Gino Severini

After early art training in Rome, Gino Severini moved to Paris in 1906, where he became closely associated with the city’s avant-garde scene, meeting artists and thinkers such as Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Georges Braque. In 1910, Severini became one of the founding members of the Futurist movement, co-signing the “Futurist Painting Manifesto”. He played a vital role in promoting Futurism internationally, organizing exhibitions in Paris, London, and Berlin.

Severini’s artistic development included several key phases. Early in his career, he adopted divisionism, a technique involving small dots of color, before embracing the speed, energy, and fragmentation of futurism. His paintings from this period often depicted movement and nightlife, such as Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin (1912). Later, Severini’s work transitioned toward cubism and eventually neoclassicism, reflecting a broader return to order in European art. In his later years, he also worked on mosaics, frescoes, and religious commissions, especially in France and Switzerland.

Some of Severini’s most well-known paintings include The Boulevard (1910–1911), Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin (1912), Pan Pan Dance, Italian Lancers at a Gallop (1915), and Blue Ballerina. His works have been exhibited extensively, with notable retrospectives held at the Estorick Collection and Grosvenor Gallery in London. During his lifetime, he showed at influential venues such as Der Sturm (Berlin), the Rome Quadrennial, and the Marlborough Gallery. Severini’s art is now held in major museum collections, including MoMA (New York), the Guggenheim, Musée National d’Art Moderne (Paris), and MART (Trento and Rovereto).