The Guardian · November 13, 2026

The beautiful game: revived art prize gives football its creative due once more | Emma John

Football and the art world have long remained distant but the breadth of entries for this year’s award revivals a healthy revivalIt may be the Beautiful Game, but in its early decades football was a rare subject for artists. The Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni whirled an athlete’s body into a vortex of movement in his 1913 painting Dynamism of a Soccer Player. You can see one of the earliest…