Giacomo Balla: Casa Balla: From the House to the Universe and Back Again

A tour through the dazzling Futurist Gesamtkunstwerk that was Giacomo Balla's home and creative laboratory

Recently opened to the public for the first time, the home of the Futurist artist Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) is depicted and inventoried in this extraordinary book. The apartment in Rome in which Balla lived with his family for over 30 years was covered with lively murals, painted furniture, decorated utensils and clothes, as well as preparatory drawings, stage designs, toys and other works by the artist, together with paintings by his two daughters Luce and Elica. The numerous paintings by Balla kept in the apartment range from his early figurative period to the Futurist aesthetics of the 1910s and ’20s and a return to representation in the latter part of his life. Together they create a kaleidoscopic example of total design, reflecting the indissoluble link between art and life that lay at the root of Futurist thinking.