Giovanni Segantini Biography
Giovanni Segantini (Arco, 15 January 1858 – Monte Schafberg, 28 September 1899) was an Italian painter, among the greatest exponents of divisionism. Orphan, after an unhappy childhood also spent in a reformatory (1870-73), he was a pupil at G. Carmignani's Brera Academy. Sensitive to the influence of the Milanese environment and the Lombard romantic tradition, he began by painting still lifes, views and subjects of literary inspiration with dense material mixtures; in 1879 he presented the Coro di S. Antonio in Brera which, although not yet substantially departing from intonations of anecdotal patheticism, achieved a certain success. On that same occasion he met V. Grubicy who, having become his advisor and material supporter, introduced him to the work of JF Millet and to French pointillist research, pushing him in the direction of greater naturalism. In 1880, S. settled in Brianza where, working in more direct contact with nature, he gradually lightened his palette and deepened his research on light in numerous landscapes and rural scenes. The subsequent works, executed during his stay in Savognino (1886-94), show the stylistic maturity he had achieved: large compositions rendered with pointillist technique celebrate a sense of panicky quiet, a sort of mystical pantheism that the artist also expressed in his numerous writings. In these years, present at the main European art events (London, 1888; Paris, 1889; Berlin, 1893; etc.),
