Carlo Carra was an Italian painter and drawing artist, a futurist, and a metaphysical painter. He was also one of the originators of avant-garde in Italy. His “Composition with a Female Head” was painted no earlier than 1915, according to the date on one of the newspaper clippings in the collage. In 1915, Carra left the futurist movement, although he was one of its founders and had been a main participant since 1910. Next to the female head we can see the futurist flag with the words “Bandiera Futurista” and the motto “Marciare non marcire” (“Move! Stopping is death”).

In 1914-1915, Carra often used the collage technique, first used by Picasso and Braque. The topics of his selected clippings were mostly connected with the war, as futurists expressed their attitude towards it in their 1914 manifesto. The collage helped the artist to create the sensation of direct contact with the world and to increase the relevance of his works. 

During this period, Carra took more and more interest in the classical heritage of Italian art, including such masters as Giotto, Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, and Piero della Francesca. We can see this in the painting of the female head, which acts as the expressive center of this piece with its laconic and slightly simplified shape. Its rounded and straight lines enter into a complicated interaction with the main compositional rhythms.