Boccioni, Umberto (1882-1916)
I lastricatori di strade (The Street Pavers)
1914
Oil on canvas, 100 × 100 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Boccioni was a member of the Futurists, a group of Italian artists who announced their existence in 1909 with a manifesto published on the front page of the French paper Le Figaro. They called for the abandonment of the past in favor of modern life and aimed to represent the metropolis in “multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution.” Canvases such as The Street Pavers offered Boccioni the opportunity to radically transform a scene of backbreaking work into a celebration of the powerful form of the modern laborer. (MET)