifs. In his studio in Rome, Giacomo Balla waits to paint with the faith of a young man and the awareness of a patriarch” (Un grande pittore: Giacomo Balla ritrattista, in “Il Resto del Carlino”, Bologna 1 marzo 1938)

PROVENANCE: Private collection, Rome