Gino Severini (1883-1966)

During the 1920s, the Pierrot or Pulcinella became a recurring theme in Severini's work. Next to the religious work executed in this decade, the allegory of the mask develops. Instead of depicting a specific person, the Pierrot now personifies the pure and simple man. As Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco wrote, 'A long path of proportional and harmonical research lies behind the apparent simplicity of every painting. It is most interesting to observe that the imagery at the boundaries of naivety [...] corresponds to an elaborate numeric and proportional preparation, of musical scales and algebraic schemes, accompanying the preliminary drawings. Therefore the Pulcinella and the Colombina are the simple images of complex processes' (M. Fagiolo dell'Arco, quoted in D. Fonti, Gino Severini: Catalogo ragionato, Milan 1988, p. 349).