“Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” (1913) by Umberto Boccioni. It depicts a muscular human figure in forward motion. Speed lines and shapes travel smoothly over the surface of the figure, abstractly transforming it. Studiously crafted, it is an early example of figurative abstraction.
It is possibly the best archetype in Western sculpture of Futurism, an Italian art movement that focused on representing the defining attributes of “modernity” insofar as it was understood at the time—speed, energy, dynamism, technology, and industrialization, for example. Industrial inventions like the motorcar, train, or the airplane served as characteristic motifs.
Appearing soon after the inception of modern sculpture, the work is prescient and influential.
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| Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) by Umberto Boccioni |
The twentieth century has been one of the most destructive in human history. World War II, the most ruinous war of the last century, ended in approximately 70 to 85 million deaths, of which an estimated 50 to 55 million were civilian deaths. Under Adolf Hitler six million Jews were killed in a genocide known as the Holocaust.
World War I was not far behind on the scale of destruction. It resulted in an estimated 15 million deaths, of which six million were civilian deaths.
World War I was an imperialist war among the Western powers. World War II began as a war of conquest of China by Japan.
Competing political ideologies was one of the major underlying reasons for the war in Europe. Germany and the Soviet Union, which championed the two totalitarian ideologies of fascism and communism, respectively, each brawled for the extermination of the other.
Other exceptionally destructive wars took place, including the Russian Civil War at the beginning of the century, and in the second half of the century, the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
In what has been characterized as the Age of Social Catastrophe, existentialism—a philosophy of alienation—took root in Europe before burgeoning after the Second World War.
This philosophy, which took as its starting point the anguish of human existence, concluded with the dreadful challenge of making meaning out of a world absent of certitudes, the peoples of the West flailing about bereft of answers.
Giacometti’s solitary, attenuated figure is the visual equivalent of existentialism.
He has been described by the art historian Tatyana Kalaydjian Serraino as “spindly,” “withered,” “skeletal,” “vulnerable,” “intense,” “emaciated,” “gaunt,” “disturbing,” and “haunting”—all pointedly appropriate.
Fashioned of bronze, his highly textured surface is “dark,” “mottled,” and “corroded.”
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl3iXGgniYg
—AboutArt, “ALBERTO GIACOMETTI'S 'THE WALKING MAN II': A sculptor's take on human nature...,” YouTube video, 9:42 minutes, September 30, 2020
The man strides forward alone, traversing the wasteland of the twentieth century.
Walking Man II is among the last in a series of multiple figures similarly conceived by Giacometti.
The first version of the motif, Woman Walking, was created in 1932.
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| Walking Man II (1960) by Alberto Giacometti |
“Reclining Figure: Arch Leg” (1969-70) by Henry Moore is abstract and modern. It reflects my own enchantment with abstraction, pervasive in modern art, and which, I have remarked, exerts its own special aesthetic appeal.
“Reclining figure” is a common motif of Moore’s art, inspired, say biographers by his encounter with the chac-mool reclining figures of Mesoamerican art during his 1924 trip to Paris on scholarship.
Moore was a postwar modern artist who built on the pioneering work of early twentieth-century sculptors like Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Lipchitz, or Constantin Brâncuși, all of whom pushed the bounds of abstraction.
At first modern sculptors did not produce wholly abstract art but rather figurative pieces distinguished by highly stylized abstraction. Moore’s work developed in this direction while rapidly evolving into his own signature style.
Moore’s sculptures engage us by transforming the subject into abstract elements yet maintaining the identity of the original figure. Twisting sinuously, often monumentally solid shapes cumulate and elongate, so that when what appear to be separate members join together into a single piece, the result elicits surprise and delight. Holes are accents, imaginatively conceived.
Today we are familiar with abstract figurative distortion, but in Moore’s time it was pioneering.
This particular piece exemplifies Moore’s best, most dramatic traits.
Two additional views, excellent, of this piece are available at this link:
https://ysp.org.uk/openair/reclining-figure-arch-leg
—“Henry Moore: Reclining Figure: Arch Leg,” Yorkshire Sculpture Park
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| Reclining Figure: Arch Leg (1969-70) by Henry Moore |
As the title of the work indicates, it consists of two pieces or what looks like a single figure cut into two parts along the approximate location of the thigh.
Highly imaginative and plastic, it is one of his last pieces. Moore passed away in 1986.
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| Working Model for Two-Piece Reclining Figure: Cut (1978-79) by Henry Moore |
WHAT IS FIGURATIVE ART?
ReplyDeleteFigurative art [is] defined broadly as any art that represents real-world subjects...Unlike abstraction, which seeks to strip down or depart from visible reality, figurative art engages with it—sometimes faithfully, other times interpretively. It includes depictions of animals, landscapes, and the human figure.
...The origins of figurative art date back to the Paleolithic era, with cave paintings in Lascaux and Altamira depicting animals in motion and human figures engaged in ritual or survival. These early images were not merely decorative; they had symbolic and spiritual functions, potentially used to convey stories, record events, or summon forces beyond human control. In this sense, figuration served as one of humanity's earliest forms of communication—a bridge between lived experience and mythic imagination.
In ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, figurative art took on new functions. Egyptian tomb paintings, for instance, depicted the human body in rigid, idealized forms meant to signify social status and divine order. Greek artists gradually moved toward more naturalistic representation, culminating in classical sculpture that celebrated human anatomy, movement, and ideal proportion. These works laid the foundation for much of Western art’s enduring emphasis on the body as a vessel of meaning, beauty, and philosophical inquiry.
The Renaissance (14th–17th century) marks a high point in the history of figurative art. With renewed interest in Greco-Roman ideals and scientific observation, artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael produced works that combined anatomical precision with emotional depth. The invention of linear perspective, along with advancements in oil painting, allowed for increasingly lifelike depictions of space and volume.
...At the dawn of the 20th century, figurative art underwent profound transformations in response to photography, industrialization, and the trauma of modern warfare. The camera freed painters from the need to replicate visible reality, allowing them to experiment with form, perspective, and symbolism. Movements such as Expressionism, Surrealism, and Fauvism used the human figure as a conduit for inner states, dreams, and primal emotion. Artists like Egon Schiele, Käthe Kollwitz, and Francis Bacon contorted the body to express existential distress and psychological fragmentation.
https://www.tappancollective.com/blogs/journal/art-101-figurative-art-origins-evolution-and-enduring-importance
—“Art 101 | Figurative Art: Origins, Evolution, and Enduring Importance,” Tappan, January 1, 2025
Figurative art is a universal response to our desire to visually depict what we see. Strictly speaking, figurative art does not strive for versimilitude but rather seeks meaningful personal expression, even if not intentionally. Figurative art is thus by its very character symbolic communication. It is always embedded in a cultural context.
Gonzalinho