Becoming – Being – Passing Away – The Upper Engadine and Bergell landscape as stage and participant in Giovanni Segantini's «Alpine Triptych»

For the painter Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899), who came from Arco (Trentino), Maloja, where he settled with his family in the summer of 1894, was the last stage on his geographically and artistically steep ascent, which led him from the humble beginnings in Milan via the Brianza up to Savognin (Oberhalbstein) and finally to the Upper Engadine. Here, Segantini, by then an internationally acclaimed artist, spent the last and most productive five years of his life. Here he created his magnum opus, the Alpine triptych "Becoming – Being – Passing Away," which remained unfinished due to his early death. This work transforms the high mountain landscape, beyond any romantic idealization, into a stage where life and death, maternal bliss and grief, light and darkness, daily toil and resignation merge and mutually influence one another.

Mirella Carbone, artistic director of the Segantini Museum, will supplement her remarks with texts by the artist previously unpublished in German.