Self-Portrait with Straw Boater

from 1910

Big-city nightlife becomes his main theme

From 1910 the main theme of his paintings is the nightlife of the big city, in which signs of Futurism — dynamism and sharpness of image — can be seen. The machine attracts him less than his fellow Futurists, and he most often chooses the figure of the dancer to express the Futurist theories of dynamism.

February – April 1910

Signs the manifestos of Futurist painting

Invited by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Boccioni to join the Futurist movement, he co-signs, with Balla, Boccioni, Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo, the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters (February 1910) and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting (April of the same year).

1911

The link between Paris and the Futurists

An important link between artists in France and Italy, he comes into contact with Cubism before his Futurist colleagues; after a visit to Paris in 1911 the Italian Futurists adopt a sort of Cubism, which gives them a means of analysing energy in paintings and expressing dynamism.

February 1912

First Futurist exhibition outside Italy

He helps to organize the first Futurist exhibition outside Italy, at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris, and later takes part in Futurist shows in Europe and the United States. The Futurists were pleased with the response, but, as he later recalled, influential critics, notably Apollinaire, mocked them for their pretensions, their ignorance of the main currents of modern art and their provincialism — and in time Severini came to agree with Apollinaire.

1913

Solo exhibitions in London and Berlin

In 1913 his solo exhibitions are held at the Marlborough Gallery in London (the first of his career) and at Der Sturm in Berlin.

August 1913

Married: Jeanne Fort