Featuring Umberto Boccioni

This exhibition of 23 Futurist works on loan from the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, linked the first and second waves of Futurism through the works of Giacomo Balla (1871-1958). Balla was already well established as an artist and teacher before coming under the influence of Futurism in 1910. His extraordinary versatility and creativity had a profound influence on his contemporaries and the eight canvases on show were from his most vibrant Futurist period.

Abstraction first emerged in Italian art around 1910, when painters belonging to the Futurist school began developing their studies of light and motion in bold new directions, depicting ‘the essential force lines of speed’ as brightly-coloured arcs and thrusting, jagged forms.

Comprising over 120 works by many of the most prominent Italian artists of the Modernist era, the Estorick Collection opened to the public in January 1998. Described by Sir Nicholas Serota as 'one of the finest collections of early 20th century Italian art anywhere in the world', it was formed in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Eric Estorick (1913-93), an American art-dealer, writer and political scientist, and is the only collection in the United Kingdom dedicated to this turbulent and fascinating period of Italian art.

Although the problem of depicting movement in painting and sculpture had concerned artists for many centuries, the birth of the Futurist movement in 1909 signalled a renewed interest in the subject. Taking as its starting point the Estorick's own collection of Futurist masterpieces, On the Move drew on a wide range of material in many different media to provide an in-depth examination of this complex and fascinating theme.

This fascinating exhibition presented the findings of a group of specialist art historians, restorers and scientists who examined key works from the Estorick’s permanent collection. Using the most up-to-date methods employed in the analysis of artworks, they shed new light on the different techniques used by a number of painters, and in some cases even revealed the presence of previously unknown images beneath, or on the back of, the Collection’s masterpieces.

The Estorick opened its 20th anniversary year with a major exhibition of works from one of the world’s most important collections of modern Italian art, housed at Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera.

As part of the celebrations for the Estorick Collection's 20th anniversary, we were delighted to feature a special display which included two masterpieces on loan from the collection of major Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo; this selection of works by Boccioni explored the evolution of his art over the course of his career.

Milan’s Ramo Collection comprises nearly 600 works on paper by artists belonging to some of the most important movements and tendencies in twentieth-century Italian art. This exhibition – the first to present a selection of drawings from the Collection outside Italy – explored the discipline as more than just a ‘preparatory’ activity, considering it as an art form in its own right.

The destruction, in 1927, of a number of plaster sculptures by Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni represented a great loss for avant-garde art. Now, using a wealth of photographic source material and ground-breaking 3D printing techniques, artists Matt Smith and Anders Råden recreated three of the artist’s iconic striding figures. This exciting and innovative display enabled visitors to ‘see’ these lost masterpieces for the first time.

In autumn 2021, the Estorick’s entire collection of modern Italian art was on show throughout the museum’s six galleries in a new exhibition, Estorick Collection Uncut.