The Two Mothers by Giovanni Segantini

A warm, soft light, an intimate and secluded atmosphere illuminates the two maternities in the painting by the Italian master of Divisionism, Giovanni Segantini.

With bold brushstrokes of color that stand out on the canvas and in which brown tones and light and dark ochre shades prevail with luminous patches of white, Segantini leads us to the heart of the symbol of motherhood: a small stable illuminated by the light of the lantern hosts the universal experience of life.

Universal, because it’s not just the human story that’s at the center of the representation, but nature as a whole; thus, while the mother holds the child in her arms, the cow watches over her calf, creating a special connection between the two couples. Looking at the poses of their bodies, one notices that the cow’s hind legs are mirrored by the legs of the chair on which the woman sits, and the gazes of the two mothers are directed in opposite directions to those of their children, as often happens during moments of rest.

The naturalistic representation of the scene, with a focus on the rural life that Segantini cultivated during his stay in Brianza from 1882 to 1886, is mixed with symbolic elements, according to a principle typical of Symbolist art according to which reality perceived through the senses evokes something else, alludes, leads the observer behind the appearance of things.

Indeed, Segantini wrote: “Modern art must convey new sensations (…). The color must be intense but pure so that the light is profound and vivid. It requires continuous evocation, continuous mirage. The so-called true must be transcended.”

Segantini mixes pigments directly on the canvas to give strength and light to the colors, as the French Pointillists did, but here the longer, more jagged brushstrokes, which sometimes even overlap (divisionism), give a special three-dimensionality and an effect of movement similar to vibration.

The light that spreads throughout the painting, as well as the warm atmosphere that shines through the work, are truly extraordinary, and Segantini once again manages to convey, with vivid language, the roots of human feeling.

With these few lines of inspiration, venture, in just a few minutes’ walk from the Best Western Hotel City, to the Gallery of Modern Art in Milan, where you can find, alongside The Two Mothers, also Segantini’s The Angel of Life, The Goddess of Love, Love at the Fountain of Life, and Landscape on the Maloja River. Then there’s the Madonna of the Lilies by Previati, paintings by Pellizza da Volpedo and many others, as well as a selection of sculptures including a plaster cast of Hebe, cupbearer of the gods, by Canova.