Nature alive (1943)

Signed lower right: “Luce Balla”

on the back title and date 1943

‘The painter of light and dynamism gave birth to two essential youths destined to perpetuate the triumph of his art in light and movement. Helix and Luce now paint things of a special finesse and grace. Their sweet souls […] produce paintings of flowers and landscapes. ‘¹ The artistic nature of Balla’s daughters emerges from this description by Alfredo Silvestri in the presentation of an exhibition of Giacomo, Elica and Luce Balla in 1935. If Elica, however, follows in her father’s footsteps of the Futurist phase, in dynamic ignitions and iridescent interpenetrations, Luce is the interpreter of a more introspective and personal language.

Very young, she stands out in the applied arts and in particular in textile production, in which she displays a bright chromatism made of evolutions and intertwining of forms, in a decorativism heir to her father’s futurism. In painting, on the contrary, she follows the path of figuration and devotes herself to silent interiors, poetic nocturnes of a deserted and magical Rome and, above all, to terse and objective still lifes that frequently appear in the photographs of the rooms of Casa Balla in Via Oslavia in Prati (fig.1), a place of life and art, a forge of ideas, projects and works, where Luce lived until her death in 1994.

In his still lifes, transparent, terse, silent and lenticular, one perceives light – emblematically encapsulated in his name – as a dense substance that fills the atmosphere: it is no coincidence that in May 1987, Cleto Polcina, at his Due Ci Gallery, dedicated an exhibition with twenty works to the artist, entitling it, with a well-chosen and perfect play on words, Trasparenze di Luce (Transparencies of Light).

Discovering a delicate and poetic language in the small things of everyday life, Luce gave life, especially between the 1930s and 1940s, to still-life pieces with vivid chromatism and diffuse clarity, which denote a clear adherence to the ways of the return to order in its most special declination, on the path of magic realism. Reminiscent, albeit with a brighter palette and at times denser brushstrokes, of Edita Broglio’s ethereal still lifes, Luce pays particular attention to the rendering of the transparencies of glass and water, to the precious sparkle of certain objects and fabrics, in a quest to unite the real with the mysterious life that hides and palpitates in objective reality.

Natura viva, an oil on panel painting from 1943, shows a shining, crystalline phenomenal perfection, in which the brilliant red of the Poinsettia or poinsettia is crossed by plays of light that illuminate the green leaves. The preciosity of the hand-decorated ceramic plate – perhaps by Luce ^herself2 -, the green drape in the background and the mandarins scattered on the transparent surface of the table, come together in a chromatic vision of colour reflections and glimmers, in a motionless and suspended combination.

The flowers and variegated species of plants and fruits that Luce Balla repeatedly depicts reveal a scientific interest but also an exercise in linear pictorial classicism, in which intimism and the purest representation of vanitas, the lightness of water and the volatility of petals are described with essential clarity, reflecting the author’s measured personality and expressing her total independence from her father’s painting.

¹ A. Silvestri, Mostra delle opere di pittura di Giacomo Balla, di Luce e di Elica Balla, preface to the exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria l’Antonina, 9 – 12 November 1935), Rome, 1935.

Elena Lago