The Giacomo Balla home is to remain open for all 2022, as Rome celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Italian painter and Futurist master. And this is an occasion no art lover will want to miss.
Opened for the first time in 30 years
Casa Balla, the painter's kaleidoscopic vision of art and colour on Via Oslavia, in Rome’s central Prati residential district has opened to the public for the first time after being closed for 30 years. The opening is a collaboration between MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st-Century Arts, and Rome's special superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape, with the support of the Italian culture ministry and the Bank of Italy.
Casa Balla
A great masterpiece
Born in Turin in 1871, Balla lived and worked here from 1929 until his death in 1958 while his two daughters, Luce and Elica who were also painters, lived here until the 1990s. Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, MAXXI art director and curator of the project explains: “The house with its decorations, furniture and works of art expresses the artist's personality in all its forms and represents one of his greatest masterpieces."
Wildly colourful interiors
The three-bedroom apartment is located on the fourth floor of a nondescript mid-20th-century building. Walking into the long hallway prepares you for the extravagant and colourful experience ahead as the hall is painted with strange floating yellow and green shapes that seemed to dance. And there are wildly colorful abstract paintings on the upper part of the walls, cleverly hiding water pipes and other protuberances.
An artists’ studio or a private home?
Each room is packed with colour and curios like cloud-shaped plexiglass light coverings hanging from ceilings, and a yellow chair with an asymmetrical back on a tiled lilac ceramic floor. It is hard to decide whether you are in an artist’s studio – which you are. Or a private home - which you are. An extraordinary experience and not to be missed.
For more information: https://www.maxxi.art/en/events/casa-balla/
