The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli

The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (Il Funerale dell’anarchico Galli) is a painting by an Italian painter Carlo Carrà. The piece was finished in 1911 during the artist's futurist phase. The subject of the work is the funeral of an Italian anarchist Angelo Galli who was killed by the police during a general strike in 1904. The Italian State feared that the funeral would become a de facto political demonstration and refused the mourning anarchists entrance into the cemetery. When anarchists resisted, the police responded with force and a violent scuffle ensued. Carlo Carrà was there at the time. His work embodies the tension and chaos of the scene: the movement of the bodies, the clashing of anarchists and police, the black flags flying in the air. He reflects in a later memoir: ‘I saw before me the bier, covered with red carnations, wavering dangerously on the shoulders of the pallbearers. I saw the horses becoming restive, and clubs and lances clashing, so that it seemed to me that at any moment the corpse would fall to the ground and be trampled by the horses…’ (Carrà, La Mia Vita, 1943). The painting currently resides in New York City's Museum of Modern Art.