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Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916). The Street Pavers. 1914. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Lydia Winston Malbin, 1989. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA / Art Resource, NY.

On our June 2007 cover, Boccioni's The City Rises (1910) conveyed the red-hot clamor and constant motion of industrial life. He called that painting a “synthesis of labor, light, and movement.” Four years later, with a palette of blues, he made a cooler but equally intense translation of urban work. The laborers grip their pickaxes and swing their arms, backs bent, a tightly wound wave of force against the ground.