Ritratto del Dottor Giordani

Here we have precious testimony to Severini’s Futurist work in 1913. The date (even the month, July) and the name of the city where Severini was working (PARIS) are inscribed in the lower right, and to the left we have the dedication “Al carissimo amico Giordani affettuosamente Gino Severini” (to my dear friend Giordani with affection). The components of the portrait are placed, fancifully, here and there on the surface: in the upper part, a top hat, whose curve is underscored by two dashes of light running up and down its entire length. Beneath the round brim we glimpse the face, deformed by “dynamism,” the eyes, nose and chin barely sketched out, the high collar bound by a blue cravat. Two semi-cylinders visible at both sides of the central image would seem to be a fleeting invocation of jacket sleeves. The composition has all the artist’s characteristic freshness, daring, inventiveness and vitality, newly fired by the Futurist fury. Considering how rare Futurist works are in this early, most intense period of Severini’s career – soon to be thought better of in favour of a geometrical classicism – the work is precious both as an invaluable historical document and as the product of a time of happy creative freedom.