Giovanni Segantini

His name was Giovanni Segantini, and he earned his widespread fame throughout Italy and Europe for his large paintings of rural and pastoral landscapes of the mountains in the Alps. His surname was originally Segatini, but in later life he added an extra “n” to change it. Most of his active career was spent in Switzerland, and although he was very successful as an artist, he never became rich from his art. Segantini’s paintings were eagerly sought after by private and national museums and galleries while he was still alive, and he painted up until the time of his death in 1899; it was his last painting that may have been the death of him.

He was born on January 15, 1858 in the town of Arco, in Trentino. At that time Trentino was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but today it is part of Italy. His childhood was a sad and hard one, with poverty and bad luck playing a big part in how his life played out. He was born the same year that his seven year old brother, Lodovico, died as a result of a fire. His mother was devastated by her first child’s death and her depression kept her distant from Giovanni’s needs. He was uneducated and raised in poverty, which was in part due to his father’s long absences away from home, while he was looking for work. When Segantini’s mother Margherita died in 1865, Segantini was taken by his father, Agostino Segatini, to live with Irene, Agostino’s daughter from a prior marriage.

Only a year later, Agostino also died, penniless and away from home. This left Irene without any kind of income except for menial work, and Segantini was left to his own devices. Irene believed that they could have a better life in Milan, and so she made the paperwork to give up their citizenship in Austria-Hungary, in order to get an Italian citizenship. They moved to Milan in 1865, but she neglected to complete the paperwork to process their Italian citizenships, and so she and Segantini became “without country”. This was to cause many problems for Segantini later in life.

When he was seven years old, in Milan, he ran away from Irene, and he was picked later up by the Milan police. He was committed to a reformatory for runaways and orphans, a standard practice in those days, to learn a trade until he was old enough to support himself. While he was at the Marchiondi Reformatory he was taught to cobble (make and mend shoes), but they neglected his basic education otherwise. A chaplain who worked at the reformatory encouraged his drawing skills, as a way of cheering Segantini up. Luckily, in 1873, Napoleon, Irene’s brother and his half-brother, showed up at the Reformatory to claim him and take him back to Trentino.

Napoleon was a photographer, and had a studio where he taught Segantini the relatively new photography business. He lived in Trentino for a year, and the knowledge that he gained was put to good use after Segantini learned to paint professionally. He would occasionally take pictures and paint the scenes from them, in part or whole. Segantini chose to return to Milan in 1874, but with the purpose of going to school there at the Brera Academy, which was the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera.

He made very good friends with a young Carlo Bugatti (who would one day be a famous decorator, architect and furniture designer) and Emilio Longoni (a landscape, portrait and still life artist). His friends would have a great influence on his later art work, and on personal his life as well. Bugatti’s sister Luigia, nicknamed “Bice”, became Segantini’s “love of his life”, and she would have been his wife, and she was, in all things, except that Segantini could not legally marry her. No one would marry them without his valid citizenship papers, which he’d been refused several times, both from Switzerland and Italy.

The lack of marriage papers made them into nomads, moving from town to town when their lack of marriage became an issue with the citizens there or the local tax collectors. They were never welcome in the strictly religious Catholic towns, even when Segantini developed a level of fame for his paintings. The moves took them to cheaper and more distant locations, which were typically higher up into the Alps, and they lived there with their four children while Segantini painted his panoramic views of the Swiss Alps. While living in the Alps, Bice taught him how to read and write; he was in his 30’s at that time. He loved to read books on philosophy.

Segantini’s art dealers, the Grubicy brothers, had a good influence on his works, keeping Segantini aware of the changes in the art world by artists such as Jean-Francois Millet and Anton Mauve. At one point Vittore Grubicy explained to him about the Symbolists, and later on he explained Divisionist art, a technique developed successfully by his old school friend Longoni. Segantini used the Divisionist method while painting a second version of his famous Ave Maria, and he got great reviews for his new painting.

Segantini’s first major work was The Chancel of Sant Antonio, which he sold in 1879, and it was the one that started off his career. His first version of Ave Maria won him a gold medal in 1883 at the Amsterdam Exhibition at the World’s Fair, the first of many such medals. Other medal winners are his paintings called The Ploughing, and Midday in the Alps. His model and housemaid, Barbara Uffer, was painted in The Kiss, After a Storm in the Alps, Moonlight Effect and Mothers.

Many years later, after growing fame (but no fortune, unfortunately), he was commissioned to make a huge panoramic painting of the Engadin Valley for the1900 Exposition Universelle, which was to be held in Paris. He started in 1897, and even after the project was scaled down to a large triptych, Segantini was eager and pressured to finish the third and final painting in time. The theme was Life, Death and Nature; he went back to the mountains near Schafberg in order to complete the Nature painting, but the high altitude and long hours harmed his health irreversibly. He developed acute peritonitis and died only two weeks later, with Bice and their son Mario at his bedside. Giovanni Giacometti, artist and acquaintance, was also in Schafberg at that time. He painted a portrait of Segantini while he was laying ill in bed, and he posthumously finished a few of Segantini’s paintings.

While he’d been alive, after he had became famous, Switzerland offered him a Swiss citizenship more than once. Segantini refused it each time, claiming that Italy was his homeland. After he died Switzerland legally declared him a Swiss national and gave him a citizenship he did not want, after all. In any case, Giovanni Segantini will always remain an amazing Italian artist, and a very famous one, at that.