Giacomo Balla's Futurist Fashion Takes Over Mart in Rovereto

The Mart in Rovereto is staging "Giacomo Balla. Lo stile dell'avanguardia," an anthology of the Italian Futurist drawn almost entirely from a single private collection — that of the late fashion designer Laura Biagiotti, who began acquiring Balla in 1986 and assembled 240 works before her death in 2017. Curated by Beatrice Avanzi with Fabio Benzi, the show foregrounds Balla's experiments in dress and applied arts, presenting them as part of a broader drive to merge art and life. Sketches for clothing, textiles and furnishings are shown alongside finished garments, accessories and furniture, with geometric motifs unfolding across the galleries. The exhibition also traces Balla's stylistic range, from Divisionism and Futurism to his later neo-figurative phase, described as the truly "hidden" part of his output. Highlights include the 1911 Ritratto di Tolstoj, the Compenetrazioni iridescenti — which established Balla as a pioneer of abstraction in the view of later Italian artists such as Piero Dorazio — the monumental Genio Futurista of 1925, his largest work, and a Composizione astratta of around 1922 that anticipated a near-Concretist idea of abstraction by decades. The display runs at MART, Corso Bettini 43, Rovereto, until 18 October 2026.