Umberto Boccioni: Recreating the Lost Sculptures

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art

25 September - 22 December

The destruction, in 1927, of a number of plaster and mixed-media sculptures by the Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was a tragic loss for avant-garde art. Of the many ground-breaking sculptures he created between c.1913 and 1915, only a handful remain in existence today. Now, using a combination of vintage photographic material and cutting-edge 3D printing techniques, digital artists Matt Smith and Anders Rådén have recreated four of Boccioni’s destroyed works: a volumetric study of a human face titled Empty and Full Abstracts of a Head, and three of the artist’s iconic striding figures. This ground-breaking display enables modern audiences to ‘see’ these lost masterpieces for the very first time.

Special Display
Achille Perilli: Irrational Geometries
Until 10 November 2019

Achille Perilli (b.1927) first rose to prominence as a member of Rome’s Forma 1 group, which was active from 1947 to 1951. Its artists were the first in post-war Italy to take an interest in abstraction, opposing their work to the realist and symbolist art that they rejected as decadent. This small selection of paintings focuses on the artist’s later works, dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, depicting angular and decentralized structures.