Restless Dancer

The painting entitled Restless Dancer first appeared at a large travelling show of the Italian Futurists, which started in Paris (February 1912) and then went on to London, Berlin, to Brussels and Holland, ending in Vienna and Budapest. A painting of this title also appeared at the exhibitions of Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin (1914 and 1916), so that one of the versions of the painting, which exists in several authorial replicas, could have been in possession of the famous German collector H. Walden atthattime. From 1908, representations of dancers were one of Severini´s key subjects. He wanted to treat them differently from Edgar Degas or Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Severini admired Georges Seurat and used his method of pure colour blobs (Divisionism). At the same time, in 1910, he made an acquaintance of Umberto Boccioni, and joined the proponents of Futurism. This movement attracted him in its inclination to modem life, dynamism and endeavor to simultaneously render different phases of motion. A combination of the Futuristic simultaneity and the Seurat order and balanced proportions was the main aim of his artistic efforts, while also exploiting experimental methods (collage, the use of real movement). In his works, which had gradually become more abstract, he created a bridge between Italian and French arts of that time.