ROME.- The exaltation of sports fits fully into the celebration of the cult of virility, futurist ideology’s fulcrum. It’s the same Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to establish the link between the artistic movement founded by him and competitive physical activities, in the article “The sports and futurism”, hosted on the front page of «La Gazzetta dello Sport» on Friday, March 4 1910, a little over a year after the publication of the manifesto of the avant-garde movement, which appeared in «Le Figaro» in February in 1909: “Futurism needs poets with the free soul, and athletes by powerful muscles. […] We believe in the goodness done by muscle power and the light of the ideal.”

The muscles and physical strength understood as the nucleus from which spring new formal relations, interpenetration between dazzling light and color values are at the heart of this extraordinary homage by Giacomo Balla to the Roman boxer Tullio Alessandri which was unveiled by Ottocento Art Gallery.

Born in Rome on May 15, 1902, Alessandri debuted on December 10, 1921, and then graduated Italian champion in the bantamweight category on January 20, 1923, beating after 15 rounds Giovanni Bosetti.

His last fight held at the Adriano stadium in Rome against French boxer Jean Julien on October 15, 1928. A short career but not stingy of satisfactions for Alessandri, earning this great little watercolor done by one of the protagonists of Futurism.

The dynamic and stylized figure of the boxer Alessandri shoots a jab shattering into space, creating a work that celebrates at once the talents of the young Capitoline sportsman and the Italian boxing school: the cult of the nation and celebration of physical strength of the individual are linked in a work in which are reflected his studies on the perception of light and the search for a vibrant dynamism, typical of Balla’s artistic research.

The homage to the boxer Alessandri will not be the only work dedicated to the boxe legends in the artistic production of Futurballa: the painter in fact, eight years later, will celebrate Primo Carnera in a portrait – icon inspired to a photograph appeared on the front page of «La Gazzetta dello Sport», published the day after the conquest by Friuli giant of the heavyweight category world title. But it will be a holographic portrait, fruit of the rediscovery of realism, when Balla, now far from futurism, breathes the climate of the “return to order”, while anticipating “the value of the popular image and mass, which in some ways foretells the Pop Art attitude”, as written by Fabio Benzi.

A studied portrait that is far from the compositional freshness and the impression fully futurist of this precious postcard, designed as a pledge of future success for an emerging young boxer, admired with enthusiasm by Balla.