Umberto Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. 1913. Bronze (cast 1931), (111.2 x 88.5 x 40 cm), MoMA, Nova Iorque.
"In Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Boccioni puts speed and force into sculptural form. The figure strides forward. Surpassing the limits of the body, its lines ripple outward in curving and streamlined flags, as if molded by the wind of its passing. Boccioni had developed these shapes over two years in paintings, drawings, and sculptures, exacting studies of human musculature. The result is a three-dimensional portrait of a powerful body in action.

In the early twentieth century, the new speed and force of machinery seemed to pour its power into radical social energy. The new technologies and the ideas attached to them would later reveal threatening aspects, but for Futurist artists like Boccioni, they were tremendously exhilarating. Innovative as Boccioni was, he fell short of his own ambition. In 1912, he had attacked the domination of sculpture by "the blind and foolish imitation of formulas inherited from the past," and particularly by "the burdensome weight of Greece." Yet Unique Forms of Continuity in Space bears an underlying resemblance to a classical work over 2,000 years old, the Nike of Samothrace. There, however, speed is encoded in the flowing stone draperies that wash around, and in the wake of, the figure. Here the body itself is reshaped, as if the new conditions of modernity were producing a new man." in www.moma.org/collection

Foi como se o mundo tivesse perdido todo o ar respirável e, por momentos, tivesse de guardar o pouco que me restava nos pulmões. De boca aberta, sem respirar, a escultura atingiu-me na ignorância do que iria encontrar. Toda aquela massa que, inerte, se movia, o ondular magnífico, inesperado. O dinamismo exposto, declaradamente exposto. Nada de subtis alusões, nada de profundos ritmos, camuflados na matéria à espera de serem descobertos. Aqui, o movimento é uma declaração de guerra: burgueses, despertai!