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Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916). The City Rises. 1910. Oil on canvas. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.

Of this painting, originally titled Work, Boccioni wrote, “I attempted a great synthesis of labor, light, and movement.” Exertion and commotion ignite the canvas, in a street scene that was viewed by some critics as a celebration of urban industrial life and by others as a reflection of destructive power. Boccioni used an Impressionistic technique “whose atomizing effect on mass permits the forceful, churning symbols of horse and manpower to slip out of their skins....” (Rosenblum R. Cubism and 20th Century Art. London, England: Thames and Hudson; 1976). Later, Boccioni would turn to sculpture to translate movement into mass.