In Dynamism of a Cyclist, how is the Subject and composition discussed?
Boccioni's preparatory drawings for the painting (two shown below) depict a head-down racing cyclist, behind in the air, his movement indicated by the characteristic Futurist "force lines" and echoing curves. Force lines, which the Futurists claimed to have invented, show how an object would resolve itself if it followed the tendencies of its own forces: 284  and reflected the interest of the Futurists in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, who believed that material objects exist in a state of continual flux. The painting is therefore an attempt to represent the dynamic sensation of a cyclist moving through time and space rather than a snap-shot of a particular moment in time.: 280  The bicycle, figure, and the surrounding space seemingly fuse together in a single form.  Although the bicycle had been invented in the early nineteenth century, it did not come into widespread use until the 1890s. Even in 1913, the bicycle, and the high speeds obtainable on it, still represented for the Futurists one of the modern forms of transport that they idealised.In the final work, the lines of the preparatory drawings are translated into curves and cones, outlined using Boccioni's characteristic divisionist technique. This technique was primarily derived from the early Futurist Giacomo Balla. Boccioni, after visiting Parisian avant-garde painters, added new elements to the style, including the typical Cubist segmentation of planes. The discordant colour choices reflect the failure of the Futurists to develop a coherent colour theory to match their theories in other areas.
Futurist Cubist Henri Bergson Giacomo Balla bicycle avant-garde divisionist