Cityscape

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Estoric Collection of Contemporary Italian Art (London, the UK).

The cityscape typical of Sironi’s style depicts grey industrial buildings, railroad tracks and an oppressive emptiness. There is not a single living soul in the picture; only a black train in the distance indicates the presence of life in this city. Motives of the loneliness of a person in a metropolis began to appear in the artist’s work after the First World War when he did not have enough money to support his family in Rome and lived in the capital alone. The artist is mostly attracted not by the central part of the city, which is always full of people and festive, but by remote districts built up with soulless factories and technical facilities. The spirit of the era, the facelessness and indifference of industrial civilization is most fully felt there.