Severini e Giotto

At the end of the First World War in the avant-garde area a real European koiné develops around the so-called "return to order", a reference to antiquity, to a classical notion of space and time, composition and form, design and technology, together with an variously characterized realistic instance. The two texts by Carra on "The Voice" in 1916, Speaking of Giotto and Paolo Uccello constructor, are symptomatic and certainly Severini focused his attention in these when he sets the work of that period in a new relationship with the Italian primitives and classical. After introducing this crossing, the article analyzes in particular the severinian project (unrealized) for the big mosaic behind the altar of St. Peter in Freiburg, dating back to 1931, and the fresco (realized) of the church of the Capuchins at Sion in Switzerland (1948-49). While the first the references to Giotto are occasional, in the fresco of Sion dedicated to the theme of the stigmata of St. Francesco, Severini refers compositionally and conceptually to the panel with the same subject that Giotto painted in the cycle of the Upper Basilica of Assisi. A significant tribute to the ancient master, even if translated into the Cubo-Futurist language of those years.