G. SEGANTINI CIVIC GALLERY
In occasion of the latest work acquisition “Sun of Autumn”, Giovanni Segantini Civic Gallery of Arco intends to present Segantini’s masterpiece to the public in a new outfitting setting, valorising the centrality into pictorial research path of Arco’s painter, and the main role of transition in development of Segantini’s experimentation between the years in Brianza and the opening of the most intense phase of his activity after his moving to Grisons, when a renovated sense of colour and light, dominates as a founding focal point of a new aesthetic conception. It concerns a painting of extraordinary importance, and by the prestigious collecting story purchased in Bottegantica Gallery of Milan.
SUN OF AUTUMN RETURNED TO THE MUSEUM
Finally, the work re-emerged in front of the general public’s eyes after seventy years, when it was exhibited in 1954, the year of the exposition “Lombard painters of the Second Half of Nineteenth century” (Como, the Municipal Villa Olmo). Into the Italian context, the museum conservation of “Sun of Autumn” by Comune di Arco (Town of Arco), for an amount of 3 million euros, represents one of the biggest never happened public purchases about a work of our Nineteenth century and especially the biggest Segantini’s acquisition from 1927. A masterpiece of national artistic culture joined our public property today, favouring not only studies about Giovanni Segantini, but all about Italian nineteenth century.
THE PAINTING
In this context, and in the occasion of one hundred fifth anniversary of Segantini’s demise, the Gallery dedicates a focus to the uninterrupted link that town of Arco has always kept alive with the painter’s memory, starting from the monument commission to Leonardo Bistolfi and renews today, with the work purchase finally returned to community and visible after seventy years from the last exhibition.
In relation to its iconographical, technical and pictorial peculiarities, the painting represents one of Segantini’s painting foundations, appearing as one of his most important works in 1887, well-known today.
Reading the canvas in continuity with the results achieved with work Alla Stanga, 1885-1886 (Rome, Contemporary Art National Gallery ), it was developed by the painter at the moment when he experimented in Ave Maria in Trasbordo, 1886 (St. Moritz, Segantini Museum) a first instinctual – and not systematic – application of divisionist writing, with reflection complicity generated by Vittore Grubicy. The use of pure colours mixture is more free, the brush stroke organises intricately the surface, becoming more substantial and more extended; the light chromatic variations, released from twilight conventionality of Brianza years, restore meticulously chromatic-Luminist values studied in real life.
The centrality of “Sun of autumn” is also connected to the subject represented, an icon of primary importance belonging to Segantini’s naturalism, linked to its other two masterpieces production like “Allo sciogliersi delle nevi (The snow melting)”, 1888 (St. Moritz, Segantini Museum) and “Vacche aggiogate (Subjugated cows)”, 1888 (Basilea, Kunstmuseum).
Under the thematic profile, the painter represents, additionally, a real moment of division compared to works of the nineteenth century early 80’s. Indeed, the Canvas exceeds the literary impasse of tragic and elegiac idyllic life, for celebrating a more direct nature glorification in its essential values, in order to release itself from a new sentimental interpretation to resemble it, instead, to an irrational and universal idea, by what the painter defines as “naturalistic symbolism”. The exceptional nature of this acquisition lies also in the collection story of itself as well, moved from Alberto Grubicy (1887) to the one of the important Dall’Acqua family (1894), then passing through Rossello collection (before 1926), one of the most significant and important collections dated back to the entire Italian twentieth century.
Information
Where: Galleria Civica “Giovanni Segantini”, Città di Arco TN
Palazzo Dei Panni, via Segantini 9/17 When: from 15th November 2024 to 26th January 2025
Opening with guided visits for schools and groups only by booking from 28/01 to 31/03/25
www.segantiniearco.it e-mail: cultura@comune.arco.tn.it