Carlo Carra (Italian, 1881—1966). After the Theater. 1910—1911. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome. Photo Credit: Alinari / Art Resource, NY.

Before he discovered Cubism, Carra was a leader in the Futurist art movement and a colleague of Boccioni (August 2007) and Balla (March 2007). Like all Futurists, he focused on movement—horse riders, rioters, “jolts of a cab,” crowds in a piazza—placing the viewer in the middle of the action on the canvas. Here, however, the viewer feels removed, as though leaning from a balcony. People leave a theater after a performance, glistening like ghosts or dark as shadows, stepping on cobblestones, heads down, as they move out of frame. A man bends into the canvas, as though to sweep the street; or perhaps it is the painter himself.

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