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MORBELLI, Angelo/ ARTISTS
1900 to present/ ART MAIN |
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Italian
painter (b. 1853, Alessandria, d. 1919, Milan.) |
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Morbelli
received his first lessons in
drawing in Alessandria, and in 1867 he travelled on a local
study grant to Milan, where he was based for the rest of his
life. He enrolled at the Accademia di Brera and from 1867 to
1876 studied drawing and painting there under Raffaele
Casnedi and Giuseppe Bertini, whose influence is seen in
both the subject-matter and technique of his early works.
These include perspectival views, anecdotal genre scenes and
history paintings. In the Dying Goethe (1880; Alessandria,
Pin. Civ.) the theatrical setting, enriched by a
sophisticated execution and a well-modulated use of colour,
derives from the teaching of Casnedi and Bertini, while the
historic–romantic quality of this painting also recalls the
style of Francesco Hayez. In the years that followed,
Morbelli began to concentrate more on themes such as labour
and the life of the poor, influenced perhaps by Realist
painters of the 1880s such as Achille D’Orsi, Francesco
Paolo Michetti and Teofilo Patini.
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For Eighty Cents!
(Per ottanta centesimi!), 1895. Oil on canvas, 69 x 124.5 cm. Museo Francesco Borgogna, Vercelli.
Photo: Giacomo Gallarate |
Rural Life
The bucolic and agrarian realms have long held appeal for artists. The
Divisionists and Neo-Impressionists sustained this pictorial legacy,
depicting the ebb and flow of rural life. Images of this kind are
distinguished by the concentration on rustic subject matter and an
idealization of rural existence, only sometimes tempered by sympathy
for the harsh actualities of this life. Conceptions of the peasant
ranged from monumental, heroic figures—much like those in the paintings
of realist precursor Jean-François Millet (1814–1875)—to the anecdotal,
whereby the subject was merely a vehicle for investigations into the
chromatic effects of light upon color, to the compassionate depiction
of backbreaking work.
There were tensions between aesthetic concerns and content. The
painters' dedication to their subject was bound up in their engagement
with pictorial issues. In these carefully constructed compositions,
painstakingly rendered with a profusion of tiny dots or dashes, fields
shimmer, light is radiant, and clothes are a vibrant array of colors.
The harmony these paintings achieve often conveys a meditative
stillness and a serenity that is at odds with the farmers' or
shepherds' exhausting labor. Although the artists were sympathetic to
the peasants' plight, suffering, and exploitation, they also were
preoccupied with formals matters.
The contrast between the visual beauty of these paintings and the
hardships being depicted elicited criticism from opposing camps. Angelo
Morbelli's For Eighty Cents! (1895), showing bent-over mondine
(the women who weeded the rice fields in notoriously awful conditions)
in his native region of Piedmont, was alternately criticized for
privileging aesthetics over commentary and documentation or for
choosing to make a politicized statement and depicting "ugly" subject
matter instead of painting appropriately appealing scenes. What these
bilateral attacks demonstrated was that Morbelli, like many of his
contemporaries, did not favor subject matter over painterly issues or
vice versa. Instead, he married the two in an image that could
alternately conjure sensorial pleasure and speak to social dilemmas.
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| Rice Pickers |
Feast Day |
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Social Problems
Many Divisionists and Neo-Impressionists correlated their
empirical, progressive painting style with enlightened,
progressive politics and subscribed to leftist views. They were
spurred to paint socially conscious work in a time when economic
and political crises were rampant through much of Europe.
Industrial development swelled metropolitan centers, and the
shift away from agricultural concerns prompted mass migration
from rural areas to the cities. Poor living conditions and low
wages led to strikes and the rise of left-wing parties that took
highly visible actions on behalf of the working class. On May 1,
1890, when the socialists initiated May Day as an international
celebration of labor, workers took to the streets in
demonstrations. Emilio Longoni captured this momentous occasion
in his first Divisionist effort, the 1890–91 painting The
Orator of the Strike, a snapshot of the illegal May Day
demonstration in Milan's Piazza Fontana, which is on public view
for the first time in almost forty years. Forbidden strikes such
as this one were not the only form of insurgence, and extreme
anarchists instigated terrorist acts. Public places were bombed
and European leaders assassinated over the course of the 1890s,
culminating in 1900 when—to avenge the rioting workers killed in
the 1898 Bava Beccaris massacre by the Milanese
authorities—Umberto I, the king of Italy, was murdered.
In this time of financial malaise, revolt, and radical
political groups—in addition to Longoni—Maximilien Luce, Angelo
Morbelli, Plinio Nomellini, Giuseppe Pellizza, Camille Pissarro,
Paul Signac, and Jan Toorop were committed to the philosophies
of the left. Particularly through the first half of the 1890s,
when such idealistic precepts were more pervasive, these
painters denounced the abasement of the urban and rural poor and
working class in their depictions of striking laborers,
downtrodden workers, and the unemployed. By the latter part of
the decade, after some artists had been arrested or otherwise
intimidated, many rejected overt political imagery in favor of
more utopian visions that transcended straightforward narrative
representations to convey a complex elision of aesthetic
objectives and ideological messages.
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