Sviluppo di una bottiglia nello spazio

Perhaps rethimking the pictorial insight of the plate and the pitcher in the foreground of the painting "Visioni Simultanee" od 1911 in a three-dimensional key (Wuppertal, Von der Heydt Museum), Umberto Boccioni developed a spiral composition which, from an irregular but solid base, rises vertically to form a balanced set of solids and voids, which are opposed on oblique planes. With "Sviluppo di una bottiglia nello spazio", the artist seemed almost willing to challenge the Cubists on their most congenial field of still-lide and to demonstrate thet also to a bottle, so frequently used in their works, could be given a strong dynamic sense. In this sense it appears significant that the artist, just before realising this sculpture, decided to copy from memory the bottle painted in the bottom left of "Ritratto di D.-H. Kahnweiler" by Pablo Picasso in his drawing "Studio di bottiglia e casamenti (tavola+bottiglia+caseggiato)" od 1912, enlivening it with various circular shapes. After having been exhibited in Paris (June-July 1913), Rome (December 1913), Florence (March-April 1914), London (April 1914), San Francisco (summer 1915) and twice in Milan (December 1916 and March 1924), the plaster was demolished in 1927 by the artist Piero da Verona, at whose studio Boccioni's sculptures were deposited since the Milanese exhibition of 1916. The fragments, immediately recuperated by young Marco Bisi, were recomposed and the work was given to futurist painter Fedele Azari who decided to make at least two copies. It is probable that the original passed throught the collection of Filippo Marinetti, who ordered a bronze cast to be produced (1931) which would be purchased by the Museum od Modern Art of New York in 1948, before arriving to the Museu de Arte of Sao Paulo in Brazil in 1952. Besided the subsequent castings of 1949, made by Giovanni and Angelo Nicci, relocated to Zurich (Kunsthaus) and New York (Lydia Winston Malbin collection), it is important to mention that the bronze "Sviluppo di una bottiglia nello spazio" of the Milanese Civiche Raccolte, was realised in 1935 by the Foundry Battaglia-Pogliani-Frigerio and Vecchi of Milan, according to the plaster model donated by Ausonio Canavese in the end of 1934, originally from Azari. [Massimo De Sabbata]