1916 oil on canvas, 98×70 cm.
signed and dated upper right U. Conti 1916
The phase of transition from Fauvism to Futurism, of which this Portrait of the Poet Gino Chierini is the culmination, is prepared by an intense poetic activity of Conti, who in Futurism would make his debut precisely as a poet. The movement in which Conti would seem to be interested at first is Orphism, a filiation of Cubism, which has greater relations with the world of poetry and music and also lends itself more easily to a relationship with dream life.
Conti found a way to bring these motifs together in a symbolic work that establishes a parallel with a painting from this same time, now lost: // violin master Fanfulla Lari, While compared to the wealth and violence of the period fauve the color goes acquiring a more muted and homogeneous tone and verifies a possibility .spiritual never before touched, the air barely moves with lines together prismatic and arabesque.
