Gino Severini. The "Ritratto di Jeanne" and two still lives, 1916-1919

Show introduction

The exhibition Gino Severini, for the Montegufoni Castle and the Rosenberg’s apartment – Works 1921-1929, currently running at the Galleria dello Scudo (starting September 5, 2026), is accompanied by a second exhibition dedicated to the years 1916–1919. During this period, the artist balanced his focus on subjects still linked to Futurism with new explorations of figuration.

Installation view

Ritratto di Jeanne, 1916
oil on canvas, 46 x 38 cm

Ritratto di Jeanne, like Maternity, also from 1916 and now at the Cortona Museum collection, represents the artist’s wife Jeanne at the age of eighteen, capturing a sense of restrained, pensive melancholy following the premature death of their son, Antonio. With its sober, restrained palette, reminiscent of Picasso’s early Cubist works, the painting does not aim to be a mere exercise in academic skill; rather, it seeks to assert itself through its “modernity”.

Tracciato per “Natura morta con pera e carte da gioco”, 1919,
pencil on paper, 32,3 x 25,4 cm

The preparatory drawing for Natura morta con pera e carte da gioco (1919) clearly reveals the constructive method Severini adopted for the still lifes of this period. The composition’s oval is inscribed within a rectangle divided into 64 rectangular subsections, overlaid with a network of radial axes. Against this complex grid, the customary still-life objects are arranged through simple symmetrical reversals, thereby acquiring clarity and simplicity.

Natura morta con rosa, 1919
tempera on paper, 34 x 43 cm

Completed in 1919, the work bears a dedication to the wife of art dealer Léonce Rosenberg beneath the cartouche containing the artist’s signature: “Hommage à Madame L. Rosenberg / avec les meilleurs souhaits pour cette première année de paix / 1 janvier 1920.” It was precisely through Rosenberg that Severini secured a commission at that time from Baron Sir George Sitwell to decorate the Castello di Montegufoni in Tuscany.

Artist

More info ↣