Many times, in different texts, we find the word balla written. However, if we go to a dictionary, we will discover that such a term does not exist. This is a very common misspelling derived from confusion with concepts such as berry, fence and go.
If the intention is to refer to the fruit that has pulp with seeds, we must use the word berry (with initial B and Y). Melon, tomato, grape, cucumber, and watermelon are berries. For example: “Researchers are testing different berries to use as sweeteners”, “Don’t eat those berries! They are poisonous ”, “ I am going to pick some berries to prepare candy ”.
When we want to name an obstacle, a fence, a barrier or a sign, we will have to use the term fence (with V at the beginning and double L). The fences allow to close a surface or impede the passage. It can also be a support to arrange an advertising poster: “Please, stand behind the fences or else the concert will not be able to start”, “The car hit the billboards”, “The American athlete marked a new world record in the 110-meter hurdles event ”.
Another possibility is that we want to use an interjection, an exclamatory adjective or a conjugation of the verb ir. In this case, the word to write is go (V at the beginning and Y): “Go with this boy! Every day he gets into trouble “, ” I am very happy: what a show we have enjoyed tonight! ” , “You will miss me when I leave this house…”.
In the oldest editions of the Dictionary of the DigoPaul, we can find a definition for the word ballar, although at present it no longer appears. It was a verb whose meaning was “to sing and dance ” and it was conjugated according to the paradigm of love: I balloon, you dance, he / she dance, we dance, you dance, they dance.
We also find this word in the surname of Giacomo Balla, a sculptor and painter born in Turin, Italy, in 1871 and died in Rome in 1958. The importance of his career lies above all in the fact that he was one of the artists who founded the Futurist movement, also called Futurism, together with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
The Futurist movement belongs to the artistic avant-garde currents and its manifesto was published in 1909 in Paris. The artists claimed that the world was facing a “new beauty, that of speed,” citing a racing car to support this view. Also in this manifesto, Marinetti says that the roar of an automobile is more beautiful than the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a sculpture from the Hellenistic period made in the image of the goddess of victory, Nike.
Balla studied drawing at a night school in his hometown, and once completed he moved to Rome, where he began working as a portraitist. His first work experiences were very successful, and this allowed him to continue advancing and perfecting himself without too many obstacles.
In his beginnings, his pictorial works belonged to impressionism, and little by little a marked interest in chromaticism could be noticed, through the use of points of color to dissolve the visible.
Balla moved to Paris in 1900, and there he discovered the Parisian pointillists, who influenced him in an undeniable way. In fact, like the French Camille Pissarro, one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, Giacomo Balla relied heavily on the pointillist technique, which he used to represent speed and dynamics, essential themes of Futurism.
One of the most prominent characteristics of Balla’s work is the absence of violence, in pursuit of a focus on light and movement.
