Giuseppe Mascarini (bologna 1877 - Milan 1954) - Landscape

Giuseppe Mascarini (Bologna 1877 - Milan 1954)

Oil painting on canvas, 88 x 117.5 cm
Signed lower left
Dated 1919

Published on page 189 plate 319 of the book ‘Giuseppe Mascarini 1877-1954. A palette between two centuries’ Skira editore - Milan 2016

He always lived and worked in Milan. He studied at the Brera Academy. Gifted in drawing and painting he won prizes in 1896 and 1897 when he participated for the first time in the Brera exhibitions.
In 1900, the Academy named him an ‘Honorary Member’ and he was later called to sit on the permanent painting commission. He spent the first years of the century in Paris where he studied the painting of the great masters of the past and followed the new pictorial trends that were advancing in the general climate of renewal. Influences of themes such as Symbolism and Divisionism can be found in his paintings from the first decades of the 20th century. To this period belong the large canvases ‘The Dream’ 1909, ‘The Visitor’ 1909, ‘Ancient Ballad’ 1916 and the large Alpine landscapes where the tripartition of horizons, divisionism, skies leading towards infinity, and visual perception bring back memories of Puvis Chevannes, Hodler and Segantini.
Mascarini loves the mountains and during his summer holidays the beautiful Val Bregaglia is the setting for many of the landscapes he depicts. But there is not only landscape painting for Mascarini but also figure painting, because nature and humanity are two equally living terms for him, both of which generate inspiration.
In his figure paintings he prefers to observe rather than interpret arbitrarily, to keep as close as possible to the subject rather than load it with extreme meanings. His brushstrokes, the strength of drawing and warmth always suggest a vision of serene and familiar calm, a warm unity of tone, a measure, a restrained and spontaneous impetus.

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