Dalla Colma

Morbelli came to Divisionism late. He was nearly forty, in fact, when he took part in the Milan Triennale of 1891 together with Segantini and Previati, marking the debut of Italian Divisionism. This painting is one of his later works, done between 1918 and 1919, the year of his death. It depicts the landscape seen from his country house in La Colma, Rosignano, in the country near Monferrato, a place dear to him where he could devote himself entirely to study and constant artistic experimentation. Over the years, the incessant repetition of the same theme appears to form a sort of intimate diary, visual and emotive. This subject triggered Morbelli’s intense dialogue with nature. Abandoning themes of old age and social subjects, in his final years the artist returned to landscape, the same subjects that had characterized the beginning of his artistic life, but now with unsurpassed mastery. The majestic depth of the vast horizon, the unexpected photographic aspect, the intense chromatic fabric of tiny touches of “divided” colour, carefully dosed, reveal the fullness of style that he had achieved. A railing festooned with leaves and vivid red flowers gives onto an open space inundated with light, giving way in turn to the grandiose scene ringed in by the mountains, in a sort of monumental gulf, beneath a sky that merges indistinguishably with the peaks. The noonday sun fades the colour of the two peaks, off of which the gaze caroms to reach the distant horizon.