Study for "La Vita"

1897

Medium

Pastel and black chalk over graphite

Dimensions

90 × 161.3 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-212788

This monumental pastel demonstrates why Segantini is today regarded as one of the most important Italian artists of his generation. Inspired by the rugged, snowy peaks that ringed his home in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland, the mountains depicted here catch the last rays of sun as twilight descends on the meadows below. At right, two figures carrying heavy loads make their way across the scene, while in the distance at left, a small house and a handful of receding figures suggest a village just down the path and out of sight. In the foreground, a female cowherd waits patiently for her charge to take a drink. A bare tree, studied from nature and silhouetted against the sky at left, contributes to the sense of quiet melancholy that pervades the composition. Laid in with graphite, the design is firmed up with black chalk contours and shadows and threaded through with long, parallel strokes of pastel, powerfully reminiscent of the skeins of oil paint we find in Segantini’s pictures of the same moment. The effect is at once muted and spectacular, suggesting both the hushed atmosphere of the valley at dusk and the awesome scale of the mountains. This drawing combines all the ele…