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Carlo Carrà was a leading figure of Futurist painting. He was more influenced by the Cubism
he encountered when in Paris in 1911, than by the concepts and writings of Marinetti. On returning home from this visit he re-works his painting Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (1911), whose first version was still beholden to neo-impressionism. It is now considered as one of the most successful works of Futurism’s early phase. – In Natura morta, following the Cubist model, he has the central point-of-view wander, with the choice of a backing surface of newspaper referring to their papiers collés. But the attempt of placing the viewer in the middle of the drawing and, paradoxically enough, bringing movement to the still-life – the air currents set in motion with the lifting and setting down of glasses, perhaps nearly falling, from the café table – links with the Futurist aim of visually representing modernity’s
fundamental dynamic. And by covering portions of the printed text, remaining combinations of
words are revealed that defy the laws of grammar, as with Marinetti’s parole in libertà. They are set to dance like the glasses, jumping hither and thither, while when petrified in print they were a mere bland, flavorless expression of an everaccelerating reality: ‘vif l’étendue … et soudain …aucune douleur …se met brusquement …le petit tremblement …’
