Expansion spherique de la lumiere (centripète et centrifuge) [Spherical Expansion of Light (Centripetal and Centrifugal)]

Artist Gino Severini (Italian, 1883 - 1966)

Date1914

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsFramed: 33 1/8 x 28 3/4 x 2in. (84.1 x 73 x 5.1cm)
Overall: 24 3/16 x 19 11/16in. (61.4 x 50cm)

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Terms

20th Century

Object number53.218

Description

On View

On view

Collections

20th-Century Paintings

CopyrightPresumed copyright: the artist or the artist's representative/heir(s).

Label TextThrough 1913, Italian Futurist Severini painted enthusiastically in his adopted home of Paris. His canvases of the period capture the excited dynamism suggested by Parisian nightlife, saturated with lights, sounds and colors. The theme of the cabaret dancer, as the metaphor of the complex kaleidoscope of modern life, is the motif in his canvases of the year. The dancer is sometimes recognizable, but during the summer of 1913 Severini refined his style to a linear, almost musical, arabesque, that led to radical abstraction. By 1914, Severini stated, " Subjects no longer exist." Spherical Expansion of Light, as the title indicates, is ambitiously intended as the rendering on canvas of the effect of two contrasting light movements that are equally abstract: one moving towards the center of the painting as a converging prism, and the other dissolving-through rotating, circular forms-the luminous particles towards the extreme periphery. Daniela Fonti Translated by Jill Weinreich 2005