Studio: international art (11.1897)

The Work of G. Segantini

natural distance, to mix, to melt them together, sought the mountains, and living in the huts and

gave an effect of more air, more light, and, conse- hamlets of the herdsmen and peasants I studied

quently, of more truth. them, their animals, their surroundings, their

"This secret, nowadays an approved fact, had land. Pushing on higher into the Alps of the

been perceived by painters of all times and all Grison I stopped in Savognino, where I remained

countries, the first of whom was Beato Angelico. eight years.

It came to me through my loving and earnest study "There were summers on the upper pastures,

of Nature, and as something personal and in- winters in the mountain huts. Living up there at

dividual." 2500 metres above the sea I learned to look at the

In his first studio, at Milan, he painted the sun more daringly, to love its rays; I learned to

Falconiera and some genre, in which his rare study Nature in her most intense and luminous

colour-sense was already making itself felt. But colouring, in her most vivid life."

the old love of the open was strong upon him, and And here, apart with Nature in the virginity of

he was soon away again to the hills. her eternal snows, in the silence of the high places,

" With this first technical method of colour and Segantini reverently labours at his calling, follow-
design, quite my own, I went into the Brianza, on ing with a heart open to all beauty and full of
the forefoot of the Alps, and remained there about loving sympathy the simple lives of the mountain
four years. Nature came to seem to me an instru- people, painting them in the weariness of their
ment playing an accom-
paniment to a voice within
my heart, which sang the
calm harmonies of the
sunsets and the intimate
sense of things.

" Nourishing in this
way a melancholy which
brought infinite sweetness
to my soul, I ever strove
to exalt myself."
• The Brianza is an idyllic
land, lying partly between
Como and Lecco. Here
Segantini, entering upon
his second manner, painted
a series of pictures charac-
terised by great depth of
sympathy, originality, and
grace of style.

Of these the Ave Maria
a Trasbordo was awarded
the gold medal at Amster-
dam in 1883, after narrowly
escaping rejection by the
Milan Commission.

In his largest painting
of this time, the Alia
Sfanga, bought by the
National Gallery of Italy
for twenty thousand lire,
the breadth and reserve
which distinguish Segan-
tini's later canvases are
already observable.

''From the hills I "evening" from a drawing by g. segantini

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