SEGANTINI, GIOVANNI. – Painter, b. at Arco in Trentino on 15 January 1858, d. on the Schafberg in Engadine on 28 September 1899.
Having lost his mother while still a child, he was taken by his father, a carpenter, to Milan; but soon abandoned by him as well and entrusted to a half-sister, he had an extremely troubled early youth. Having succeeded in entering the Brera Academy, in 1879 he distinguished himself with a painting entitled Coro di S. Antonio, which, like other works from this early period, shows affinities with the manner of the contemporary Milanese milieu. A friend of Longoni, Mentessi, and Luigi Grubicy, he was influenced by the latter’s technical investigations, divisionism (v.). Having moved in 1881 first to Brianza and then to Savognino, in search of ever clearer atmospheres, he came to express, in a group of works of high lyrical value, his sincere love for nature and its manifestations. Endowed with a strong decorative sense, he often employed this to express the hidden meanings of sometimes vague moralistic and humanitarian allegories arising from his own loving contemplation of creation. Thus in Due madri (1889), in the Galleria d’arte moderna of Milan, and in the later Amore alle fonti della vita and Angelo della vita in the same collection, painted after he had moved in 1894 to Moloia. Other works of great quality, and rightly famous, are in Italian and foreign museums and collections: such are Ragazza che fa la calza (1888), in the Kunsthaus of Zurich, and Alla stanga, in the Galleria naz. d’arte moderna of Rome. – Vedi tav. XV.