The Hand of the Violinist

The Hand of the Violinist (The Rhythms of the Bow) is a 1912 painting by Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla, depicting a musician's hand and the neck of a violin "made to look like it's vibrating through space"—blurred and duplicated to suggest the motion of frenetic playing.^[2][3] The painting, representative of Futurism's first wave, exhibits techniques of Divisionism.^[4]

The Hand of the Violinist (The Rhythms of the Bow)
Artist	Giacomo Balla
Year	1912 (1912)
Medium	oil on canvas
Subject	The hand of a violinist in play
Dimensions	56 cm × 78.3 cm (22 in × 30.8 in)[1]
Location	Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

History

Balla was inspired to use multiplication to imply motion by the photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey.^[4] As with other Futurists, he was also inspired by Cubism's methods of capturing multiple perspectives; The Hand of the Violinist has been said to bring the viewer "inside the reverberations of the instrument itself", and has earned comparison with Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase.^[5]

From February to August 2014, the painting was part of the exhibit Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe, at the Guggenheim in New York.^[4][6]