Gino Severini,  (b. April 7, 1883, Cortona, Italy—d. February 27, 1966, Paris, France), Italian painter who synthesized the styles of Futurism and Cubism. Severini began his painting career in 1900 as a student of Giacomo Balla, an Italian pointillist painter who later became a prominent Futurist. Stimulated by Balla’s account of the new painting in France, Severini moved to Paris in 1906 and met leading members of the French avant-garde, such as the Cubist painters Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso and the writer Guillaume Apollinaire. Severini continued to work in the pointillist ...