Radical Light

Italian Divisionist painters of 1891-1910 suggests fairly estoteric fare and yet this modest exhibition (Radical Light: Italy's Divisionist Painters 1891-1910, National Gallery, 18 June - 7 September 2008 ) yields much that will be of interest both to those who seek to express faith through art and those who are appreciative of art that is expressive and symbolic.

Divisionism, the application of pure colours to canvas in dots, lines or threads, was an expression of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century search for a scientifically based understanding of colour and form. The most well known instance of this search was the Pointillism or Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat which initially influenced the Italian Divisionists.

However, the wider search had a strongly spiritual underpinning; one that is revealed in the interest that Paul Sérusier and Gino Severini showed in the writings of the Benedictine painter, Desiderius Lenz, with his insistence on the use of elementary geometric forms in the construction of paintings and also in the cubism of Albert Gleizes who located his scientific formulations for art in the Romanesque Art of the early Middle Ages.

Italian Divisionism also had a strongly spiritual element expressed primarily in symbolist images drawn from Christian iconography but also in the still luminosity of landscapes and the expressive movement of the social realist works. This in turn found its way into the Futurist Art movement which was built, as this exhibition demonstrates, on the achievements of the Italian Divisionists and which, through the work of Gerardo Dottori and Fillia, developed a strong strand of Futurist Sacred Art.

Gaetano Previati sought to develop a contemporary Christian Art which used the Divisionist technique of evoking the luminosity of light through the application of repeated lines of pure colour to suggest the spirituality of his subjects. The exhibition includes his first major work using these motifs entitled Motherhood and depicting a Madonna and child surrounded by angels. This image, which now appears to verge on the sentimental, stirred up considerable controversy when first exhibited at the 1891 Brera Triennale, an exhibition which marked the public debut of Divisionism and Modern Art itself in Italy. Contemporary critics expressed bafflement at the combination of contemporary techniques with a traditional religious image and failed to see the way in which Previati’s evocation of light spiritualised his image of maternal love.

Other Divisionists, such as Giovanni Segantini, also worked with symbolism which was mainly Christian in origin while Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo created realist works which often depicted aspects of Christian ritual and ceremony. The Procession depicts a Catholic procession in his hometown of Volpedo where the bright radiance of the sun envelopes the participants and, as with Previati’s work, creates a spiritual luminescence. The curve which defines the upper part of the painting and the gold border of the canvas recall the format of Quattrocento religious painting and are typical of another means by which the Italian Divisionists commonly create links to the great religious works of Italian art, even when the subject of their work appears entirely secular.

Most of the Italian Divisionists displayed an interest in the great social movements of their day as the unification of Italy resulted in turbulent social and political conditions. Some of the most forceful and vibrant Divisionist paintings are those which depict aspects of the political and social struggles of their day, such as Emilio Longoni’s immense figure of The Orator of the Strike or his poignant Social Contrasts depicting a homeless man observing an affluent couple in a restaurant. In works such as these, divisionist technique is used to created a sense of movement and it is this that is developed by the later Futurists in works such as Carlo Carra’s The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and Umberto Boccioni’s The City Rises where the intensity of the layered lines of colour suggests the agitation and pace of urban life and social change.

The Italian Divisionists therefore provide contemporary artists with an example of how to be on the cutting edge of society with an art that is both socially engaged and spiritually uplifting.

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Lou Reed - Strawman.