The Street Pavers

Boccioni and his compatriot Gino Severini were two of the leading members of Italian Futurism, an early twentieth-century avant-garde movement that embraced industrial technology as a primary method of achieving radical social transformation. In The Street Pavers, Boccioni revolutionizes a scene of backbreaking work to create a luminous celebration of the modern laborer. Through his inventive use of color and staccato brushstrokes, Boccioni conveys both the powerful movements of the pickax-wielding workers and their anonymity, as the faceless figures are almost indistinguishable from the background. (Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)