Giovanni Segantini

 The Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa presents to the public the grand exhibition that, over ten years since the last exhibition dedicated to the artist, celebrates the work of one of the leading exponents of Divisionism, one of the most sensitive observers of the natural world and an incomparable singer of the mountain as a physical and symbolic place: Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899).

Created with the support of the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz and the Galleria Civica G. Segantini in Arco, and in collaboration with Dario Cimorelli Editore, the exhibition aims to retrace the entire artistic trajectory of Segantini for the first time placing his works in dialogue with those of the major European artists of his time, from Millet to Van Gogh, to tell the story of a star of painting who was able to contribute to and often influence the main artistic movements of his time.

Born in Arco to a family of humble origins, Segantini was trained in the workshop of decorator Luigi Tettamanzi and, later, attended an evening course at the Brera Academy. From his early days in Milan, and subsequently after his move first to Brianza and then to the Swiss Alps, his work would be determined by a deep communion with Nature and the study of the expressive potential of light and color: a search that the painter would carry to extreme consequences with his arrival at Divisionism, which would find full expression in the symbolic and pantheistic rewriting of the alpine spaces he rendered absolute and eternal in pictorial terms.

From the “scapigliati” beginnings to pastoral painting, from daring colorist experiments to the lyrical attempts to capture the spirit of the mountain and celebrate its myth, the exhibition will follow the most important junctions of his biographical and artistic journey through a chronological and geographic pathway divided into four sections and punctuated by numerous thematic focuses.

Through a hundred works from major public and private collections in Italy and Europe - from the Musée d’Orsay to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - some of which have been rediscovered more than a century after their creation, the grand exhibition at the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa will allow the public to discover, with completely new eyes, one of the most extraordinary artists of the nineteenth century.

Accompanying the exhibition, an important scientific catalog published by Dario Cimorelli Editore will gather contributions from the most authoritative scholars of Segantini's work, with extensive sections dedicated to reconstructing his artistic path, his painting technique, and the latest diagnostic investigations, in addition to the reasoned entries for the exhibited works.

The exhibition is curated by Niccolò d’Agati.

On the cover: Giovanni Segantini, Return from the Woods, 1890. © Segantini Museum St. Moritz - Deposit of the Otto Fischbacher Giovanni Segantini Foundation