“By the simple indication of values and of mass I have arrived at arabesque. The indication of form and colour should give us the total reality. These drawings are plastic rhythms.”

This self-portrait is a wonderful example of the level of maturity achieved by Gino Severini’s Futurist style as early as the end of 1912. In view of the solo exhibition he was due to hold in London (Marlborough Gallery) in April of the following year, 1913, Severini produced a series of important drawings “with hints of colour”, as we can read in the catalogue, meaning that he made them in charcoal with touches of tempera and pastel. They were mostly female portraits - including the famous image of his fiancée Jeanne Fort, daughter of the Symbolist poet Paul, whom he married in summer 1913 - and pictures of figures dancing under the spotlights in Parisian cabarets. Like the others, the male figure in this self-portrait is summed up by a few lines that tend to capture his presence in space, perceived in a futuristic manner as something fluid and in constant movement. The elements that have been highlighted on a conceptual level include the curvature of the bowler hat, the elegant monocle and, below, the stiff white collar and tie. The white shirt front intersects and invades the space above the face, transcribed within a triangular module that deliberately contrasts with the soft circular lines of the rest. Lastly, at the bottom, the space all around the figure is amplified by a kind of rotating orbit that can be interpreted as dislocations of the shoulder joint. Severini explains this original and perfectly configured language as follows in the London exhibition catalogue: “By the simple indication of values and of mass I have arrived at arabesque. The indication of form and colour should give us the total reality. These drawings are plastic rhythms.”¹ It is therefore very clear how the process of Futurist portrayal is not, for Severini, the result of a purely intuitive and instantaneous approach to the forms of perceived reality but, on the contrary, the result of a conceptual selective process that, through resolute exemplification, drives him to do away with the superfluous details of the figure in order to highlight the ones that, in addition to conveying the physical sense of the form, also allude to aspects of the sitter’s psychology. Consequently it is no surprise that one of the most widely circulated photographs from the history of Futurism, namely Severini at the exhibition opening in London, shows the artist dressed up in front of his self-portrait, certainly not the most important work at the exhibition, which also displayed masterpieces including Danseune à Pigalle (Dancer at Pigalle, 1912, now at the Baltimore Museum of Art) and L’Autobus (The Bus, 1913, Milan, Museo del Novecento).² It was a sort of self-presentation of the artist as a success, an elegant dandy - something in common with Marinetti’s public image - that once again supports the prophetic focus by the Futurists on the intangible elements of communication in the burgeoning art system. The exact opposite of the truth: the same artist, in the few pages devoted to the London exhibition, recalls his terrible financial circumstances of the spring of 1913, with his studio seized by creditors and his paintings for the exhibition blocked by the seizure (fortunately resolved by his Dutch friend Dop Bles, who funded the travel costs for the artist and his artworks in their entirety). He also recalls how the hoped-for sales did not happen despite the public’s curiosity and the interest of the press.³ The no. 22 we can glimpse in the historical photograph (fig. 1) recurs in the autograph writing on the back of the drawing signed in full in a cursive hand. It corresponds to the lists - common in Futurist exhibitions, especially in the early days - that the artists drew up in an awareness of the difficulties deciphering what was in their works. This was partly due to the fact that from the very start the collective exhibitions with dozens of works on show went on promotional tours to various European capitals. This was also the case with the London solo exhibition, which moved to Berlin in the summer, keeping the catalogue and the number of works (around thirty) unchanged. In 1914, after its return to Italy, this work was almost certainly exhibited by the gallery owner Giuseppe Sprovieri in Naples, in a large group exhibition, where it remained no. 22. After a period of time in a London collection, it entered the Cerruti Collection in 2000. 

Daniela Fonti 

¹ London 1913, p. 11.

² See Fonti 1988, pp. 130, no. 109, p. 140, no.129.

³ See Severini 1946, p. 177. On the basis of a comparison with the exhibition that opened in Berlin in June-August 1913 at the Der Sturm gallery run by H. Walden, Severini added another work in place of the only one that sold in London, the drawing of Georgette of the Folies Bergères (Fonti 1988, p. 136, no. 119) which has not been seen since.