Futurism
Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) was a prominent Italian artist during the early 20th century. He was a promoter of Futurism, an art movement that promoted revolutionary ideas to break away from the perceived stagnant past. Futurist artists believed that Italy was in decline and shackled to its heritage. To them, museums and libraries were mausoleums. Balla and his Futurist colleagues stated that Italy’s art, society, and politics needed to embrace the speed and dynamism of modern life. Giacomo Balla’s Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash is a masterpiece of Futurism and expertly expresses its core values of motion and speed.
Composition
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash is an oil on canvas measuring 110 cm wide by 90 cm high (43 in. wide by 35 in. high). It features a female pedestrian walking a small dog. Many elements of the painting are blurred and repeated to imply the forward movement of the two figures. It has the appearance of multiple overlaid photographs that capture the multiple single frames of a continuous motion.
Dachshund
The star of the painting is undoubtedly the dachshund dominating the bottom half of the scene. Its little short legs blur in a frenzied whirlwind that mimics its owner’s footsteps. The paws of the dog are each repeated approximately eight to ten times in various positions of walking. The legs are ghostly silhouettes connected by blurred and dashed lines.
Like most dogs, this dachshund appears happy to be going on a walk. The dog’s tail resembles a bottle brush or a palm frond as it happily wags from side to side. There is something intrinsically charming about a pet dog wagging its tail on a walk. Maybe it is because it captures the unfiltered and childlike innocence of pure joy. Pet lovers enjoy seeing their pets happy, and Giacomo Balla has captured this dog’s joy with energetic enthusiasm. It is even captured in the small vibrations of the dog’s flapping ears. So cute!
Female Pedestrian
A female pedestrian dominates the upper half of the painting. She wears a long dark skirt and thick leather boots. Like her pet’s paws, the woman’s boots are repeated multiple times giving the impression of simultaneous movement. They are single moments, like movement in stages, captured during a short burst of energy. The repeated footwear blurs the walking animation like a multiple-exposure photograph.
Leash
Dominating the middle of the painting is a leash swinging in parabolic shapes. It is repeated only four times because it swings with less frequency than the quicker, more-repeated paws and feet of the figures. Therefore, Giacomo Balla implies a sense of speed, a sense of visual language between the number of repetitions and the velocity of movement. A stationary object, for example, would have no repetitions. Therefore, a sense of scale is established between the slower moving leash and the quicker moving dachshund and pedestrian.
Ground
Pale pink and green streaks form a background surrounding the dachshund, pedestrian, and leash. This blurry diagonal background is the ground that the two figures walk across. The pinprick stripes imply a speeding view, a quick passing of specks and particles. The granular pattern resembles the hyperdrive of a Star Wars film or the warp drive of a Star Trek series. Both views are space fantasy, but they imply extremely fast motion, and this is the exceptionally fast motion that Giacomo Balla is implying. The woman and her dog are not leisurely walking. They are speeding across the ground.
Montepulciano
Giacomo Balla painted Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash in May 1912 when he was visiting Montepulciano, near Siena, Italy. The area is known for its white dusty ground accented with green and pink flecks. Therefore, it is strongly suggested that the background captures the colorful essence of this Tuscan countryside.
Shadows
Also noteworthy is the lack of shadows in the painting. There is a slight shadow directly below the dog’s paws and the woman’s feet. Therefore the painting implies the scene is occurring around noon and in direct sunlight. Perhaps Giacomo Balla witnessed a woman walking her dog one day in the vicinity of Montepulciano around noon, and he thought, this will make an excellent image on canvas?
He must have thought the final image was worthy of ownership because he confidently signed the painting in the lower right corner at a diagonal slant aligned to the ground’s streaks. Balla’s signature evokes dynamic energy. It evokes the motion and speed so valued by Futurism. It evokes the reasons as to why Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash is a masterpiece of pet images, Futurism, and early 20th-century Italian art.
