An intense artistic and theoretical activity characterised Severini’s career, which led from Futurist painting to Synthetic Cubism and then to a renewed classicism, against the backdrop of a constant dialogue between Italy and France. In 1918, Severini painted Still Life, which later became part of the collection of Léonce Rosenberg, promoter of the Cubist group. The painting is situated within the theoretical debate that brings Severini’s art closer to the results of Synthetic Cubism. The artist’s research is aimed at investigating pictorial space as a vision capable of combining the dynamism of line with a rigorous canon of composition. 2024 The answer lies in the creation of a visual arrangement that entrusts geometry with the principle and measure of the spatial organisation of objects. The resulting dialogue describes a painting structured in a perfect balance between the expressiveness of colour, the sensitivity of perception, and the rigor of form that represents the outline of the pictorial elements by contrast. The aesthetic principle adopted by Severini is interpreted as a synthesis of objects in space and time, capable of originating images that in painting are translated into harmonic law.
—Sonia Zampini
