MAXXI is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Giacomo Balla’s birth
MAXXI is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Giacomo Balla’s (Turin 1871 – Rome 1958) birth with an incredible exhibit split between the museum and Balla’s own apartment in Via Oslavia. “Casa Balla: From the house to the universe and back” showcases the themes of the Futurist movement and how timely they still are today. The exhibit is an extraordinary project in collaboration with various institutions: MAXXI, the Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio, with the support of Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura.
The exhibit is a “total” project, highlighting the all-encompassing idea of art that Balla had. The apartment in the Della Vittoria/Prati district is open to the public for the first time and it represents a testament to the artist’s experimental universe. Each room is an experience in itself, adorned with the artworks of Balla and his daughters Luce and Elica, who were also painters. Different objects, picked and built by Balla, cohabit with hand-painted walls and doors, paintings and sculptures, constituting an experimental artistic project that involved Balla’s life at 360 degrees.
INSPIRATION
MAXXI Museum
The house expresses the artist’s full personality and is perhaps his truest masterpiece. Through the opening of the apartment, we can regain a part of our artistic DNA from the past century that changed the conception of art forevermore. The exhibit continues at MAXXI (in the museum’s Galleria 5), where contemporary Italian and international artists open our eyes to the legacy that Futurism left to current art.
Juxtapositions and intersections between different media, different languages, different techniques, a strong bond with everyday life and the constant challenge to the limits of traditional categories of expressions are the protagonists of the MAXXI exhibit, showcasing the impact that Giacomo Balla’s work still has on 21th century art. Invited to investigate Casa Balla are international artists and creatives – Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine, Carlo Benvenuto, Alex Cecchetti, Emiliano Maggi, Leonardo Sonnoli, Space Popular and Cassina with Patricia Urquiola – whose productions meet some important loans from Giacomo Balla inside the gallery space.
As is made perfectly clear by this calaidoscopic exhibit, Giacomo Balla imagined a modernity that feels very familiar to this day: the overcoming of barriers, contamination of genres, the identification of art and life.
Casa Balla is open between Thursday and Sundays until December 31, 2022; in order to guarantee social distancing, visits only last 45 minutes and no more than 10 people can visit at the same time, therefore booking is mandatory. Tickets can be bought along with the MAXXI exhibit or separately; the two visits can occur on different days. The museum exhibit follows MAXXI’s regular opening hours (closed on Mondays).
Casa Balla
Via Oslavia 39b, Roma
Open between Thursdays and Sundays till 31 December 2022
Reservation required
Exhibition “Casa Balla. Dalla casa all’universo e ritorno”
MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo
maxxi.art
06.320.19.54
info@fondazionemaxxi.it
Casa Balla + MAXXI Museum: € 22,00 | Reduced € 20,00
