Federico Severino

Art Brokerage: Federico Severino Italian Artist: b. 1953. Federico Severino, was born in Brescia, Italy, in 1953. Severino's iconography, which represents often mythological and religious figures, embodies a relation between the real and the imaginary. In effect, his work has attained important critical attention by the national press for artworks inspired by sacred themes. Severino's bronze sculptures embody both the dramatic and grotesque, the tragic and the ironical. It is for this that they appear to recall upon the rather crude way of representation of body and faces, which dominated the neo-figurative art of the 1960's. On the other hand, however, they also resemble traditional, if not archaic icons such as those found during the 16th century: the centaurs, the man beast, and bifrontal figures Sirenes to name but a few. Referring to the latter it needs to be mentioned that Severino is one of the few sculptors who successfully created sculptures visualizing the unreal, symbolical and medieval nature of "The Thirty Three Chants" of Dante's "Inferno". The mysterious netherworlds, narrated by Dante, are expressed by means of either female or male nudes that often appear abandoned, lingering in crouched positions displaying mouths widely opened by astonishment, showing anguished faces expressing the true drama of the human condition. Rough "relieves", woven bodies animated by passion and sufferance and an almost pictorial effect achieved through a special coating, which covers the sculptures' bronze tone but tints them yellow, red or green enforces the impact of looking at Dantesque alike figures.