In The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, how is the Analysis and reception discussed?
While Carrà drew inspiration from Cubism, he stressed dynamism, as opposed to Cubism's static and analytical style. In 1912, the same year the painting was first exhibited, Futurist Manifesto would praise Carrà's use of fracturing in his piece, stating:
"If we paint the phases of a riot, the crowd bustling with uplifted fists and the noisy onslaught of the cavalry are translated upon the canvas in sheaves of lines corresponding to the conflicting forces, following the general law of violence of the picture. These force-lines must encircle and involve the spectator so that he will in a manner be forced to struggle himself with the persons in the picture."
The piece has been compared to Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo’s Fourth Estate (Il Quarto Stato) due to its similar subject matter and ability to establish a "direct relationship between the viewer and the painting". The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli has been noted as "unusual" for Futurist art, owing to its subject, scale, and historical importance. The art historian and former director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., wrote that “fundamentally, in its main lines and masses Carrà’s Funeral is as classically organized as a fifteenth-century battle piece by Paolo Uccello.”The art historian Dr. Rosalind McKever has also proposed that Funeral is compositionally similar to Uccello's The Battle of San Romano, noting that, "The clash between the anarchists and the police is compositionally closest to the Uffizi version; the dominance of black and red recalls the Louvre version; and the melee of flag poles, lances and cranes jutting into the sky is present in all three." McKever states that Carrà had likely seen The Battle of San Romano prior to the composition of The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. Author Dr. Mark Antliff has proposed that Carrà's The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, along with other contemporary Futurists, incorporates the philosophical theories of Henri Bergson, in an attempt to "transform the consciousness of the Italian citizenry and inaugurate a political revolt against Italy's democratic institutions."Hungarian poet Lajos Kassák wrote a dramatic prose account of the painting in A Tett, a Hungarian arts magazine, in November 1915. In the account, Kassák gave a dramatic retelling of the event from the perspectives of the anarchists present. This piece, alongside Kassák's poems calling for pacifism during World War I, led to his work being confiscated by Hungarian authorities and his art being banned from publication.
Uffizi philosophical The Battle of San Romano Lajos Kassák Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo’s A Tett painting Fourth Estate anarchist canvas Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo Cubism Italy Italian Futurist Manifesto Museum of Modern Art Henri Bergson Hungarian Alfred H. Barr, Jr. lance Paolo Uccello flag cranes