This expressive power also imparts substance to the dominant figures in the foreground, isolated in their feelings and poses. Their stereometric form takes on absolute value in a formal synthesis that leaves no space for descriptive detail. This absolute harmony of man and nature absorbs the minute episodes of everyday life taking place on the banks of the Curone.  

Born in Volpedo in 1868, Giuseppe Pellizza attended the Brera Academy in Milan and the Academy in Florence before completing his training with Cesare Tallone at the Carrara in Bergamo, where he achieved excellent results in portraiture and landscape alike. He was awarded the gold medal for Mammine (Mummies) at the Italo- American exhibition of 1892 in Genoa and began to experiment with the divisionism then fully expressed in Speranze deluse (Dashed Hopes) and Sul Fienile (On the Barn), both shown in Milan in 1894, and in Processione (Procession), presented at the first Venice Biennale. He then began to adopt a Symbolist approach as well in works like Lo specchio della vita (The Mirror of Life, 1895-98). His great commitment in addressing social problems culminated in Quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate, 1898-1901). His divisionist technique was perfected in the early years of the 20th century with works and series on the subjects of love, life, work and death (L’amore nella vita [Love in life], Il Ponte [The Bridge], Membra stanche). He died in 1907. 

The initial ideas for Membra stanche (Weary Limbs) date from 1894, when Pellizza produced a drawing (fig. 1)1 and a sketch, as mentioned to his friend Domenico Tumiati: “Weary limbs are the subject of another painting, for which I made only a sketch. A mother with a baby in her arms and two slightly older little girls resting on a road in the blazing sun on a sultry summer day.”2 This sketch, which has yet to be found, was also included in the inventory of the painter’s works compiled in 1907: “Membra Stanche o Mondarisi olio su legno 341⁄2 x 231⁄2 cm datato Luglio 1894”. The date of July 1894 connects the subject with the contemporary work of Morbelli. The same year saw a sketch on a panel of walnut with a gesso ground (14.3 x 23.7 cm, Volpedo, Studio Pellizza) of the winding course of the Curone flowing through the territory of Volpedo as well as a small drawing of a family group resting in a meadow (La Triade [The Triad], Volpedo, Studio Pellizza). Pellizza produced a new sketch (oil on panel, 23.4 x 40 cm, fig. 2) in October with the group now consisting of a mother with a baby in her arms, a father and two older girls. These now become the focal point of the composition and a suitable space must be found to position them. The sketch presents traces of squaring and on the back, next to the first date, there is another in crayon (“15-XI-98”) together with proportional calculations,3 which mark the painter’s renewed interest in the subject. The dates in the autumn and winter refer not to the arrival in the plain of seasonal labour from the Apennines in search of work but to their return home. The figures are distributed at regular intervals with structured applications of paint to define their overall mass and vibrant lighter outlines to show them silhouetted against the setting sun. The compositional idea underwent no further changes. The motionless forms and the spaces between the figures endow them with greater solemnity. Their vertical lines balance the dominant horizontals of the landscape just as the diagonal line of the man’s body is balanced by the undulating diagonal course of the river. While the depiction of the figures and the natural setting of the work displays the same careful study as works like Speranze deluse and Sul Fienile, the tension between the motionlessness of the group and the movement of the river look forward to a new link between space and time. The use of no longer limpid colours, orchestrated over ranges of greenish, reddish and purplish hues, accentuates the emotive overtones in much the same way as the reddish and sulphurous colours of Pellizza’s Fiumana (Flood).

In 1901, when Quarto Stato had found its definitive form, Pellizza took up these sketches again (a letter to Vittorio Pica of 20 January mentions “two sketches, one of which [probably Emigranti] had been in my studio for years”). In 1903, after new proportional calculations based on the measurements of the sketch, he prepared a stretcher of 111 x 179 centimetres.4 This corresponds quite well to the measurements of the large preparatory drawing in charcoal and white chalk on light brown paper, now glued onto canvas (fig. 3),5 which accentuates the absolute immobility of the weary migrants against the plain through which the river runs. The background presents a line of trees and the Alps can just be made out in the distance, as is sometimes the case in Volpedo. After a visit to the Engadine in 1904, Pellizza began to use the mountain chain as a grandiose background of the meadows and countryside from his homeland (as also documented by the large canvas Il ponte, now in the collections of the Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona). The painting was marked out at the same time as the drawing on a canvas of larger size than the final version; the parts of the canvas folded over the back because they were in excess preserve traces of the initial underpainting with greenish and earthen hues for the land and blues for the sky. The painter then worked on this preparatory surface, building up layers with intersecting brushstrokes that vary greatly in thickness and execution, streaks, dots and dashes of saturated colour with a predominance of greens and reds in a broad range of variations with numerous strokes and touches of blue, yellow and purple. Built up through the synthesisof forms with no descriptive detail, the figures - especially the child in the mother’s arms and the reclining male figure - clearly show the traces of the complex underpainting.

After registering the expressive intensity of the Alpine chain as early as 1904, his 1906 stay in the Engadine really brought home to Pellizza the power of the Alps and the allure of sharp profiles of tall peaks standing out against the sky. While this is given new strength with undulating arabesques of white cloud on a blue ground, responding with greater freedom to the sinuous course of the river, the bold blues and dark blues of the Alps, albeit with dashes of red and purple, set off the greens, browns, reds and deep garnet hues, tinged with green, purple and orange, of the landscape. This expressive power also imparts substance to the dominant figures in the foreground, isolated in their feelings and poses. Their stereometric form takes on absolute value in a formal synthesis that leaves no space for descriptive detail. This absolute harmony of man and nature absorbs the minute episodes of everyday life taking place on the banks of the Curone. As in other paintings of the period 1905-06, the brushwork presents a free and densely interwoven structure of straight and curved strokes, while the clumps of trees on the horizon display the synthesis and vibration of the corresponding drawings of 1906. This work constitutes a major contribution to Symbolism in its recognition that the true social function of art was to reawaken awareness of these bonds between mankind and nature, fostering a state of peace and serenity that is not, however, devoid of faith and hope, as suggested by the gaze of the little girl towards distant horizons. 

[Aurora Scotti]

¹ Scotti 1986, p. 838, no. 327.

² Carechino – Scotti - Vinardi2012, p. 66.

³ Scotti 1986, p. 368, no. 963. The two sketches were present in the inventory of the works by Pellizza drawn up at his death, as nos. 222 and 223 respectively. 

⁴ Id. 1974, f. 1903, 2 May. 

⁵ Id. 1986, p. 421, no. 1118; the drawing and canvas of the Emigrants were also in Pellizza’s studio at his death, as nos. 350 and 311 respectively. Regarding Pellizza’s visits to The Engadine, see S. Picenni, ‘I due viaggi di Pellizza in Engadina’, in Carteggio Pellizza2018, pp. 87-109.