Giovanni Segantini (1858-99) was an Italian-born Swiss painter whose work, primarily landscapes, was created in and around his home in the Swiss Alps. A pioneer in utilizing divisionist technique, he is revered as most eminent exponents of symbolism. More recently, he has also begun to be acknowledged as an early convert to European modernism, his work poised at the transition from nineteenth-century aesthetics to twentieth-century artistic experimentation.
A long-awaited retrospective, Giovanni Segantini showcases sixty paintings selected from the artist's prolific career. Suffused with light and saturated with color, they feature villages, farmers and shepherds watching over wandering livestock, and idyllic pastoral scenes from the Swiss Alps. Each picture is described in detail with information about the circumstances of its creation. The paintings are accompanied by an introductory essay that examines Segantini's life and work, assessing his reception over m
ore than a century, including his influence on later artists and movements like the futurists and Joseph Beuys. Additional essays bring together the latest research on Segantini's biography, his depictions of nature and the connections between nature and man, his masterful handling of shadow and light, and the divisionist combinations of iconography in Segantini's later works.
With this German language book, Beat Stutzer has compiled the most comprehensive overview of this inventive alpine artist to date, including some paintings that have not been available to the public in many years. It will be welcomed by art historians, collectors, curators, and all with an interest in this period in art.
Beat Stutzer, geboren 1950 in Altdorf, studierte Kunstgeschichte, Geschichte und Ethnologie an der Universität Basel. 1980 promovierte er mit einer Dissertation über "Albert Müller (1897 - 1926) und die Künstlergruppe Rot-Blau". Er war wissenschaftlicher Assistent am Kupferstichkabinett der öffentlichen Kunstsammlung Basel sowie Assistent am Lehrstuhl für Moderne Kunst in Basel. Seit 1982 ist er Direktor des Bündner Kunstmuseums Chur, seit 1998 zugleich Konservator des Segantini-Museums in St. Moritz. Er realisierte zahlreiche Ausstellungen zur Kunst des 19. und 20.Jahrhunderts und ist Autor vieler Katalogbeiträge, Aufsätze und Bücher u. a. zu Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Giovanni Segantini, Alberto und Augusto Giacometti, Albert Müller, Heinrich Danioth, Hannes Vogel, Kurt Sigrist und Pierre Haubensak.
