Plastic synthesis - seated person 1915

Umberto Boccioni built this seated figure with strokes of color, not unlike how Cézanne used paint to construct a landscape. I imagine him, driven by this impulse to reinvent how we perceive the world, layering brushstrokes of raw color – oranges, blues, browns – to capture not just an image, but a felt sense of being. The way he applied paint must have been so vigorous, each stroke vibrating with energy. Look at how those strokes create a kind of visual rhythm, almost like the person is resonating with unseen forces. Boccioni and other Futurists were so in love with movement, technology, and the dynamism of modern life. What if this portrait is actually a meditation on stillness? A moment of contemplation amid the rush of a world in motion. Painters are always wrestling with ways to say something new, building on what those before us have done.