GINO SEVERINI, (1883-1966)
Danzatrice
Danzatrice
signed 'G Severini' (lower centre)
pen and India ink on paper
29.7 x 20.6cm (11 11/16 x 8 1/8in).
Executed in 1955
The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Dott.ssa Romana Severini Brunori.
Provenance
Private collection, Italy; their sale, Christie's, South Kensington, 7 February 2014, lot 25.
Private collection, London (acquired at the above sale).
'I think I realise only now how much I am in debt with Braque and Picasso' (G. Severini)
Severini first depicted the subject of the dancer in 1910. During the first decade of the 20th century he explored the Divisionist technique, working together with Futurist artists such as Giacomo Balla, his mentor, Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni. He returned to this subject time and again until the 1950s. In Danzatrice, executed in 1955, Severini deconstructs the figure through a grid of intersecting vivid black lines which create a number of geometrical shapes, giving life to an abstracted dancer.
Severini was fascinated by the study of light and movement, as were the majority of avant-garde Italian and French artists including Post-Impressionists Seurat and Signac, whom Severini admired while living in Paris from 1905, and Italian Futurists, with whom Severini signed the second 'Manifesto dei pittori futuristi' in April 1910. It was in Paris that Severini frequented popular cabaret bars such as Le Chat noir and Bal Tabarin for his inspiration. The subject of the dancer was already popular among Impressionist artists such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, however, as the present work shows, Severini developed this motif according to the Cubist fragmentation of elements, recreating rhythm and movement in a well-balanced composition.
The present sketch is, in its simplicity and economy of lines, of great impact and represents one of the most recognisable of Severini's drawings. The philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote of the artist's 1954 New York exhibition that 'his canvases were themselves real dances of lines and colours' (quoted in Severini, l'emozione e la regola, exh. cat., Parma, 2016, p. 18).
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Danzatrice
Danzatrice
signed 'G Severini' (lower centre)
pen and India ink on paper
29.7 x 20.6cm (11 11/16 x 8 1/8in).
Executed in 1955
The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Dott.ssa Romana Severini Brunori.
Provenance
Private collection, Italy; their sale, Christie's, South Kensington, 7 February 2014, lot 25.
Private collection, London (acquired at the above sale).
'I think I realise only now how much I am in debt with Braque and Picasso' (G. Severini)
Severini first depicted the subject of the dancer in 1910. During the first decade of the 20th century he explored the Divisionist technique, working together with Futurist artists such as Giacomo Balla, his mentor, Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni. He returned to this subject time and again until the 1950s. In Danzatrice, executed in 1955, Severini deconstructs the figure through a grid of intersecting vivid black lines which create a number of geometrical shapes, giving life to an abstracted dancer.
Severini was fascinated by the study of light and movement, as were the majority of avant-garde Italian and French artists including Post-Impressionists Seurat and Signac, whom Severini admired while living in Paris from 1905, and Italian Futurists, with whom Severini signed the second 'Manifesto dei pittori futuristi' in April 1910. It was in Paris that Severini frequented popular cabaret bars such as Le Chat noir and Bal Tabarin for his inspiration. The subject of the dancer was already popular among Impressionist artists such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, however, as the present work shows, Severini developed this motif according to the Cubist fragmentation of elements, recreating rhythm and movement in a well-balanced composition.
The present sketch is, in its simplicity and economy of lines, of great impact and represents one of the most recognisable of Severini's drawings. The philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote of the artist's 1954 New York exhibition that 'his canvases were themselves real dances of lines and colours' (quoted in Severini, l'emozione e la regola, exh. cat., Parma, 2016, p. 18).
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