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Gino
Severini/Works and
biography
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Sea=Dancer
January 1914 |
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Gino Severini was born April 7, 1883, in Cortona, Italy.
He studied at the Scuola Tecnica in Cortona before moving
to Rome in 1899. There he attended art classes at the
Villa Medici and by 1901 met Umberto Boccioni. Together,
they visited the studio of Giacomo Balla, where they
were introduced to the Divisionist painting. After settling
in Paris in November 1906, Severini studied Impressionist
painting and met the Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac.
Severini soon came to know most of the Parisian avant-garde,
including Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Amedeo Modigliani,
and Pablo Picasso; Lugné-Poë and his theatrical
circle; the poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Fort,
and Max Jacob; and author Jules Romains. After joining
the Futurist movement at the invitation of Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti and Boccioni, Severini signed the Manifesto
tecnico della pittura futurista of April 1910, along
with Balla, Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, and Luigi
Russolo. However, 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.
Severini helped organize the first Futurist exhibition
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.
During the Futurist period, Severini acted as an important
link between artists in France and Italy. After his
last truly Futurist works—a series of paintings
on war themes—Severini painted in a Synthetic
Cubist mode, and by 1920 he was applying theories of
classical balance based on the Golden Section to figurative
subjects from the traditional commedia dell’arte.
He divided his time between Paris and Rome after 1920.
He explored fresco and mosaic techniques and executed
murals in various mediums in Switzerland, France, and
Italy during the 1920s. In the 1950s, he returned to
the subjects of his Futurist years: dancers, light,
and movement. Throughout his career, Severini published
important theoretical essays and books on art. Severini
died February 26, 1966, in Paris.
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