“The painting Agave devant la mer, la mer d’Anzio is a key work in Giacomo Balla’s artistic itinerary. It is also one of the most remarkable creations in the aftermath of Neo-Impressionism.”

Giacomo Balla's painting Agave sur la mer, la mer d’Anzio was painted in 1908 from life on the terrace of the Villa Selle in Anzio. A large-scale canvas about 1.5 meters long, it represents the view before the artist of a agave rosette in the foreground and the sea extending behind to the cloudy horizon surmounted by a band of sky. Simple and apparently innocuous, this painting is in reality a major work of Giacomo Balla, painted at a pivotal period of his development at the moment when he leaves insistent figuration and the symbolism of his beginnings (Lemendiant, 1902 La folle, 1905) to turn to the most modern art of his time represented by Paul Signac's Divisionism. He adopts simple subjects devoid of anecdote pointillism. Here the points are wide, juxtaposed on coloured backgrounds with which they contrast. The plant’s motif represented in daylight against the light source emanating from the sea is the pretext to develop forms in volutes which unfold by opening symmetrically. The network of curves created by the leaves with serrated, pointed edges contrasts with the horizontality of the sea ruffled by waves parallel to the plane of the painting. The subject and composition are remarkably avant-garde. The technique, which the remarkable state of conservation of the work gives all the flavour, is itself totally modern and enabled Balla to paint Lampe à arc the following year and in 1912 Fillettecourant sur un balcon, one of the Futurist masterpieces.

As with many artists such as Matisse, Derain, Delaunay, Mondrian and among the Futurists Boccioni and Severini, Giacomo Balla's adoption of pointillism opened new paths and accelerated its development, and this work is an important step in the process. As for the scrolls of the agaves in croissants and serrated edges, they later became stylized in the artist's abstract paintings such as Pavoisement + foule from 1915 and Coup de fusil le dimanche from 1918. The painting Agave devant la mer, la mer d’Anzio is a key work in Giacomo Balla’s artistic itinerary. It is also one of the most remarkable creations in the aftermath of Neo-Impressionism.

Public Exhibitions

Artcurial France in Paris: 24, 25, 26 & 27 Movember 2017

Auction in Paris: 27 November 2017, 8pm & 28 November 2017, 2:30pm. View Catalogue

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Carine Decroi
cdecroi@artcurial.com