Born in 1858 in Arco (Trient province) on the north side of Lake Garda, the artist attended the Milan Art Academy Brera. He afterwards lived in the Brianza area then moved to Switzerland in 1886. He first settled in Savognin, but from 1894 lived in Maloja and Soglio. Giovanni Segantini died at the age of 41 from peritonitis: he was on the Schafberg above Pontesina, working to finish Nature, the central picture of his Alpine Triptych.
Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899)
Throughout a large part of Europe, Segantini was, in his lifetime, already recognized as an innovator and prophet and as an important symbolist painter. His early works, produced in Milan and Brianza, still owed something to the traditional style of painting in Lombardy. On moving to the clear atmosphere of the Alps, the artist was able to develop a style which exuded radiance and which at the same time went hand in hand with the evolution of the Divisionism technique and his progression towards Symbolism.
At the end of the 19th Century, Giovanni Segantini executed a planned panorama which conveyed an underlying universal meaning - 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 exhibition at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 and depitcs human existence in harmonious unison with Nature. The landscapes and simple people portrayed are woven into the eternal rhythm of the changing seasons.
Together with Ferdinand Hodler, Giovanni Segantini is considered to be the outstanding painter of the Swiss mountains. He enjoyed international renown during his lifetime; and the place he holds in the history of art is due to the unique combination of his meticulous observation of Nature and his overlaying symbolism. The artist succeeded in depicting alpine scenery in minute detail without extremes of illusionism, producing allegorical paintings of remarkable radiance. If Giovanni Segantini, with his alpine visions, is regarded as one of the leading fin-de-siecle European symbolists, then he can also be considered as an innovative artist, who exerted an important influence on the development of Italian Divisionism. The Divisionism technique - fine parallel brush strokes of pure colour - was his definitive contribution to avantgarde art at the time - and the secret of the brilliant luminosity in his paintings.