Focus on this artwork and analyze the Context.
Painted around the time of the organization of the Futurist artists, the work may be seen as a response to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's 1909 manifesto Uccidiamo il Chiaro di Luna! (Let's Kill the Moonlight!), in which Marinetti writes, "trecento lune elettriche cancellarono coi loro raggi di gesso abbagliante l'antica regina verde degli amori." ("three hundred electric moons wiped out with their dazzling rays of plaster the ancient green queen of love.") Balla's painting is an analytical study of the patterns and colors of a beam of light; it typifies his exploration of light, atmosphere, and motion as a member of the Italian Divisionism movement, in which he was inspired by the Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Balla stated of his painting, decades later, that it "demonstrated how romantic moonlight had been surpassed by the light of the modern electric street light. This was the end of Romanticism in art. From my picture came the phrase (beloved by the Futurists): 'We shall kill the light of the moon'."
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti light Georges Seurat Paul Signac Futurist Italian street light Neo-Impressionism motion atmosphere Divisionism