PELLIZZA DA VOLPEDO, Giuseppe

(b. 1868 Volpedo, d. 1907 Milano)

Italian painter. He came from a farming family and in 1884 began attending drawing classes at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. He also began to study painting, first with Giuseppe Puricelli (1832-94) and then in 1886-87 with Pio Sanquirico (1847-1900), but in 1887 he broke off his studies at the Brera and moved to Rome in order to attend the Accademia di San Luca. He very soon became disappointed by the teaching there, which he combined with attendance at the life class at the Académie de France, and went to Florence, where from 1888 he was a pupil of Giovanni Fattori at the Accademia di Belle Arti. After a few months he returned to Volpedo, where he began executing portraits and landscapes that show the influence of the Macchiaioli in their limpid layers of light and geometrically balanced compositions (e.g. Portrait of the Poor Girl and the Piazza di Volpedo, both 1888; both private collection).

In the autumn of 1888, wanting to consolidate his drawing skills, Pellizza moved to Bergamo, where he studied under Cesare Tallone (1853-1919) at the Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti. In October 1889 he visited the Exposition Universelle in Paris, but early in 1890 he returned for two months to the Accademia Carrara.

He was drawn to open air painting and Divisionism, but he also shared a keen interest in social themes with his like-minded colleagues Segantini and Morbelli. In 1895, he concentrated on these projects and on completing Fiumana. Leaving this painting unfinished, he began a new work, Commino dei Lavoratori, which in 1901 was officially entitled The Fourth Estate.

In 1907, his wife died in childbirth and the infant too died shortly afterward. Tormented by the loss, Pellizza took his own life, hanging himself in his studio.

The Statue of Villa Borghese

The divided colour tones and Pointillist technique of divisionism are adapted here to an intensely romantic, or symbolist, reflection on nature, time, and myth in this view of the Borghese Gardens in Rome.

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Washing in the Sun

In the 1880s, Lombardy began to play an active part in Italian art. The movement that originated there declared its loyalty to the great Italian tradition, and was particularly interested in atmospherics of light, colour, and texture. In the 1890s, such work came into its own with divisionist or pointillist paintings.

In the work of Pellizza, the most important Lombard Neo-Impressionist, the goals of the leading French pointillist, Seurat, were most consistently pursued. This was apparent not only in his relinquishing romantic natural scenes such as Impressionism favoured, and preferring an art based upon ideas; he also dispensed with clear outlines, and used strong contrasts of juxtaposed colours. His thematic range was great, and included curiously symbolic paintings such as Washing in the Sun.

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