States of Mind: The Farewells is a series of three paintings by Umberto Boccioni that were created in 1911. The paintings aim to capture the psychological dimension of modern life’s transitory nature by depicting the chaos and drama of movement in a railway station setting. The focus of the paintings is on the movement itself, highlighting modern machines such as the locomotive, airplane, and automobile that redefined the concept of speed.
Boccioni, the leading artist of Italian Futurism movement, utilized color and dynamism to showcase the energy and excitement of modern life. The Farewells specifically depicts the fusion of people being swept away in waves as the train’s steam bellows into the sky. The allegory presented is of characters and emotions depicting people saying farewell.
The series exists in four complete iterations, each comprised of three images. The first set of oil paintings were completed during the late summer of 1911 and are in the Divisionist style. They are currently in the collection of the Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan. The States of Mind series has long been recognized as the pinnacle of the Futurist style in painting.