Speeding Automobile, 1913

In 1913, Giacomo Balla created an important series of works based on a new analysis of dynamism. In them, he sought to suggest the vortex of energy generated by swiftly moving machines, but removed almost all visual references to the vehicles themselves, thereby developing one of the earliest abstract interpretations of this canonical Futurist theme. Such imagery also signalled a move away from the sequential – or ‘cinematographic’ – approach to the study of motion that the artist had explored in works such as The Hand of the Violinist.