La seggiola dell'uomo strano

In 1929, Balla had just moved into his new house at number 39b, Via Oslavia, as his daughter Elica wrote: “There was a terrace with so much sun. … In the early part of our time there … my father painted the terrace door in La seggiola dell’uomo strano, one of his last Futurist works.” The interior, constructed like an abstract painting, is full of sunlight and colour; criss-crossing geometric, polychrome forms probe a space arranged in perspective, while from the terrace door on the right there enters a ray of light, etching the deep shadow of the chair on the floor. To the left, two-coloured, curved shapes roll wavelike one after another, forming a great circle at whose centre we find a stick figure resembling a sign or a target. On this figure there converge a series of rays, of varying intensities of light. In the background, the buildings are seen through the window. “The chair” is a good example of Balla’s décor, while the stylized “strange man” at the centre is probably the artist himself.