Study for The Laugh

Study for The Laugh is a pivotal preparatory drawing created by Umberto Boccioni around 1910. Executed with pencil on paper, this work documents the artist’s immediate shift toward the visual language of Italian Futurism and anticipates his celebrated large-scale oil painting of the same title. The drawing captures a fragmented, dynamic scene, rendered through rapid, overlapping lines that suggest both motion and simultaneous perception.

The period spanning 1910–11 marked Boccioni's decisive break from earlier Divisionist techniques as he focused on illustrating the central tenets of the Futurist movement: the glorification of mechanical speed, the chaos of urban life, and the interpenetration of objects and environment. This study emphasizes the movement’s goal of visually representing sound, light, and movement converging in a single, frenetic composition. Boccioni employed sharp, angular forms and repeated contours to articulate the sensation of dynamic action, rather than relying on traditional anatomical representation.

As a preliminary exploration, the piece reveals Boccioni’s iterative process in attempting to visualize non-visual phenomena. He sought to place the viewer at the center of the event, conveying the sensory overload experienced in a modern café setting. Unlike the more colorful and final version of the scene, the starkness of the pencil medium highlights the structural fragmentation central to the composition.

This essential Italian drawing is housed in the Museum of Modern Art collection, where it serves as a foundational example of early twentieth-century modernism and a significant record of the birth of the avant-garde. While preparatory, the drawing’s influence remains strong, and high-quality prints of the study are frequently used in scholarship analyzing Boccioni’s complex handling of space and dynamism.