Author 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.