The Street Pavers by Boccioni in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2008

Artist: Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916)

Title: The Street Pavers

Date: 1914

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: H. 39-3/8, W. 39-3/8 inches (100 x 100 cm.)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Lydia Winston Malbin, 1989

Accession Number: 1990.38.5

Description:

In Boccioni's nearly abstract composition, two crouching workers emerge as the heirs to the toiling subjects of Gustave Courbet's famed Stone Breakers (1849, destroyed 1945), which the artist may have seen at the 1910 Venice Biennale. Composed of staccato brushstrokes, this painting conveys both the laborious movements of the pickax-wielding workers and their anonymity, particularly in the background, where figures are merely suggested by an indistinguishable mass of color.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/modern...