Book Description
This is the catalogue of the recent exhibition at the Guggenheim Collection in Venice devoted to a 20th-century avant garde master on one of his favorite subjects: the dance. Between 1910 and 1915 Gino Severini was a central figure of Italian Futurism, the movement that celebrated the modern by giving expression to contemporary theories about sensory perception of the new urban and industrial environments. As a resident of Paris, Severini served as an intermediary between Futurists in Italy and the Parisian avant-garde, especially his friends among the Cubist painters.

Above all other art movements, the dance excited Severini's imagination as a painter during his Futurist period. The dancing figure was for him the icon of modernity, a metaphor of dynamism, and the door of perception through which he invited viewers to enter a world built on rhythm observed with intense involvement.

The volume charts a pictorial journey to the limits of abstract art: fifty paintings by Severini, together with nearly fifty works by his contemporaries including: Van Doesburg, Kirchner, Man Ray, Gaudier-Brzeska, Muybridge, Nevinson, Boccioni, Depero, Balla and Sironi.


About the Author
Daniela Fonti is a professor of art history at the University of Rome and is the author of the Severini catalog raisonne.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This is the catalogue of the recent exhibition at the Guggenheim Collection in Venice devoted to a 20th-century avant garde master on one of his favorite subjects: the dance. Between 1910 and 1915 Gino Severini was a central figure of Italian Futurism, the movement that celebrated the modern by giving expression to contemporary theories about sensory perception of the new urban and industrial environments. As a resident of Paris, Severini served as an intermediary between Futurists in Italy and the Parisian avant-garde, especially his friends among the Cubist painters.

Above all other art movements, the dance excited Severini's imagination as a painter during his Futurist period. The dancing figure was for him the icon of modernity, a metaphor of dynamism, and the door of perception through which he invited viewers to enter a world built on rhythm observed with intense involvement.

The volume charts a pictorial journey to the limits of abstract art: fifty paintings by Severini, together with nearly fifty works by his contemporaries including: Van Doesburg, Kirchner, Man Ray, Gaudier-Brzeska, Muybridge, Nevinson, Boccioni, Depero, Balla and Sironi.