Abstract

This paper considers a little-known aspect of Gino Severini‟s œuvre, his religious commissions, in light of his collaborative friendship with the French neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain. The collaboration between Severini and Maritain was a dynamic process of exchange, in which they shared both directly and indirectly their individual expertise as artist and philosopher to arrive at their creative objective of a modern sacred art. Gino Severini‟s futurist canvases inspired Maritain‟s understanding of the avantgarde, while Maritain‟s aesthetic treatise Art et Scholastique provided the means for Severini to reconcile the spheres of discipline and intuition, to realise the common ground between the spiritual and the artistic researches of the avant-garde, and to find an accord between art and morality. It was also thanks to his friendship with Maritain that Severini became one of the first protagonists within Europe to renew sacred art in light of the artistic languages of the avant-garde. Through the specific case studies of the church of Notre-Dame in Lausanne and the mosaics of the Via Crucis in Cortona , I outline the relationship between Maritain‟s neo-Thomism and Severini‟s sacred aesthetic. I also consider Severini‟s collaborations with the Milanese artist Anton Luigi Gajoni, who worked alongside Severini in the church of Notre-Dame, and the group of Roman mosaicists who assisted Severini in the execution of La Via Crucis. I interrogate these collaborations and argue that ideologically they challenge the fragmentary individualism that was understood by Maritain and Severini to characterise modern art, while in practical terms they demonstrate Severini‟s reticence in wholly embracing the collective enterprise