Gaetano Previati, Der Sonnenwagen (Il carro del sole), 1907, Öl auf Leinwand, 127 x 185 cm, Camera di Commercio, Industria, Artigianato, e Agricoltura, Mailand.

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Spiegel des Lebens. Und was der erste tat, tun auch die andern (Lo specchio della vita. E ciò che l’una fa, e l’altre fanno), 1895-1898, Öl auf Leinwand, 132 x 291 cm, GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte e Contemporanea, Turin.

Emilio Longoni, Der Klang des Bachs (Il suono del ruscello), 1902/03, Öl auf Leinwand, 106 x 165 cm, Privatsammlung.

Giovanni Segantini, Meine Modelle (I miei modelli), 1888, Öl auf Leinwand, 65,5 x 92,5 cm, Kunsthaus Zürich, Vereinigung Zürcher Kunstfreunde.

Angelo Morbelli, Im Reisfeld (In risaia), 1898-1901, Öl auf Leinwand, 183 x 130 cm, Privatsammlung.

Kunsthaus Zurich
Heimplatz 1
CH 8001 Zurich
+41 (0)44 253 84 84
Rivoluzione!
Italian Modernism
from Segantini to Balla
September 26, 2008-
January 11, 2009

Divisionism was the most significant movement in Italian painting in the late 19th century. Like Georges Seurat and Paul Signac of the French Neo-Impressionists, Giovanni Segantini is emblematic of Divisionism, a master of colour, luminescent power and brilliance. The Divisionists were Italy’s answer to the Pointillists, who were in turn the Parisian successors to the Impressionists. Adherents of Divisionism analysed colour and light, and Segantini and his contemporaries ushered in classical modernism in Italy, applying colour theory and the principles of optics to the work of painting. Their dots and brushstrokes often rendered in complementary, contrasting primary colours, the Divisionists created dazzling compositions flooded with light.

Among the first generation of Divisionist painters were Giovanni Segantini, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo and Gaetano Previati, who were to become its chief proponents. Their successors in the second generation, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni, turned later in their careers to Futurism.

While the French Post-Impressionists created an idyllic imaginary world, the Divisionists used their paintings to express a range of progressive socio-political views, as exemplified by some of the 80 works on show. The exhibition also features paintings with natural motifs, such as Umberto Boccioni’s Lombard Landscape (1908), and treatments of symbolist topics like The Sound of the Brook (1902) by Emilio Longoni. Angelo Morbelli’s Christmas Among the Forgotten (1903), meanwhile, presents the viewer with the bare interior of a shelter for the homeless and the lonely souls within, yearning for warmth, sustenance and affection. Nor does Giacomo Balla’s Farmer (1903) seem able to live by the sweat of his brow, in an era in which the rural population was increasingly seeking work and refuge in the cities. And yet, in those cities as well, hard by the achievements of modern technology, as exemplified in Giacomo Balla’s celestially glistening Streetlamp (1909), a starving class was on the rise too: the proletariat. And it was not only the artists of the time who noticed the ambiguity of the world in which they lived; visitors to the Kunsthaus exhibition will also be struck by the twin faces of the industrial revolution, in the juxtaposition of Emilio Longoni’s 1894 painting Social Contrasts with Segantini’s idyllic Midday in the Alps (1891).

Divisionism also plays a role in Swiss art history, with painters mainly from the southern part of the country, such as Edoardo Berta, Filippo Franzoni and Giovanni Giacometti, adopting the stylistic vocabulary of their Italian counterparts.

The exhibition, co-organized with National Gallery, London, was curated by Simonetta Fraquelli, Tobia Bezzola and Christopher Riopelle. Works on loan from Italian museums as well as from Musée d’Orsay in Paris or Museum of Modern Art are joined by a dozen rarely shown pieces from private collections. The catalogue includes essays by Vivien Greene, Giovanna Ginex, Aurora Scotti Tosini and Simonetta Fraquelli, while an audioguide, included in the price of admission, informs visitors about Divisionist painting technique, provides biographical data on individual artists, and sketches in the background to the creation of a whole series of paintings.

Angelo Morbelli, Das Weihnachtsfest der Vergessenen (Il Natale dei rimasti), 1903, Öl auf Leinwand, 61 x 110 cm, Musei Civici Veneziani, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte, Moderna di Ca’Pesaro, Venedig.

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868-1907), The Dead Child, 1896-1905, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (Palais de Tokyo, since 1977), (RF1977-281), © RMN, Paris. Photo Hervé Lewandowski.

Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899). The Bad Mothers, 1896-7. © Kunsthaus, Zürich. All rights reserved (1967/66).

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Wäsche in der Sonne (Panni al sole), 1905. Oil on canvas, 87 x 131 cm. Privat collection, Courtesy James Roundell.

Plinio Nomellini (1866-1943). The Strike, 1889. Private collection. © Photo Courtesy of the owner.

Emilio Longoni (1859-1932). Glacier, 1906. Private collection. © Photo Courtesy of the owner.

Luigi Russolo (1885-1947). Lightning, 1909-10. © Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome. Photo Alessandro Vasari.

Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
212-423-3500
New York
Divisionism /
Neo-Impressionism:
Arcadia and Anarchy
April 27-August 6, 2007

Divisionism emerged in Northern Italy at the end of the 1880s. The first generation included Vittore Grubicy De Dragon, Emilio Longoni, Morbelli, Pellizza, Gaetano Previati, and Segantini. Their painting method was characterized by the juxtaposition of strokes of pigment to create a visual effect of intense single colors. While they were anchored in the traditions of Italy’s artistic heritage, they took cues from modernist practices occurring elsewhere in Europe, primarily those of French Neo-Impressionists, or Pointillists. They were also influenced by optical and chromatic ideas developed by French and American scientists, namely, Michel-Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood.

Divisionism / Neo-Impressionism: Arcadia and Anarchy is the first exhibition in the U.S. to focus on Italian Divisionism — a style so named for its painting technique, which employed the “division” of vibrant color through brushstrokes — and to examine its relationship to French Neo-Impressionism. The exhibition comprises approximately forty paintings drawn from major museums and private collections by the masters of Italian Divisionism, including Giovanni Segantini, Angelo Morbelli, and Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, together with significant Neo-Impressionist paintings by Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and Camille Pissarro, among others. Divisionism / Neo-Impressionism situates Italian Divisionists in an international context with major proponents of Neo-Impressionism.

The exhibition was organized by Vivien Greene, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and premiered at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, earlier this year.

The shared concerns of the Neo-Impressionists and Divisionists, paired with the latter’s emergence at a slightly later date, have often caused the Italian style to be regarded as a derivation of the French one. Yet distinct differences marked the Divisionists’ art, and the exhibition reveals that they developed an idiom that was all their own. This included a preference for large-scale compositions, an ongoing interest in modeled form and the representation of three-dimensional space, and a desire to connote movement. Unlike the French, Belgians, or Dutch, the Italians eschewed representations of bourgeois life or urban spectacle. Instead, they painted Symbolist imagery, largely absent from the work of their European contemporaries. Underlining the paradoxical nature of Italian art in this period, these pursuits both reflected the Divisionists’ grounding in Italy’s rich visual heritage and pointed the way for the next generation, the Futurists.

The exhibition is organized in five thematic groupings—“Light,” “Landscape,” “Rural Life,” “Social Problems,” and “Symbolism”—to address the concerns these artists shared as well as to reveal how their work diverged. The first section, “Light,” demonstrates the preoccupation with the depiction of refracted lamplight upon color in interiors. “Landscape” features works that capitalize on the effects of sunlight, particularly in the reflective surfaces of rivers, lakes, glaciers, and the sea. “Rural Life” denotes the pervasive representations of agrarian labor in aesthetically beautiful images that seemingly contradict the hardships implicit within these scenes. In contrast, the paintings in “Social Problems” more directly call attention to the political issues of the day by portraying strikes, industrial labor, and the urban malaise of the working class. Finally, “Symbolism” reveals the direction taken in the late 1890s, primarily by the Italian Divisionists, when artists turned away from political matters to realize transcendent allegorical or spiritual visions.

The exhibition’s subtitle, Arcadia and Anarchy, literally and metaphorically alludes to philosophies shared by many Divisionist and Neo-Impressionist artists. Their choice of a radical new style was as anarchic as their allegiance to leftist politics, but their search for the ideal led to arcadian evocations in idyllic landscapes and mystical imagery.

Emilio Longoni (1859-1932). Alone!, 1900. © Casa di Lavoro e Patronato per i Ciechi di Guerra di Lombardia, Milan.

Camille Pissarro, Apple Picking at Éragny-sur-Epte (La Cueillette des pommes, Éragny-sur-Epte), 1888, Oil on canvas, 61 x 74 cm, Dallas Museum of Art, Munger Fund.