Biographies

Umberto Boccioni (1882 – 1916)

Umberto Boccioni was born in Reggio di Calabria in Italy on 19 October 1882. At first Boccioni was a journalist and a writer. He moved to Rome in 1898. In Rome Boccioni studied painting and became a friend of Gino Severini and Giacomo Balla. From 1902 to 1904 Umberto Boccioni stayed in Paris and Berlin. He exhibited with Severini at the Mostra dei Rifintari. After a short stay in Paris he moved to St. Petersburg. In 1908, Umberto Boccioni met Carlo Carra and Emilio Marinetti in Milan. A year later he became an adherent of futurism. Together with Russolo, Carra, Balla, and Severini he signed the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painters in February 1910. The next year Boccioni traveled to Paris with Severini. In 1912 the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painters was published. Boccioni took part in the first international exhibition of futurist art in the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris. A soldier, he died in WWI, near Verona in August of 1916.