Segantini, Giovanni

Giovanni Segantini, (born Jan. 15, 1858, Arco, Tyrol, Austrian Empire [now in Italy]—died Sept. 28, 1899, near Pontresina, Switz.), Italian painter known for his Alpine landscapes and allegorical pictures, which blended Symbolist content with the technique of Neo-Impressionism.

Raised by peasants in the Italian Alps as a herdsman, Segantini spent long hours of solitude in drawing. His work was noticed by the local authorities, who sent him to art school in Milan. In 1894 he settled in the Engadin region of the Swiss Alps, where he remained for the rest of his life. Living in virtual isolation in Switzerland, he experimented with optical mixtures, a technique similar to that of the Pointillists. Possibly inspired by literary sources, he also evolved a Symbolist subject matter seen in such paintings as “The Punishment of Luxury” (1891), “The Unnatural Mothers” (1894), and “Love at the Fountain of Life” (1896). A pantheist by nature, he felt himself in mystic communion with his mountain environment. He usually used an Alpine background in his works and left unfinished a great triptych entitled “Life, Nature, and Death,” which is exhibited in the Segantini Museum in Sankt Moritz, Switz.