Venue:
Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Curator:
Daniela Fonti.

Artists:
Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Giuseppe Cominetti, Fortunato Depero, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Percy Wyndham Lewis, Man Ray. Eadweard Muybridge, Christopher R. W. Nevinson, Enrico Prampolini, Auguste Rodin, Gino Severini, Georges Seurat, Mario Sironi, Theo Van Doesburg.

Exhibition description:
Gino Severini. The Dance, 1909–1916 took place half a century after the 25th Venice Biennale of Visual Arts in 1950 paid tribute to Severini and rediscovered in his work the Futurist movement led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. This unique exhibition brought together over fifty Futurist works by Gino Severini and more than forty others by contemporary European artists who exploited the theme of modern dance. The show was separated into two sections, the first of which focused entirely on Severini and the dance. A legacy of the French fin de siècle pictorial imagination, for Severini the dance was an icon of modernity, a metaphor for dynamism and a vehicle for the exploration of a new means of perception. It was the synthesis of a world built on the principles of rhythm and the physical and psychological involvement of the spectator. The theme of the dance, more than any other, triggered the experimental imagination of Severini during the Futurist period. The second section of the exhibition illustrated the impact of modern dance and the music hall upon European art in the first years of the twentieth century, as their influence on artistic imagination was strong and transcended the ambience of the avant-garde. This exhibition included works that have been selected from public and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou and Musée Rodin, Paris, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, and the Tate Gallery, London.

Catalogue:
Fonti, Daniela. Gino Severini. The Dance, 1909-1916. Milan: Skira, 2001.

Two catalogues, in English and Italian. Catalogues include preface by Thomas Krens (Director, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation), essays by Daniela Fonti, John Gage, Silvia Carandini and Marina Carmigani, and catalogue entries by Daniela Fonti, Jasper Sharp, Claudie Judrin, Bärbel Hedinger, Elena Gigli and Gabriella Belli. An appendix includes a critical chronology on Severini’s work, a list of exhibitions and a bibliography.

Library location: GUGG PGC 2001 .02 (English), GUGG PGC 2001 .03, UFFICIO 28 0006 (Italian).