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Your galleryThe Artist's Mother
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Look at the two round patches of red on her cheeks and the touch of blue at her collar, the brightest colors among the gray pencil lines.
Boccioni drew and etched his mother again and again: the Met holds prints of her crocheting and sewing from 1907 and 1910, and a second head of her from 1915. On this large sheet of 1915, the year he joined the army, he drew her with her eyes closed in strong pencil lines and added a few washes of watercolor.
Graphite with green, red and blue watercolor washes on paper · 25 1/16 × 20 3/8 in. (63.7 × 51.8 cm · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Futurism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Artist's Mother
- Artist
- Umberto Boccioni (Italian, Reggio 1882–1916 Sorte)
- Date
- 1915
- Medium
- Graphite with green, red and blue watercolor washes on paper
- Dimensions
- 25 1/16 × 20 3/8 in. (63.7 × 51.8 cm)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Lydia Winston Malbin, 1989
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.