Living in art: Casa Balla

We have time until November 21st to immerse ourselves in art and browse the house of Giacomo Balla, one of the most famous exponents of the Futurist movement who, especially after the death of Umberto Boccioni, became the absolute protagonist of it, so that from 1916 he began to sign his works under the pseudonym of FuturBalla. He called his daughters Luce and Elica, which names would be more suitable for the offspring of a man as enlightened, modern and open to the future as Balla was? Yet, anachronistically, the two girls, and future artists, lived almost confined within the Balla art house in via Oslavia in Rome where they moved in 1929. Unfortunately, over the years with the enormous popularity, even political, reached by Futurism, the art and ideals that had initially animated it, faded into the most sinister economic interest, as often happens. So Balla returns to figurative art not before, however, having officially communicated the reasons that led him to this choice: "I had dedicated all my energies to renewing research with sincere faith, but at a certain point I found myself together with individuals opportunists and careerists with more business than artistic tendencies; and in the conviction that pure art is in absolute realism, without which one falls into ornamental decorative forms, so I took up my old art again: interpretation of naked and healthy reality. "

Since June, for the first time, thanks to the initiative of the Maxxi museum in Rome and the project curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Domitilla Dardi, Casa Balla has been open to the public and it is like entering a world apart, almost magical. Waking up, living, sleeping and breathing immersed, literally, in a real work of art: it is no coincidence that both of Balla's daughters became well-known artists. Giacomo Balla lived in his "artwork" in Via Oslavia from 1929 until his death.