Still Life with Violin 1964

Gino Severini made this ‘Still Life with Violin’ using simplified forms, and a riot of pattern. It feels like an arrangement of shapes and objects, but also a meditation on seeing. The textures in this piece grab me: that pointillist section, the thin, flat colors, and the graphic quality of the black lines feel playful, like collage. It’s a world rendered in shapes, but the subject is the business of picture making itself. Look how that single swirl, floating above the fruit bowl, becomes a kind of hieroglyph, standing in for a shadow, or a reflection, it’s like the entire history of painting is condensed into one shape. Severini reminds me of artists like Juan Gris, who also used cubism to create these lively, animated compositions. It’s a reminder that art is always a conversation, a way of building on what’s come before and imagining new ways of seeing the world.