SEGANTINI, Giovanni

Italian painter. Born in 1858 in Arco, in the province of Trient, on the northern bank of Lake Garda, Giovanni Segantini attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. Subsequently, he lived in the Brianza region, and then moved to Switzerland in 1886. He first settled with his family in Savognin, but from 1894 he was based in Maloja and Soglio. Segantini died of peritonitis in 1899, at the early age of 41, while working on the middle section of his Alpine TriptychGLOSSARYA painting in three sections, usually an altarpiece, consisting of a central panel and two outer panels, or wings. In many medieval triptychs the two outer wings were hinged so that could be closed over the center panel. Early triptychs were often portable., Nature, on the Schafberg high above Pontresina.

Already during his lifetime, Segantini was celebrated through much of Europe as an innovator and prophet, as well as an important Symbolist painter. His early works, executed in Milan and Brianza, still bear testimony to the traditional Lombard style of painting. After moving the Alps, with its pure, clear air, the artist was able to develop a style which exuded radiance and at the same time went hand in hand with the evolution of the DivisionismGLOSSARYSee Pointillism painting technique and his progression towards SymbolismGLOSSARYAn artistic movement that arose in France toward the end of the nineteenth century, primarily in literature, in opposition to the reigning schools of Realism and Impressionism. Symbolism rejected objectivity in favour of the subjective, and turned away from the direct representation of reality in favour of a synthesis of many different aspects of it, aiming to suggest ideas by means of ambiguous yet powerful symbols. Among the artists associated with the movement were Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes in France, Fernand Khnopff in Belgium, Jan Toorop in Holland, Ferdinand Hodler in Switzerland, Gustave Klimt in Austria, and Giovanni Segantini in Italy..

At the end of the 19th century, Giovanni Segantini executed a panorama conveying an underlying universal truth; his impressive Alpine Triptych, Life - Nature - Death, was one of the last paintings of its kind in that era. The work - a large-dimensional portrayal of the life cycle - was intended for the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 and depicts human existence in harmony with nature. The landscapes and simple characters portrayed are woven into the eternal rhythm of the changing seasons.

An exponent of Divisionism, Segantini was the only Italian painter of the late 19th century to have enjoyed an unbroken international reputation, especially in Germany and Austria.