In 2021, following a careful restoration and reinstallation project, the MAEC inaugurated three new rooms entirely dedicated to Gino Severini (1883–1966), restoring to the city a permanent space devoted to its most renowned twentieth-century artist.
The scientific project, curated by Daniela Fonti in collaboration with Romana Severini Brunori, made it possible to reinterpret and recontextualize the body of works resulting from donations made over time by the artist himself and by his family — Gina Severini Franchina, Jeanne Fort and, more recently, Romana Severini Brunori — together with additional bequests from friends and admirers.
The exhibition design, created by Andrea Mandara with graphic design by Francesca Pavese, builds a unified narrative across more than six decades of artistic activity, interweaving paintings, mosaics, documentary materials, photographs and archival testimonies.
Despite the inevitable absence of many Futurist and Cubist works now housed in major international museums, the Severini Rooms offer a comprehensive vision of his artistic evolution: from his dialogue with the European avant-gardes to his sacred art period, and finally to the technical experiments that established him as a central figure in the European artistic landscape of the twentieth century.
Among the five signatories of the Manifesto of Futurist Painters — alongside Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo — Severini is the only one represented by permanent monographic rooms in a major Italian museum. A recognition that confirms Cortona’s role as the privileged guardian of his legacy.
MAEC | The Rooms Dedicated to Gino Severini
The First Room
Visitors enter the Severini Rooms through the sculptural portrait of the artist modeled by his son-in-law Nino Franchina — a symbolic presence guiding them into the heart of his story.
The first room is devoted to the profound relationship between Severini and Cortona. Born in 1883, he left the city as a teenager for Rome and later Paris, yet he never severed his bond with his native land, which in his Memoirs he described as a “natural attachment” that accompanied him throughout his life.
Here, visitors encounter his family roots and early artistic efforts: portraits of his parents, his wife Jeanne and his daughters, alongside the significant portrait of Monsignor Lorenzo Passerini, the young artist’s first patron.
The room is dominated by two fundamental works: La bohémienne (1905), a large-scale figure of intense expressive power marking his first ambitious independent achievement, and Maternity (1916), a masterpiece of the “return to order” period, where classical monumentality merges with the geometric structure developed through his dialogue with Cubism.
This first stage recounts the origins of a European journey: from the streets of Cortona to the capitals of the avant-garde.
The Second Room
The second room opens like a theatrical space: a large proscenium arch, inspired by the stage design Severini created for the ballet Scarlattiana (1926), introduces visitors to his “imaginary museum.”
Beyond the curtain, a selection of prints — from early woodcuts of 1916 to postwar lithographs — retraces the major themes of his research: Futurist dance and light, Cubist still lifes, abstract and decorative compositions. Displayed in cases, the costumes of Harlequin and Pulcinella evoke the atmosphere of his Roman studio, where the masks of the Commedia dell’Arte became central figures in his production.
An immersive space projects masterpieces now dispersed across museums worldwide — an impossible museum that cannot be physically reunited, yet is evoked through image and memory.
Opposite, the facsimile of the frescoes from the Castle of Montegufoni (1922) testifies to Severini’s return to mural painting and the technique of true fresco. The lively scenes of Harlequins and musical masks, constructed through rigorous geometric balances, mark a decisive phase: the dialogue between modernity and tradition, between avant-garde and classicism.
This room portrays an artist capable of transforming theatre, decoration and memory into pictorial space.
The Third Room
The third room ideally reconstructs the atmosphere of Severini’s studios from the 1940s until his death, thanks to personal objects donated by his daughter Romana. Easels, musical instruments, floral wallpapers, glass objects and small furnishings evoke the “creative disorder” in which luminous still lifes, portraits and figures took shape.
During the Second World War, confined to Rome, the artist found in the studio a space of freedom: Cubist geometry softened into more fluid rhythms, the lesson of Matisse intertwined with Italian tradition, and everyday objects became protagonists of compositions rich in decorative grace.
The room also retraces his renewed commitment to sacred art, from painted cycles in churches of French-speaking Switzerland to his dialogue with the thought of Jacques Maritain, culminating in his rediscovery of ancient fresco and mosaic techniques, including the Via Crucis and the Sacred Heart mosaic in the Cathedral of Cortona.
In his final years, already in his eighties, Severini continued to surprise: with the large iron collages of The Industrial Age (1959–1964), he confronted the contemporary language of Nouveau Réalisme with energy and experimentation, demonstrating a vitality that spanned the entire twentieth century.
This room is where memory, spirituality and materiality intertwine, recounting the final season of an artist always in dialogue with his time.
