ROME.- On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Giacomo Balla’s birth, the MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts is celebrating him with an exceptional project, namely the first-ever opening to the public of his incredible Futurist house in Via Oslavia, Rome – a total work of art –, as well as an exhibition at MAXXI highlighting its extraordinary topicality and creating a connection in space and time.

The Casa Balla. From Home to the Universe and Back project, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI Arte, and Domitilla Dardi, MAXXI's Design Curator, will open to the public in two stages: the exhibition at MAXXI will begin on 17 June, while the house in Via Oslavia will be open to visitors at weekends as of Friday 25 June (booking required at www.maxxi.art). Casa Balla and the MAXXI exhibition will be open until 21 November 2021.

The project is the product of remarkable inter-institutional synergy and has been produced by MAXXI in collaboration with the Special Superintendence for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Rome, with the support of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture and the contribution of the Bank of Italy and sponsors Laura Biagiotti, Mastercard and Cassina.

Giovanna Melandri, President of Fondazione MAXXI, said, "Casa Balla. Dalla casa all’universo e ritorno is a project as extraordinary as the virtuous collaboration between various public institutions and private partners that has made it possible.

It is a 'total' project, just like the great Futurist master's understanding of art.

Balla's flat in the heart of Rome's Della Vittoria district, which is opening to the public for the first time, celebrates the artist's kaleidoscopic, experimental universe, as well as his all-round concept of art, which is surprisingly topical and inspiring for today's creative communities. You will see it in the spaces of Via Oslavia and rediscover it in the visions of the contemporary artists on show in MAXXI's iconic Gallery 5, which dialogue with works by Balla".

Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI Arte and curator of the project, said: "Casa Balla. Dalla casa all'universo e ritorno is an important new stage in MAXXI's great effort to enhance and reinterpret our historical and contemporary artistic heritage. After being closed for thirty years, Giacomo Balla's house is finally coming back to life by opening its doors to the public for the first time. With its decorations, furniture and works of art, the house represents the artist's personality in all its facets and constitutes one of his greatest masterpieces. Through the reopening of the Futurist master's home, we are recovering a part of our DNA, as well as one of the greatest stories of 20th-century art, which forever changed the way art is made, conceived and experienced. This exceptional event is complemented by the exhibition in MAXXI's Gallery 5, where Italian and international artists and creatives shed light on an understanding of present-day art derived from the teachings of Balla and Futurism, a concept made up of continuous intersections between different lingos and expressive techniques, a profound link with everyday life and a constant challenge to the limits of traditional categories of expression".

Domitilla Dardi, the curator of the project, said, "The modernity envisioned by Balla and his daughters is something we are very familiar with today: it speaks of the of overcoming of disciplinary barriers, of conceptual influences and mixtures, of the coexistence of abstract and figurative language. Above all, it speaks of the link between art and life: the Balla family’s act of experiencing their own art without interruption is what makes their work a 'diffuse project' that involves paintings as much as dishes, sculptures, furniture, but also the clothes they wore, thereby becoming moving works of art themselves. It is no coincidence that the great designers of the 1970s found their roots in this approach, and their contemporaries are able to continue their reflections with ease, now that that future has become our present".

The house in Via Oslavia

For the first time ever, the extraordinary Futurist house in which Giacomo Balla (Turin 1871 - Rome 1958) lived and worked from 1929 until his death is opening its doors to the public. As of Friday 25 June, it will be possible to visit Casa Balla every weekend for over 5 months, until Sunday 21 November. The visits, which will be organised and managed by MAXXI's Education Office, will be arranged in different time slots for groups of 8 people. Booking is required at www.maxxi.art as of June.

After spending several years in Via Nicolò Porpora, in an old convent building overlooking the greenery of Villa Borghese, the Master moved to the flat in Via Oslavia in Rome with his wife Elisa and their two daughters Luce and Elica – also painters –, who lived in it and looked after it until the 1990s.

Casa Balla, which was declared to be of historical interest and listed by the Special Superintendence in 2004, was initially restored by the Central Institute for Restoration; more recently, further securing works have been carried out on the flat in collaboration with the Bank of Italy.

On the occasion of this exceptional opening organised by MAXXI, and thanks to a long and careful process involving the identification, study and securing of the property by MAXXI and the Special Superintendence, it has been possible to set up the house and finally make it accessible, thereby restoring its soul as a creative laboratory with works by the Master and his daughters.

During the visit, visitors will feel a sense of excitement as they stand in front of the main door bearing the FuturBalla plaque/signature, which heralds the wonders and surprises that will be revealed as they immerse themselves in the artist's extraordinary home-universe: from the corridor to the living room, where visitors will be shown the Italian version of the Balla et le Futurisme docufilm by Jack Clemente, winner of the Golden Lion award at the 1972 Venice Film Biennale, from the famous red study to Luce and Elica's rooms, from the kitchen to the beautiful bathroom.




The Balla family has transformed an anonymous, bourgeois flat into a unique work of art, a laboratory for experimentation made up of painted walls and doors, decorated furniture and fittings, self-made utensils, paintings and sculptures, clothes designed and sewn at home and many other objects that come together to create a unique, kaleidoscopic total project.

This sunny, colourful, dynamic house reflects the ideas of the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe manifesto written by Balla and Fortunato Depero in 1915, but goes even beyond that. For Balla, Futurist dynamism translates into continuous creation, which is why his house became a sort of ancient Renaissance workshop where simple, albeit very creative objects designed and built for everyday life (tables, chairs, shelves, easels, plates, tiles) coexist with paintings, drawings and sculptures.

A number of important works housed there, including drawings and preparatory sketches that have recently been restored and exhibited either in the house or at MAXXI, bear witness to the different phases of the Turin-born artist's research, from an initial figurative period at the turn of the century to the Futurist aesthetics and ideology of the 1920s (witness the three large panels of Le mani del popolo italiano) and a late return to the pure representation of reality.

Casa Balla also houses several paintings by Luce and Elica, namely the artist’s daughters.

The exhibition at MAXXI

The Casa Balla. From Home to the Universe and Back project also includes a major exhibition in MAXXI's spectacular Gallery 5, which will be open to the public as of 17 June.

Tapestries, drawings, sketches, furniture and furnishings originally displayed at Casa Balla will dialogue with eight new productions by contemporary international architects, artists and designers. These original works, which have been created for the occasion, reflect on the numerous suggestions of Casa Balla as a total work of art, thereby highlighting the profound topicality of the eclectic Master's thinking and creating a space-time link between the 1930s house and the 21st-century Museum.

Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, Carlo Benvenuto, Alex Cecchetti, Jim Lambie, Emiliano Maggi, Leonardo Sonnoli, Space Popular, and Cassina (with Patricia Urquiola) have been invited to investigate the suggestions of Casa Balla; in the space of Gallery 5, their productions will join some of Giacomo Balla's important originals from private collections, which have been brought together for the first time and are now accessible to the public.

Among them, witness the door of the famous red study as well as drawings and sketches for clothes, such as the one made for Luce; these originals are on loan from the Biagiotti Cigna Foundation and the Laura and Lavinia Biagiotti Collection, which boast more than 300 works by Balla. The majority of these are works and studies on design and fashion and constitute the largest, most important collection of applied art in the world.

The exhibition opens in the Museum hall with Jim Lambie's hypnotic installation designed for the two lifts that take visitors to Gallery 5, immediately immersing them in a total space. Further on, one comes across the work of Leonardo Sonnoli, which reinterprets 5 words and concepts dear to Balla (don't see double, don't say it, tik tak, universe, modifying) by providing a Balla-like interpretation that privileges their visual, graphic and typographic aspect. Bêka and Lemoine's film, which was made in the house in Via Oslavia, takes visitors into the heart of Balla's universe. Alex Cecchetti's original is a total work of art in the spirit of Balla and combines dance, music, performance and fashion: the audience is invited to dance while wearing the skirts of traditional Sufi whirling dervishes, which have been made in collaboration with the Laura Biagiotti fashion house, to a musical composition by Cecchetti himself – performed by six students of the Dance School of Teatro dell'Opera di Roma and the Cantoria of Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, as conducted by maestro Roberto Gabbiani –.

Emiliano Maggi has created three sculptures in wood, bronze and mirrored glass, each titled Notturno, which recall Balla's interest in the dreamlike and imaginative dimension of sleep and night. Carlo Benvenuto's body of photographs creates a rarefied atmosphere by depicting domestic objects from his home that evoke the everyday life of Casa Balla. Research and innovation characterise Cassina's project with Patricia Urquiola, who has designed a large table inspired by the asymmetries and diagonal cuts of Balla's furniture. The Communal Table is made with transparent coloured polycarbonate bases that emphasise the iridescent compenetrations dear to the Master.

Finally, there is the film version of the Space Popular digital work, namely a virtual reconstruction of Casa Balla designed without ever seeing the physical space, but only through the suggestions of stories and images, produced with the support of Mastercard. The work will be available in its entirety on www.maxxi.art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue edited by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Domitilla Dardi, with texts by Fabio Benzi, Domitilla Dardi, Eleonora Farina, Elena Gigli, Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Emanuele Trevi (Marsilio editori).

The curators' texts are complemented by essays by critics and art historians who analyse the house, Balla's Universe and the role of his daughters in relation to his concept of total art. At the same time, Emanuele Trevi's contribution dwells on the origins of the house and the district in which it is located, thereby creating a short unpublished story that beautifully describes Casa Balla as a "clear three-dimensional representation of the mind that inhabited it and imagined it".

The book's iconography is particularly interesting: previously unpublished shots document the new set-up of Casa Balla, while images from the past provide valuable historical evidence. The book is accompanied by descriptions of the works by contemporary artists and a complete list of Giacomo Balla's works on display.