An Italian painter and leading member of the Futurist movement. For much of his life he divided his time between Paris and Rome. He was associated with Neo-Classicism and the 'return to order' in the decade after WWI. During his career he worked in a variety of media, including mosaic and fresco. He showed his work at major exhibitions, including the Rome Quadrennial.

Born into a poor family, in 1900 he met the painter Umberto Boccioni. Together they visited the studio of Giacomo Balla, where they were introduced to the technique of Divisionism, which had a great influence on Severini's early work and on Futurist painting from 1910 to 1911. In 1906, he settled in Paris, where he met most of the rising artists of the period, befriending Amedeo Modigliani and occupying a studio next to those of Raoul Dufy and Georges Braque. He knew most of the Parisian avant-garde, including Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso. He was invited by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Boccioni to join the Futurist movement and was a co-signatory of the Futurist Manifesto in 1910.

After WWI, he moved away from Futurism and returned to more figurative painting. In his later life, his work became semi-abstract.