Gino Severini - Du Cubisme au Classicisme - 1921

From Cubism to Classicism
Author: Gino Severini
year: 1921
publisher: J. Povolozky & C. language: French

Gino: From Cubism to Classicism. Aesthetics of the compass and of numbers. Preface by R. Allendy, Paris, Povolozky & C., 1921, 20 x 14.5 cm. Editorial softcover; pp. 124, (4) with various illustrations in the text and some plates outside the text. Fictitious mention of a fifth edition on the cover. The most important critical text of the “return to order,” after the sparks of Futurism, which brings Severini’s aesthetic pursuit closer to Picasso’s neoclassical one, in an experience shared by all of European art of the period, even in the musical field. It is precisely Gino Severini who, after the Marinettian intoxication, weaves together Futurist dynamism and the decomposition and recomposition of the Cubist planes, foreshadowing and actively contributing to imposing that artistic language that would interest all of Europe, named Cubo-Futurism. Since 1920 Severini has shuttled between Paris and Rome, working on his “psychic cubism” until the following year, when with the publication of the essay From Cubism to Classicism he will consider this phase concluded, opting for a painting in a “neoclassical” mold with metaphysical influences. It is that “return to the craft,” hoped for in 1919 by Giorgio de Chirico from the pages of Valori plastici.