Giuseppe Mascarini (1877-1954) - Small vegetable garden

Giuseppe Mascarini (Bologna 1877 - Milan 1954)

Oil painting on canvas depicting two peasants working in a vegetable garden.

Canvas measures: width 65 cm, height 76 cm

Signed lower right G.Mascarini Published "Giuseppe Mascarini 1887-1954. A palette in two centuries" Edition Skira 2016 - page 189 tav.322 He always lived and worked in Milan. He studied at the Brera Academy. Gifted for drawing and painting, he won prizes in 1896 and 1897 when he took part in the Brera exhibitions for the first time. In 1900 the Academy nominated him "Honorary Member" and was later called to be part of the permanent painting commission. The first years of the century he spent them in Paris where he studied the painting of the great masters of the past and followed the new pictorial tendencies that advanced in the climate of general renewal. Influences of themes such as symbolism, divisionism, are found in his paintings of the first decades of the 20th century. The great canvases "Il sogno" 1909, "La visitatrice" 1909, "Ancient Ballad" 1916 and the great Alpine landscapes where the tripartite division of horizons, divisionism, the skies that lead to infinity and visual perception are part of this period. reminiscent of Puvis Chevannes, of Hodler and Segantini. Mascarini loves the mountains and during the summer stays the beautiful Val Bregaglia is the scene of so many landscapes represented by him. But there is not only the landscape framework for Mascarini but also that of figure because nature and humanity are in him two equally vivid terms, both inspiring. In his figure paintings he prefers to observe rather than interpret with arbitrariness, to keep himself as close as possible to the subject rather than charging him with extreme meanings. His brushstrokes, the strength of design and warmth always suggest a vision of calm and familiar calm, a warm unity of tone, a measure, a contained and spontaneous impetus.