Gino Severini (Cortona 1883 – Paris 1966) was a painter, mosaicist, and art critic. Born in Cortona, he moved to Rome as a teenager, where he was introduced to neo-impressionist (divisionist) painting by Giacomo Balla. Severini moved to Paris in 1906, where he connected with artists like Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris and engaged with the Cubist movement. Soon after, he became a signatory of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto (1909). Severini played a key role in linking French and Italian art scenes, merging Cubist and Futurist elements (sometimes referred to as cubofuturismo). After the First World War, his work shifted towards a more neoclassical style, echoing Europe’s broader ‘call to order’ movements. He articulated this shift in his treatise Du cubisme au classicisme (Severini 1921). His departure from Marinetti’s Futurism marked a shift away from the radical revolutionary politics of Fascism, as Severini embraced conservative Catholicism and sought to integrate religion with modernism through a more defined classicism, influenced by his friendship with French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (Jones 2009: 61–62, 65; Radin 2011). His connection to Mussolini’s regime appears to have been unstable, and he expressed criticism of the corporative system’s impact on the arts sector (De Marco 2011: 60). Nonetheless, Severini remained involved in several politically significant projects, including the Palazzo di Giustizia in Milan, the Foro Mussolini and the Palazzo degli Uffici of E42 in Rome, and the Palazzo delle Poste in Alessandria. Although the use of Latin was not a prominent feature in Severini’s work, Severini probably selected the Latin inscription for the mosaic he crafted for the square in front of Palazzo degli Uffici (Nastasi 2019: 633–35). He exhibited at major art shows such as the Biennale in Rome in 1923, the Novecento shows in Milan and Geneva in 1926–1929, the Venice Biennale in 1930, and the Quadriennale in Rome, where he won the Grand Prize in 1935; he was elected a corresponding member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in 1938. After the Second World War, he revisited Futurist motifs with a contemporary abstract approach. He spent his later years living between Paris and Italy.

Bibliography

Selected works

Severini, Gino. 1921. Du cubisme au classicisme (esthétique du compas et du nombre). Paris: Povolozky.

———. 1946. Tutta la vita di un pittore. Milan: A. Garzanti.

———. 1996. The Life of a Painter: The Autobiography of Gino Severini. Translated by Jennifer Franchina. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Secondary literature

De Marco, Gabriella. 2011. ‘Biografia di Gino Severini’. In: Fondo Severini. Inventario, edited by Gabriella De Marco and Paola Pettenella, 23–95. Inventari / MaRT 6. Rovereto: Mart.

Fonti, Daniela. 1988. Gino Severini: catalogo ragionato. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori.

Jones, Zoë Marie. 2009. ‘Spiritual Crisis and the “Call to Order”: The Early Aesthetic Writings of Gino Severini and Jacques Maritain’. Word & Image 26 (1): 59–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666280902907004.

Nastasi, Antonino. 2019. Le iscrizioni in latino di Roma Capitale (1870–2018). Rome: Edizioni Quasar.

Radin, Giulia, ed. 2011. Il carteggio Gino Severini-Jacques Maritain, 1923–1966. Documenti del MART. Florence: L.S. Olschki.

Venturi, Lionello, and Gino Severini. 1961. Gino Severini. Rome: DeLuca Editore.

Han Lamers