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Lot Essay
In the years leading up to World War I, Severini remained staunchly committed to the principles of Futurism outlined by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in his Manifesto del futurismo of 1909. Bold patriotism, technological advancement and speed characterized the movement’s vision of a new Italian nation. During these years, Severini focused on the forceful movement and whirring excitement of modern urban transportation. Powerful trains, trams, buses and motorcars provided the perfect subject matter for the Futurist artistic agenda. Similarly, Severini saw this forceful energy in the movement of dancers, a subject he depicted repeatedly from 1911 to 1915 and revisited many decades later in the 1950s.
The present charcoal drawing from 1915 evokes the vigorous romping and twirling of the dancers that Severini would have seen at dance halls or nightclubs in Paris, where he moved in 1906. It captures a vision of the dancer in motion, as she jumps, twists, and kicks. The artist’s bold charcoal lines form concentric circles, as if the dancer’s continuous pirouettes pulsate outward and expand beyond the central form. The curves are sharply interrupted by straight vertical and diagonal lines, a stark visual reminder of the robust infrastructure supporting the fast-paced society championed by the Futurists. Unlike painting, drawing allowed Severini to relinquish purely pictorial problems—such as the all-encompassing presence of color and its total integration with forms—to concentrate on ideas of construction and dynamism. As the artist wrote in the 1913 catalogue that accompanied the exhibition of his work at the Marlborough Gallery in London, “same abstraction and same search for the arabesque and rhythm but remaining in an intermediate zone between the pictorial and the plastic execution” (quoted in D. Fonti, Gino Severini: Catalogo ragionato, Milan, 1988, p. 153).
While Severini sought to capture the velocity of modern society in his images, he was simultaneously exposed to the ideas of the avant-garde circles in Paris, whose members preferred Cubist natures mortes to the Futurists’ freneticism. Unlike other Futurists, Severini spent years in Paris, and he was well-acquainted with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, whose art would help direct Severini’s work in the years following the war. He provided an important link between the two movements, having personal relationships with members of both circles and at times merging elements of each movement within his artwork.
The present charcoal drawing from 1915 evokes the vigorous romping and twirling of the dancers that Severini would have seen at dance halls or nightclubs in Paris, where he moved in 1906. It captures a vision of the dancer in motion, as she jumps, twists, and kicks. The artist’s bold charcoal lines form concentric circles, as if the dancer’s continuous pirouettes pulsate outward and expand beyond the central form. The curves are sharply interrupted by straight vertical and diagonal lines, a stark visual reminder of the robust infrastructure supporting the fast-paced society championed by the Futurists. Unlike painting, drawing allowed Severini to relinquish purely pictorial problems—such as the all-encompassing presence of color and its total integration with forms—to concentrate on ideas of construction and dynamism. As the artist wrote in the 1913 catalogue that accompanied the exhibition of his work at the Marlborough Gallery in London, “same abstraction and same search for the arabesque and rhythm but remaining in an intermediate zone between the pictorial and the plastic execution” (quoted in D. Fonti, Gino Severini: Catalogo ragionato, Milan, 1988, p. 153).
While Severini sought to capture the velocity of modern society in his images, he was simultaneously exposed to the ideas of the avant-garde circles in Paris, whose members preferred Cubist natures mortes to the Futurists’ freneticism. Unlike other Futurists, Severini spent years in Paris, and he was well-acquainted with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse, whose art would help direct Severini’s work in the years following the war. He provided an important link between the two movements, having personal relationships with members of both circles and at times merging elements of each movement within his artwork.