Gino Severini
The Futurist in Paris, who painted dancers as shattered light and later returned to order.
Gino Severini was born at Cortona in 1883, moved to Paris in 1906 and was the Futurists' link to the French avant-garde, signing the movement's manifestos while living among the Cubists. His subject was the dance hall — the Bal Tabarin, the Pan Pan at Monico — painted as fractured planes of light, movement and sequins, sometimes with real sequins stuck to the canvas. After the First World War he turned decisively towards classicism, wrote on proportion and geometry, and spent much of his later career on mosaic and fresco for churches and public buildings in Italy and Switzerland. He died in Paris in 1966.
The Futurist years of 1910 to 1915 are the peak of the market by a very large margin, and works from that period are scarce and heavily documented. The post-war classical work and the later decorative and commedia dell'arte subjects form a much broader and more modest field. Severini is well catalogued, and the archives held by his family and by Italian institutions are the reference. There is a substantial output of drawings, gouaches and prints, and forgeries of the Futurist manner exist.
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