Symbolism

Symbolism—a movement that emerged in reaction to realism and the vulgar materialism and commercialism associated with the negative side of modernity—reflected the changing attitudes that espoused spiritual concerns over scientific ones during the course of the 1890s, as the century's end brought a yearning for transcendence and an embrace of antimaterialist philosophies. Among the Divisionists there were some artists who chose to pursue Symbolism's mystical motifs, sinuous lines, and curvilinear forms. In their Symbolist production, the Italians frequently adapted religious or allegorical subjects, landscapes, and rural imagery to convey spiritual themes metaphorically. Within these paintings, mysticism, communion with nature, and utopianism played important roles. However, the merging of Symbolism and the chromatic division of color was particular to the Italian Divisionists. Most French, Belgian, and Dutch artists who followed a Symbolist path did not employ a Divisionist painting method.

The Divisionists retreated from the urban realities, societal strife, and commotion of city life to alternate surroundings to paint their Symbolist works. Giovanni Segantini went to the Alps and realized pantheistic representations of nature and the cycles of life. Gaetano Previati withdrew to the internal domain of his studio and created lyrical imagery based on Christian, literary, and mythical subjects. Giuseppe Pellizza remained in his hometown of Volpedo in the Piedmontese countryside and imbued scenes of these environs with spiritual and humanistic themes. Vittore Grubicy, like Segantini, painted in the mountains and—through images of shimmering Alpine lakes, misty forests, and distant snowy peaks—evoked intangible sensations.

The 1890s was a period in which positivism was losing centrality as a more intuitive system of knowledge gained primacy and segued into the mysticism often associated with Symbolism. While the technique the Divisionists employed remained anchored in loosely scientific practices, they used painting as a means to express the metaphysical that lay outside the reach of empirical theories. Their pervasive belief was that art—via artistic intuition, sensibility, and interpretation—could recapture a series of values, truths, and mysteries that eluded science.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT:
Henri-Edmond Cross, Nocturne with Cypresses (Nocturne aux cyprès), 1896. Oil on canvas, 65 x 92 cm. Association des Amis du Petit-Palais, Geneva. Photo: Studio Monique Bernaz, Geneva

Gaetano Previati, Dance of the Hours (Danza delle ore), ca. 1899. Tempera on canvas, 133.5 x 199 cm. Fondazione Cariplo-Iniziative Patrimoniali, S.p.A., Milan. Photo: Sandro R. Scarioni, Milan