Italian painter (1883-1966)
Gino Severini
|
---|
Severini in 1913
|
Born
| (
1883-04-07
)
7 April 1883
|
---|
Died
| 26 February 1966
(1966-02-26)
(aged 82)
Paris, France
|
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Education
| Rome Fine Art Institute
|
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Known for
| Painting,
mosaic
,
fresco
|
---|
Notable work
| Pan Pan Dance
,
Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin
,
Italian Lancers at a Gallop
,
Maternity
,
Consegna delle Chieve
|
---|
Movement
| Divisionism
,
Futurism
,
Cubism
,
Return to order
,
Neo-Classicism
,
Novecento Italiano
|
---|
Awards
| Premio Nazionale di Pittura of the Accademia di San Luca, Rome
|
---|
Gino Severini
(7 April 1883 ? 26 February 1966) was an Italian
painter
and a leading member of the
Futurist
movement. For much of his life he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with
neo-classicism
and the "
return to order
" in the decade after the First World War. During his career he worked in a variety of media, including
mosaic
and
fresco
. He showed his work at major exhibitions, including the
Rome Quadrennial
, and won art prizes from major institutions.
Early life
[
edit
]
Severini was born into a poor family in
Cortona
, Italy. His father was a junior court official and his mother a dressmaker. He studied at the Scuola Tecnica in Cortona until the age of fifteen, when he and a group of fellow-classmates were expelled from the entire Italian school system for the attempted theft of exam papers.
[1]
The boys escaped a custodial sentence but Severini never again attended formal education.
[2]
For a while he worked with his father; then in 1899 he moved to Rome with his mother. It was there that he first showed a serious interest in art, painting in his spare time while working as a shipping clerk. With the help of a patron of Cortonese origins he attended art classes, enrolling in the free school for nude studies (an annex of the Rome Fine Art Institute) and a private academy. His formal art education ended after two years when his patron stopped his allowance, declaring, "I absolutely do not understand your lack of order."
[1]
In 1900 he met the painter
Umberto Boccioni
. Together they visited the studio of
Giacomo Balla
, where they were introduced to the technique of
Divisionism
, painting with adjacent rather than mixed colors and breaking the painted surface into a field of stippled dots and stripes. The ideas of Divisionism had a great influence on Severini's early work and on Futurist painting from 1910 to 1911.
Severini settled in Paris in November 1906. The move was momentous for him. He said later, "The cities to which I feel most strongly bound are Cortona and Paris: I was born physically in the first, intellectually and spiritually in the second."
[3]
[1]
He lived in
Montmartre
and dedicated himself to painting. There he met most of the rising artists of the period, befriending
Amedeo Modigliani
and occupying a studio next to those of
Raoul Dufy
,
Georges Braque
and
Suzanne Valadon
. He knew most of the Parisian
avant-garde
, including
Jean Metzinger
,
Albert Gleizes
,
Juan Gris
,
Pablo Picasso
,
Lugne-Poe
and his theatrical circle, the poets
Guillaume Apollinaire
,
Paul Fort
,
Max Jacob
, and author
Jules Romains
. The sale of his work did not provide enough to live on and he depended on the generosity of patrons.
Futurism
[
edit
]
He was invited by
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
and Boccioni to join the Futurist movement and was a co-signatory, with Balla, Boccioni,
Carlo Carra
, and
Luigi Russolo
, of the
Manifesto of the Futurist Painters
in February 1910 and the
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting
in April the same year. He was an important link between artists in France and Italy and came into contact with Cubism before his Futurist colleagues. Following a visit to Paris in 1911, the Italian Futurists adopted a sort of Cubism, which gave them a means of analysing energy in paintings and expressing dynamism. Severini helped to organize the first Futurist exhibition outside Italy at Galerie
Bernheim-Jeune
, Paris, in February 1912 and participated in subsequent Futurist shows in Europe and the United States. In 1913, he had solo exhibitions at the
Marlborough Gallery
, London, and
Der Sturm
, Berlin; it was during the show in London when he met and befriended British artist
C. R. W. Nevinson
, ultimately leading to the latter's decision to become a fellow Futurist.
[1]
In his autobiography, written many years later, he records that the Futurists were pleased with the response to the exhibition at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, but that influential critics, notably
Apollinaire
, mocked them for their pretensions, their ignorance of the main currents of modern art and their provincialism. Severini later came to agree with Apollinaire.
[1]
Severini was less attracted to the subject of the machine than his fellow Futurists and frequently chose the form of the dancer to express Futurist theories of dynamism in art. He was particularly adept at rendering lively urban scenes, for example in
Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin
(1912) and
The Boulevard
(1913). During the First World War he produced some of the finest Futurist war art, notably his
Italian Lancers at a Gallop
(1915) and
Armoured Train
(1915). He spent part of the war in
Barcelona
, but returned to Paris by July 1915.
[4]
Crystal Cubism and Neo-classicism
[
edit
]
In 1916 Severini departed from Futurism and painted several works in a naturalistic style inspired by his interest in early Renaissance art.
[5]
After the First World War, Severini gradually abandoned the Futurist style and painted in a synthetic
Crystal Cubist
style until 1920.
[5]
[6]
By 1920 he was applying theories of classical balance based on the
Golden Section
to still lifes and
figurative subjects
from the traditional
commedia dell'arte
. He became part of the "
return to order
" in the arts in the post-war era. Works such as
The Two Pulchinellas
(1922) exemplify Severini's turn toward a more conservative, analytic type of painting, which nonetheless suggests metaphysical overtones.
[5]
After 1920, Severini divided his time between Paris and Rome. In 1921, he was commissioned by
George Sitwell
to paint murals for Montefugoni castle, which the latter had bought in 1909; the same year, Severini published
Du cubisme au classicisme: Esthetique du compas et du nombre
, a book summarizing his research into mathematical theories of harmony and proportion.
[7]
The murals were completed in 1922.
[8]
[1]
: 250?60
In 1923 and 1925 he took part in the Rome Biennale.
[5]
He exhibited in Milan with artists of the
Novecento Italiano
group in 1926 and 1929 and in their
Geneva
exhibition of 1929. From 1928 he began to incorporate elements of Rome's classical landscape in his work. In 1930 he took part in the Venice Biennale, exhibited in the Rome Quadrennials of 1931 and 1935, and in 1935 won the first prize for painting, with an entire room devoted to his work. He contributed a cycle of works to the Paris Exhibition. He explored
fresco
and
mosaic
techniques and executed
murals
in various media in Switzerland, France, and Italy.
During this decade, he taught the Swiss printmaker
Lill Tschudi
, who had previously studied at the
Grosvenor School of Modern Art
.
[9]
Later life
[
edit
]
In the 1940s Severini's style became semi-abstract. In the 1950s he returned to his Futurist subjects: dancers, light and movement. He executed commissions for the church of Saint-Pierre in
Freiburg
and inaugurated the
Consegna delle Chiavi
("Delivery of the Keys") mosaic. His mosaics were shown at the Cahiers d'Art gallery in Paris and he participated in a conference on the history of mosaic at
Ravenna
. He received commissions to decorate the offices of
KLM
in Rome and
Alitalia
in Paris and took part in the exhibition
The Futurists, Balla - Severini 1912?1918
at the Rose Fried Gallery in New York. In Rome he reconstructed his
Pan Pan Dance
mosaic, which had been destroyed in the war. He was awarded the
Premio Nazionale di Pittura
of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, exhibited at the 9th Rome Quadrennal and was given a solo exhibition at the Accademia di San Luca.
Throughout his career he published important theoretical essays and books on art. In 1946 he published an autobiography,
The Life of a Painter
.
Severini died in Paris on 26 February 1966, aged 82. He was buried at Cortona.
Gallery of Works
[
edit
]
-
La Danseuse Obsedante (The Haunting Dancer, Ruhelose Tanzerin)
, 1911, oil on canvas, 73.5 x 54 cm, private collection
-
Le Boulevard
, 1911, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 91.5 cm,
Estorick Collection
, London
-
The Pan Pan Dance
(
The Pan Pan Dance
). The original 1911 version was destroyed. This new version he painted in 1959?60, now at
Musee National d'Art Moderne
, Paris
-
Dynamism of a Dancer
(
Dinamismo di una danzatrice, Ballerina di chahut
), 1912, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm, Jucker Collection,
Pinacoteca di Brera
, Milan
-
La danse de l'ours au Moulin Rouge
, 1913, oil on canvas, 100 x 73.5 cm,
Musee National d'Art Moderne
, Paris
-
Gino Severini, 1913,
Tango Argentino
, work on paper (published on the cover of Der Sturm, Volume 4, Number 192-193, 1 January 1914)
-
c.1915-16, dimensions and whereabouts unknown, photo
Leonce Rosenberg
, published in Action: Cahiers Individualistes de Philosophie et d’art, Volume 1, Number 2, March 1920
-
Nature Morte (still life)
, 1919
-
Nature morte a la guitare
, 1919. Private collection
-
Bohemien Jouant de L'Accordeon (The Accordion Player)
, 1919, Museo del Novecento, Milan
-
Maternite
, 1920
-
Paintings by Gino Severini, 1911,
La Danse du Pan-Pan
, and Severini, 1913,
L'autobus
. Published in Les Annales politiques et litteraires,
Le Paradoxe Cubiste
, 14 March 1920
-
Paintings by Gino Severini, 1911,
Souvenirs de Voyage
,
Albert Gleizes
, 1912,
Man on a Balcony, L’Homme au balcon
, Severini, 1912?13,
Portrait de Mlle Jeanne Paul-Fort
,
Luigi Russolo
, 1911?12,
La Revolte
. Les Annales politiques et litteraires,
Le Paradoxe Cubiste
, n. 1916, 14 March 1920
-
Nature morte
(Still-life), January 1920
-
Mosaic of San Marco
, 1961 - decoration on the front-facade of the Church of St. Mark Cortona, Italy
Public collections
[
edit
]
Among the public collections holding works by Gino Severini are:
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Severini, G.,
The Life of a Painter
, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995.
ISBN
0-691-04419-8
- ^
"Gino Severini"
. Retrieved
10 August
2022
.
- ^
Fonti, D.,
Severini
, Florence, Giunti, 1995.
ISBN
88-09-76204-5
- ^
Green, Christopher (1973).
Leger and the Avant-Garde
. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 120.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990).On Classic Ground: Picasso, Leger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910?1930. London: Tate Gallery.
ISBN
1-85437-043-X
- ^
Christopher Green,
Cubism and its Enemies, Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916–1928
, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, pp. 13-47
- ^
Severini, G:
From Cubism to Classicism
(together with Albert Gleizes:
Painting and its Laws
), translation, introduction and notes by Peter Brooke, London, Francis Boutle publishers, 2001,
ISBN
1-903427-05-3
- ^
Severini, Gino,
The Life of a Painter
(Princeton, 1995); fig. 44 to 47
- ^
Gordon, Samuel; Leaper, Hana; Lock, Tracey; Vann, Philip; Scott, Jennifer (13 August 2019). Gordon, Samuel (ed.).
Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking (Exhibition Catalogue)
(1st ed.). Philip Wilson Publishers. p. 40.
ISBN
978-1-78130-078-7
.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Santarelli, Cristina (2014). "From Figuration to Abstraction: Dance in the Paintings of Gino Severini".
Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography
.
39
(1?2): 167?180.
ISSN
1522-7464
.
External links
[
edit
]
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Leaders
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Section d'Or
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Others
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Paintings
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Sculptures
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Influences
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Influenced
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Related
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Related
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International
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National
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