Umberto Boccioni was an Italian painter and sculptor who played a significant role in the Futurism movement. His painting, “Interior With Two Female Figures,” created in 1915, is a stunning example of his distinctive style. The painting depicts fractured buildings and an array of girders, bricks, and figures thrusting upward. In the center of the painting, we see two female figures: one seated and one standing – leaning precariously over what seems to be a dizzying view.
Boccioni’s ardent interventionist spirit led him to volunteer for service in World War I in 1915; he died just a year later at the age of thirty-three. After his death, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space,” became one of the most iconic sculptures of the twentieth century.
“Interior With Two Female Figures” shows how Boccioni captured movement not with particular attention to physical characteristics but through abstract form. The kaleidoscopic array is an amalgamation of forms that come together to represent femininity through abstraction; this approach is quintessentially Futurist.