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Library Journal Review

Umberto Boccioni, a leader of the Futurist movement, is here captured for the American reader. This handsome publication documents the first retrospective exhibition of Boccioni's art in this country. Complementing the colored plates and descriptive catalog are an insightful biography, the text of Boccioni's most important writings, and a scholarly discourse on Futurism. The spirit and energy of Boccioni's works come to life and Futurism's contribution to modern art is reaffirmed. This book is an excellent addition to the study of Italy's most influential art movement in the early 20th century. Highly recommended. Suzanne J. Peterson, SUNY at Cortland Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

A leading Futurist painter and sculptor, Umberto Boccioni (1887-1916) was attracted to subjects like speed, violence and automobile travel long before the movement's birth. This superbly illustrated catalogue of a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City traces his development through early portraits of great sensitivity and depth, luminous landscapes, to the oils, graphics and bronzes that seem to strip motion down into its dynamic constituent parts. Boccioni's meteoric rise ended abruptly in 1916 when he died in a fall from a horse, a trajectory that parallels the Futurists' history. He concocted diverse theories, including ``physical transcendentalism,'' or moving beyond the palpable properties of things, a concept which seems to illuminate his most kinetic and mysterious works. This album includes an essay by Coen, a Rome-based scholar; it also reprints Futurist manifestoes and excerpts from Boccioni's diary. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

For a long time Umberto Boccioni was underestimated in 20th-century art, especially in comparison with his contemporaries Picasso and Braque. The number of works produced by Boccioni is small in comparison with several of his contemporaries, as he died in WW I at the age of 34. However, his contribution to the transformation of 20th-century sensibility is most significant in that his ability to encompass painting, sculpture, architecture, and art theory remains unrivaled. He was also able to articulate the essence of Italian Futurism in art and theory, and several of Boccioni's works--such as "The City Rises," "States of Mind," "Development of a Bottle in Space," and "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space"--have become icons in early 20th-century art. There are earlier books about Boccioni, among them those by Carlo Carra (1916), M. Valsecchi (1950), Argan and Calvesi (1953), De Grada (1962), and G. Ballo (1964); the most complete documentation of Boccioni's work (in Italian) is Calvesi's and E. Coen's Boccioni: L'opera completa (1983). Coen's volume, developed as the catalog for a 1988/89 Boccioni exhibition, is the first major opportunity to study the work and theory of Boccioni in the US, and it transcends the previous knowledge of Boccioni in many ways. It brings forth new information about his life and family, a critical assessment of his works between 1902 and 1916; a full documentation of his paintings, sculptures, drawings, etchings, and cartoons; little-known portrait photos; and the publication of his many writings, some of them for the first time in English translation. This book ranks among the most important art publications in recent years as it provides a long-overdue opportunity to integrate one of the most crucial artists of the early 20th-century into the complex mainstream of the art of our century. -U. Kultermann, Washington University