Sunbathers (1906)

Signed and dated bottom left: «Pier Focardi 1906»

On the back of the frame: a printed label from the Galleria Alberto Grubicy in Milan with partially legible handwritten notes: «Piero Foca[rdi] / Bagnanti al s[ole] [Dip]into ad olio con Corn[ice]»; una etichetta con numero manoscritto «1580».

Bibliography: Catalogue du Salon des Peintres Divisionnistes Italiens organisé par la Galerie d’Art A. Grubicy de Milano, Paris 1907, p. 5, no. 2

Exhibitions: Paris 1907 (Salon des Peintres Divisionnistes Italiens, 1 September-15 October 1907, Paris – Serre de l’Alma).

 

The son of painter Ruggero Focardi, Piero made his debut at a young age in 1903 at the annual exhibition of the Florentine Società d’Incoraggiamento.¹ The following year he returned with two other works, All’aratro and Crocevia a Settignano.²

Greatly influenced by the naturalist approach of his father Ruggero, also open to Previatian Divisionism, but above all Nomellinian influences, Piero Focardi’s first works fit into the framework of a solid Tuscan naturalism of Macchiaioli origin, as evidenced by the reproductions, which appeared in «Natura e Arte», of the paintings exhibited in Florence in 1904.

The first critical notes on his debut already focused on the luminous effects that characterise his work: «Pierino, just fifteen years old, has already exhibited several times and who alone, hiding his first works from his father, has already explained the nascent admiration for his Tuscan hills, has already marked the first luminosities».³ Although the reproductions of the works do not allow a complete evaluation of the pictorial characteristics, it is probable that, already in this period, research into the application of the Divisionism technique constituted one of the areas of in-depth study of the work of the extremely young painter in a variation which combined the conciseness of the Tuscan brushstroke, more oriented towards chromatic quality than towards the filament, the empirical division of colour, filtered by the evocations of Nomellini mediated by his father’s work, on a formative path not dissimilar to that of other young Tuscan artists, such as Benvenuto Benvenuti from Livorno, who also started with Tuscan scrub and opened up to Divisionist evocations on the basis of Segantini’s examples and models.

The more conscious and structured adherence to a Divisionist brushstroke closer to the variations of a purely Lombard context and, specifically, linked to Segantini’s models, begins being felt in Focardi’s work starting from 1906. Throughout 1905, in any event, the decision to experiment in the wake of Divisionist painting now appeared confirmed by the inclusion of the young artist in the “Scuderia Grubicy” by the gallery owner Alberto Grubicy De Dragon. The dealer, who became the sole contact for sale of Segantini’s work in 1889 and had exclusive relationships with artists such as Previati and Fornara, had steered his gallery towards the almost exclusive promotion of Italian

Divisionist painting at the beginning of the century. This decision, in addition to responding to the very identity of the Grubicy House which, since the end of the ‘80s had, thanks to the presence of Vittore Grubicy, been organised in relation to the pictorial achievements of some of the first masters of Italian Divisionism, from Segantini and Longoni to Morbelli , was motivated by a general interest, at a European level, in research concerning the divided brushstroke and the results of post-impressionism. From this perspective, Alberto set himself the commercial objective of ideally becoming the sole reference point for the spread and commercialisation of Northern Italian Divisionism abroad by investing financially in young artists, those who subsequent historiography would define as petits-maîtres of Divisionism, hailing from different paths and different geographical areas – Tuscany, Liguria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto – but united by their adoption of the Divisionist technique.⁴

In this context, Piero Focardi’s research was, as mentioned, immediately steered by Alberto Grubicy towards the context of experiments that Achille Locatelli Milesi summarised in the preface to the first Parisian exhibition of the Grubician group: « Les artistes y sont réunis par la communauté d’un effort vers une recherche commune: la luminosité – à laquelle correspond une technique particulière. Leurs ouvrages sont d’autant plus intéressants, que cette recherche est devenue, depuis un demi-siècle, le besoin le plus senti et le plus important de la peinture. Désormais, cette technique est reconnue la seule pouvant donner des résultats positifs. L’Ecole divisionniste Italienne, qui procède de Segantini, possède des caractères spéciaux très remarquables. Elle c’est pas «naturaliste» dans le sens objectivement vulgaire de ce mot, mais elle tend, au contraire, à donner, autant que possible, des œuvres de style complètes et pénétratives».⁵ The priority given to the Segantinian descendance of the Italian Divisionist school – in strict contrast with Previati’s position, which constituted the other cornerstone of Alberto Grubicy’s offering – consequently oriented the choices and preferences of the Galleria and, therefore, of its commercial and exhibition offering, towards a variation that was a naturalist as possible, in an intentional departure from the symbolist results of Segantini’s work. The central core of the offering of the Grubician “stable” revolved around the investigation of luministic and chromatic effects based upon technical unity around Divisionism presented as a unique example of a modern, avant-garde artistic position. The centrality of this specific variation of Divisionism was reiterated in 1908 in Rossi-Sacchetti’s preface to the exhibition catalogue in favour of the newly established Segantini Museum in St. Moritz: «L’histoire de la peinture divisionniste italienne se rattache trop intimement au nom de son plus grand maître Giovanni Segantini, pour que la jeune école italienne moderne cultivant l’étude du plein air, et dont les œuvres sont groupées en cette Galerie, puisse se dérober à l’intérêt de tous ceux qui connaissent et apprécient l’œuvre grandiose et universellement connue de cet artiste. Il est, en effet, très intéressant de se rendre compte de l’influence exercée sur les luministes italiens, par Segantini; de voir jusqu’à quel point cette influence a été bienfaisante, et a poussé ces jeunes artistes vers la recherche de la couleur et de la lumière; et de savoir enfin quels sont, parmi ses prosélytes, les plus remarquables. Cela a un double intérêt parce que, en faisant même abstraction de la technique divisionniste, la recherche de la luminosité— spécialement dans les paysages — représente sans contredit la seule et unique tendance du modernisme italien, en peinture».⁶

This precise ideal and technical genealogy led to a predilection for landscape works – from alpine subjects to lake views to seascapes, especially of medium and small dimensions – characterised both by a more immediate commercial appeal and by a unitary underlying note linked to the reinterpretation of the legacy of Divisionism in a decorative sense. Now distant from the more purely scientific speculations of the Divisionism of the nineties – furthered in those years by Morbelli’s continued dedication and more moderately by Pellizza – the new generations of Divisionists linked to the Galleria Grubicy were oriented towards a style characterised by strong experimentation with symbols, material and colour, which perfectly responded to Locatelli Milesi’s conclusions regarding «des œuvres de style complètes et pénétratives» from an eminently decorative perspective.

Therefore, whereas Focardi’s works in 1904 were more consistently part of a tradition of more sincere Tuscan heritage, by 1905 there was an undeniable trace of a more complete adoption of the type of Divisionism promoted by the Galleria Grubicy.

A testimony of this early rapprochement is small work, dating back to 1905, in which the experimentation of a Divisionism that was not yet mature can be recognised. The search for luministic effects, in a certain continuity with Nomellinian models, translated into a diversified and material brushstroke where the alternation of the ductus, more minute and speckled, then looser, proceeds towards the decomposition of the colour not based on a scientific procedure, but on the mutual celebration of chromatic saturations and luminous contrasts, as can be appreciated in the reflections on the water or in the alternations of yellows and oranges and blues in the shadows and lights on the shore.

In an evolutionary relationship with this work, Focardi’s works, that are undoubtedly from 1906, highlight a further deepening and refinement of the pictorial and executive technique in parallel with the move to Lake Garda, which became the thematic fulcrum of the artist’s work. The young painter’s entry into Grubicy’s circle, which occurred between 1905 and 1906, undoubtedly led to a more meditated rapprochement to pictorial models, especially those of Segantini, with his definitive inclusion in the exhibitions sponsored by the Galleria, primarily the Parisian undertaking in 1907.

On this occasion, Focardi presented a group of 9 paintings: A l’ombre, Coucher de soleil en hiver, Aube sur le Lac de Garde, Coucher su Soleil en été, Le Chateau de Padenghe, Midi d’Eté, Retour de la Messe e Baigneurs dans le Lac undoubtedly identified in the work discussed herein.⁷ The titles of the works exhibited correspond perfectly to the type of subjects indicated above: landscape visions of Lake Garda in certain conditions of light – sunrises and sunsets emphasised by reflections on the water – contributing to the full expressive potential of the Divisionist technique, as in the small Aube sur le lac de Garde. Compared to the more frank and uneven technique used for the small painting from 1905, where the Divisionist approach was characterised by a still immature experimentalism, the works exhibited in Paris showed a more complete achievement of a symbolic, decorative unity and of an evocativeness played on the exaltation of the enamelled chromatic values that became the signature style of Focardi’s period of Divisionism. This occurred both in the small formats, which necessarily adopted a more cursive and tense technique, albeit based on linear insistences and on the exaltation of pure colours, as well as in the larger works, in which the painter relied on the extreme articulation of touch.

Among the works exhibited at the 1907 exhibition, the imposing Retour de la Messe, dated 1906, undoubtedly represented the work that was closest to Segantini’s models and, above all, to the compositional variations of Carlo Fornara and Cesare Maggi. The adoption of a more rhythmic and decorative ductus, based on the exaltation of individual colour tones through elongated symbols, the serpentine graphic insistences in the depictions of mountains, meadows and sky, show the full maturation of Focardi’s Divisionist technique. This variation, which was close to the contemporary works of Guido Cinotti, Ferdinando Ramponi and Giovanni Omio, was based on the adoption of the elongated symbol as the ideal cantus firmus of a complex symbolist variation that contributed to the exaltation of chromatic values.

It is precisely the painting shown here, Baigneurs dans le Lac, in its absolute iconographic independence with respect to prototypes or derivative motifs, which allows a complete evaluation of the qualities of Focardi’s Divisionism. The large canvas, played on a distinctly horizontal cut, is set on the shores of Lake Garda: in the foreground, the shaded area acts as a backdrop to the opening onto the landscape piece in a chiaroscuro contrast that emphasises the brightness of the background. The technique adopted by Focardi, which fully embraced contemporary experimentation, used an extremely diversified painting style. In the foreground, where the painter concentrated on the description of the shore, the pictorial symbol is entrusted to a serpentine ducuts with a material and chromatic accumulation, employing overlapping single filaments of pure color, which restore the different tactile qualities of the ground, the trees and stones, as well as the complex luministic articulation of the light that filters from the foliage and plays on the non-exclusive use of complementary tones, such as blues, oranges and yellows, which I define as the extremes of the spectrum which contains more subtle tonal variations.

This freer symbol is contrasted by the adoption of a measured, rhythmic and controlled horizontal stroke that runs along the entire lake area, pausing the pictorial surface. Once again, in a very free chromatic experimentation that is alien to all scientific insistence, the style of application is divided into a very dense weaving, with much material, with parallel symbols of pure colours which restore the chromatic and luminous variations of the water filled with the reverberation of the tones of the sky and the mountains that are reflected in it. This dominance of parallels, the progressive decrease in the thickness of the lines of which creates the perspective of placid waters, is interrupted by the unprecedented expressiveness and cursiveness of the brushstrokes that create the mountains in the background in an intricate play of symbols in which minute brushstrokes of pure colour in polarised and hyper-saturated ranges overlap and intersect according to a working style that, at the same time, was being experimented by his fellow countryman Benvenuto Benvenuti.

At the basis of this complex, articulated and completely anti-naturalistic emphasis of the symbol in a decorative key, there is an equally tense conception of colour. Indeed, the accentuation of the luminous effects is accompanied by an extremisation of the chromatic ranges which focus on the brightest, glazed and saturated tones without the mediation of tonal transitions – in the almost total obliteration of chromatic backgrounds under the intricate interweaving of brushstrokes – but rather playing on the absolutisation of tone.

This evidently forced approach constituted a dominant aspect of the experimentalism of this generation of Divisionists, including Merello, Minozzi, Boccioni and Carrà, as well as an individual characteristic of Focardi, who continued to employ these brilliant colours throughout the decade, and responded to a conscious tension in an expressionistic key of the divided technique which aimed at exalting the emotional values of symbols and colour. These elements appeared clear to the French critics who related to the works of the Divisionists sponsored by Grubicy. Mourey, in «Les Arts», focussing on the younger ones, including Focardi, captured these elements of stridency and fracture:

«ils vous sembleront parfois inharmonieux, maladroits, exagérés, attachant trop d’importance aux théories qui les inspirent: soit; jamais vous ne le surprendrez manquant de conscience, indécis, flottants, faute d’avoir approfondi les choses qu’ils veulent représenter, les impressions qu’ils veulent fixer».⁸ Focardi was included by Etienne Charles among those painters who «pratiquent le divisionnisme suivant la formule de Segantini, mais parfois en l’accentuant et en l’aggravant».⁹ In general, critics, in the specific case of Focardi, appreciated his luminous and chromatic intensity, defining his «une palette lumineuse». Indeed, the critic of «L’Univers», excluding the differences in the schools of the Divisionism group and the excessive diversification of technique, named him as being the brightest of the Divisionists: «Nous pouvons toujours tenter de faire du divisionnisme en distinguant M. Baracchini Caputi qui est pointilliste, de M. Fornara qui est “mouchetiste”, de M. Omio qui est “banditiste”, de M. Previati qui est “ligniste”. J’espère que ces néologismes s’expliquent d’eux-mêmes et que je puis me sospenser de les traduire. En tout cas M. Piero Focardi est peut-etre le seul qui donne l’impression de la vrai lumière ».¹⁰

Niccolò D’Agati

 

1 Società delle Belle Arti. Catalogo delle opere ammesse alla Esposizione annuale, Bencini, Firenze 1903, p. 28, no. 389 N. 9 studi dal vero (primi saggi di pittura), no. 390 N. 6 studi dal vero (primi saggi di pittura), no. 372 November.

2 Società delle Belle Arti. Catalogo delle opere ammesse alla Esposizione annuale, Bencini, Florence-Rome 1904, p. 19 no. 184, p. 24 no. 291.

3 A. Franchi, Ruggero Focardi, «Natura e Arte», XIII, 2 sem. f. XXI, pp. 582-592: 592; Un artista quindicenne, Natura e Arte», XIII, 2 sem. f. XXI, pp. 642-643. See also: Artisti precoci, «I diritti della scuola», VI, 2, 22 October 1904, p. 8.

4 Su Alberto Grubicy si vedano come riferimenti: A. Scotti Tosini, Milano tra primo e secondo divisionismo, Milano tra primo e secondo divisionismo, in P. Biscottini, M. Amari, M. Negri, Arte a Milano 1906-1929, cat. della mostra (Milano, Fiera Milano 24 novembre 1995 – 7 gennaio 1996), Electa, Milano 1995, pp. 77-127; S. Rebora, Umberto Boccioni e la Galleria Grubicy, tracce per la ricostruzione di un rapporto, in F. Rossi, A. Contò, a cura di, Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916). Genio e memoria, (Milano, Palazzo Reale, 23 marzo – 10 luglio 2016), Electa, Milano 2016, pp. 126-131.

5 A. Locatelli Milesi, Catalogue du Salon des Peintres Divisionnistes Italiens organisé par la Galerie d’Art A. Grubicy de Milano, Paris 1907,

6 V. Rossi-Sacchetti, Preface, in Catalogue du Salon pro-Musée Segantini à Saint-Moritz. Organisé dans la Galerie d’Art Italien A. Grubicy, Parigi 1908, pp. 1-2.

7 Catalogue du Salon des Peintres Divisionnistes Italiens organisé par la Galerie d’Art A. Grubicy de Milano, Paris 1907, p. 5 nn. 1-9.

8 G. Mourey, Exposition d’Art Italien moderne à Paris, «Les Arts», no. 69, September 1907, pp. 26-29 : 28.

9 E. Charles, Notes d’Art. Les peintres divisionnistes italiens, «La Liberté», 42, no. 15093, Monday, 9 September 1907, p. 2.

10 Le Gay, çà et là. Les peintres divisionnistes italiens, «L’Univers», 21-22 October 1907, p. 1