Severino Rappa (1866-1945, Friend Of Félix Fénéon), Lecture (reading)

Séverin Rappa (1866-1945)
Reading
drawing in pencil
signed and dated in the middle on the right "S. Rappa / 29.1.1920 / Paris"
340 x 245 mm
Good condition, unframed

Séverin Rappa (1866-1945) was one of the artists who were supported and protected by the art critic Félix Fénéon during the first half of the 20th century. Trained in Italy as a woodcarver in the 1880s, he traveled through Europe, in Switzerland and France, fascinated and convinced by the purest and most radical anarchist theses of the time.
Expelled from France in 1892 for his ideas and perhaps his actions, Séverin Rappa was able to return to Paris in 1899 where he entered the studio of sculptor and medalist Alexandre Charpentier. It is certainly thanks to Charpentier that Rappa met more intimately the Neo-Impressionists group, notably Maximilien Luce, Paul Signac, Theo van Rysselberghe and other agitators of the turn of the century.

During his rather confidential career, Séverin Rappa exhibited alongside some of the most famous names in modern painting and in pioneering Salons: in 1909 at La Libre Esthétique in Brussels, and in those same years at the Salons d'Automne, Salons des Indépendants and Salons de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

Our drawing, dated and located in Paris on January 29, 1920, is quite characteristic of the manner and the aesthetics of this always precise and adventurous artist. At the top of the page, as often in his drawings, Rappa gives the title of his work, in stylized capital letters.

Lecture
Reading

This young woman is absorbed in her thoughts, perhaps even in the beauty that springs from the book she is holding in her hands. The poetry of our work is both in the incessant vibrations of the pencil as well as in the framing chosen by the artist. Séverin Rappa does not include the anecdotal in his drawing, he does not show the book. He chooses to depict far more the pleasure of reading, the reflection over words, the pure abstraction that is the questioning of literary, poetic or political matters.

Séverin Rappa devoted himself almost exclusively to drawn portraits, always in the same way, and most often in pencil, as here. His manner is immediately recognizable, especially for those who know the various portraits that the artist has made of Félix Fénéon and his relatives over the years of intimate and intellectual friendship. In his style of drawing, Rappa sometimes evokes Théo van Rysselberghe, Lucie Cousturier, Émile Compard, other artists close to Fénéon.

The drawing is well preserved, presented in sheet.