In Forme di una danzatrice nella luce, Severini dispenses completely with setting to concentrate on the frenzied movement of the dancer through a rhythmic breakdown of forms. 

Gino Severini was a major figure in the Futurist movement and a signatory of its two manifestos on painting in 1910. Endowed with a certain figurative autonomy by his relations with the European avant-garde, he acted as a link between Futurism and Cubism after his arrival in Paris. Dance became a favourite subject of his painting at the very outset, reflecting his frequent presence in the most renowned Parisian night clubs such as Monico, the Moulin Rouge, the Folies-Bergère and the Bal Tabarin (all referred to in the titles and settings of his works), where he was very often admitted free of charge due to his skill as a dancer. 

It was in 1911 that Severini first depicted the female dancer, a subject previously overlooked by the other Futurists, who had yet to go beyond the ideas expressed in the manifesto in typically fin de siècle literary terms: “the brand-new psychology of nightlife […] the hectic figures of the viveur, the cocotte, the apache and the alcoholic”. While 1912 is the autograph date on the front of the work, Forme di una danzatrice nella luce (Forms of a Dancer in Light (Dancer with Sequins) must be attributed to the end of that year or, more probably, the beginning of the next due to the stylistic similarities with the works presented by Severini in his solo show of April 1913 in London, for which we have a more reliable chronology (cat. p. 692). For the artist, 1913 was a period of intense productive activity developed through parallel avenues of experimentation. While a focus on the subject and its recognisability are still present in some of his works, in others - including the one examined here - Severini pursued abstraction and synthesis to a far greater extent in an attempt to represent the rhythms of the dance figuratively¹ and capture the sensations aroused at the same time through form, line and colour. 

In Forme di una danzatrice nella luce, Severini dispenses completely with setting to concentrate on the frenzied movement of the dancer through a rhythmic breakdown of forms. Executed in pastel on paper with the application of sequins, the work has a companion piece of similar size entitled Danseuse parmi les tables (Dancer among the Tables, fig. 1).² First introduced by Severini between the spring and the summer of 1912, the use of sequins undergoes organic evolution in Forme di una danzatrice nella luce in accordance with the theoretical and operative precepts developed in the meantime. After including the sequins in the pictorial fabric with the almost purely decorative function of representing nothing but themselves, Severini decided to give them a more abstract presence within the boundaries of established geometric forms designed to recall the motif of the dance. As he later explained with reference to the Danseuses espagnoles à Monico (Spanish Dancers in Monico), which was produced at practically the same time as the Cerruti work: “I applied […] the sequins […] in a more abstract way, […] not to describe a reality but to express it transcendentally.”³ 

Included from the 1950s in Severini’s major shows and in exhibitions of the Futurist movement, Forme di una danzatrice nella luce was bought by Francesco Federico Cerruti in the second half of the 1990s⁴ thanks to the mediation of Giancarlo Gallino, founder of the Antichi Maestri Pittori gallery in Turin, after remaining many years in Rome as part of the collection of Igino Zanda, together with other works by the artist. 

Alessandro Botta 

¹ Severini spoke in the catalogue of the 1913 show in London of being “I do not, for my part, refrain from feeling instinctively drawn towards a plastic whole in which a musical rhythm accompanies the arabesque of lines and planes” (London 1913, p. 6).

² Fonti 1988, p. 139, no. 127.

³ Severini 1946, p. 175.

⁴ The work is in fact not mentioned in the handwritten inventory of the collection dated 30 June 1993. See “Inventario dei mobili, dipinti, sculture, argenti, tappeti, maioliche, porcellane e oggetti d’arte che si trovano nella villa di Rivoli alla data del 30-06-1993” (Cerruti Collection Archives).