By Anne Leader
Gino Severini died on 26 February 1966 in Paris. Severini was born in Cortona and moved to Rome at age 15 where he worked as an accountant. Night art classes led him to befriend Umberto Boccioni and later Giacomo Balla. Attracted by the avant-garde, he moved to Paris in 1906 and joined the community of artists and writers near Monmartre that included Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Georges Braque and studied the work of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, especially Georges Seurat. He was one of the signers of the 1910 Futurist Manifesto and became one of the movement’s primary exponents. Severini would return to Italy in the 1920s and 30s and took part in numerous projects sponsored by Benito Mussolini’s fascist government. He returned to Paris in 1946 and remained there until his death twenty years later.
Reference: Ester Coen. “Severini, Gino.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T077858>.
Armored Train in Action, oil on canvas, 1915, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Richard S. Zeisler © 2014 Gino Severini / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Red Cross Train Passing a Village (Train de la Croix Rouge traversant un village), summer 1915. Oil on canvas, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 44.944 © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Visual Synthesis of the Idea: “War,” 1914, oil on canvas, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Bequest of Sylvia Slifka, © 2014 Gino Severini / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Gino Severini, aged 30, at the opening of his solo exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery, London
Blue Dancer (Ballerina blu), 1912, oil on canvas with sequins, Gianni Mattioli Collection, long-term loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice © Gino Severini, by SIAE 2008
Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin, oil on canvas with sequins, 1912, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest © 2014 Gino Severini / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
St. Mark, mosaic, San Marco, Cortona