The aim of this paper is to provide a deep analysis of La Danseuse obsedante by Gino Severini from an iconographic perspective. The painting is the artist's first depiction of the dancer, a theme that distinguishes his Futurist pictorial production. The inquiry chiefly examines the 'low' sources, the nightlife and the dance halls usually attended by Severini in Montmartre. Songs, postcards, photographs,lqffiches, club guides, journalistic reports and cartoons allow the understanding of the irreverent spirit that animated the Bohemian neighbourhood he lived in, therefore to identify the possible sources that stimulated his pictorial sensitivity. An analysis and a possible interpretation of each element of the painting (the cat, the girl, the viveur and the dancer) are here proposed in order to consider the specificities of the world of the Parisian divertissement of those years. Moreover, owing to the comments expressed by French critics.on the occasion of the first public exhibition of La Danseuse obsedante, at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1912, and because of certain formal and stylistic similarities with Severini's work, the essays analyses some paintings by Kees van Dongen useful for the interpretation of La Danseuse obsedante.
