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Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916). Dynamism of a Soccer Player (Dinamismo di un footballer). 1913. Oil on canvas. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection (580.1967). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA. Photo credit: Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY.

Boccioni and other Futurist artists were interested not in showing fixed moments in time and space but in conveying a continuum of human movement with no boundaries between body and activity. In Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture (1912), Boccioni stated that “the figure must be broken open and enclosed in environment.” In this painting from the “dynamism” series, the soccer player is “broken open” and becomes the forces and energies that he propels. Although his massive thigh appears to be at the center of the painting, it is the power and motion of those muscles, not the muscles themselves, that inform the canvas.