 gino severini (7 april 1883 â 26 february 1966) was an italian painter and a leading member of the futurist movement. for much of his life he divided his time between paris and rome. he was associated with neo-classicism and the "return to order" in the decade after the first world war. during his career he worked in a variety of media, including mosaic and fresco. he showed his work at major exhibitions, including the rome quadrennial, and won art prizes from major institutions. == early life ==  severini was born into a poor family in cortona, italy. his father was a junior court official and his mother a dressmaker. he studied at the scuola tecnica in cortona until the age of fifteen, when he was expelled from the entire italian school system for the theft of exam papers. for a while he worked with his father; then in 1899 he moved to rome with his mother. it was there that he first showed a serious interest in art, painting in his spare time while working as a shipping clerk. with the help of a patron of cortonese origins he attended art classes, enrolling in the free school for nude studies (an annex of the rome fine art institute) and a private academy. his formal art education ended after two years when his patron stopped his allowance, declaring, "i absolutely do not understand your lack of order."severini, g., the life of a painter, princeton, princeton university press, 1995. isbn 0-691-04419-8 in 1900 he met the painter umberto boccioni. together they visited the studio of giacomo balla, where they were introduced to the technique of divisionism, painting with divided rather than mixed color and breaking the painted surface into a field of stippled dots and stripes. the ideas of divisionism had a great influenc
1883_births 1966_deaths 20th-century_Italian_painters Divisionist_painters Italian_Futurist_painters Italian_artists Modern_art