#gino severini

Gino Severini (1883-1966), The Yellow Dancers, ca. 1911-1912, oil on canvas, Cambridge, Harvard Art Museums

June 21, 2026

In France, the summer solstice is celebrated with what's called la Fête de la musique. Everyone, everywhere can go out with an instrument (or these days, dj equipment) and play music in the streets well past midnight. Revellers circulate from one spot to the next, picking up drinks and food in between dancing spots.

There's no shortage of artworks showcasing music and or dancing, but to mark the occasion today, I thought this work by the Italian futurist Gino Severini would be more interesting.

I saw it in October at the Harvard Arts Museum. Here's what the museum has to say about it:

Severini was a prominent painter of Italian futurism, the first strategically organised avant-garde art movement of the 20th century. It was launched by poet, polemicist, and entrepreneur Filipp Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. The futurists declared war on traditional art and outmoded cultural institutions and proclaimed the advent of an aesthetic that would embody the dynamism of modern life and its enhancement by technology. The Yellow Dancers was one of eight seminal works by Severini included in the first major futurist exhibition, held in Paris in February 1912. Two cabaret dancers whirling in yellow, and fleshy pink, following a principle stated in the 1910 Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting: "movement and light destroy the materiality of bodies."

Spring in Montmartre 1909

Gino Severini (1883-1966$