The Sun by Pellizza da Volpedo: the Pinacoteca di Tortona exhibits the artist's early work


From Sept. 13, 2025, the Pinacoteca Divisionismo in Tortona will exhibit "The Sun (study)," an oil on canvas from the youth of Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. The exhibition delves into the artist's formative period with 28 works, including studies, portraits and landscapes, revealing the genesis of the Roman masterpiece "The Sun."

Beginning Sept. 13, 2025, the Pinacoteca Divisionismo in Tortona will welcome a new work by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, The Sun (study), an oil on canvas that anticipates the painting of the same name preserved at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome. The work becomes part of the Pinacoteca’s permanent collection and will be the focus of an in-depth study dedicated to the early stages of Pellizza’s artistic production, entitled The Young Pellizza. Academies, Masters and Early Experiences: 1883-1890, which can be visited from September 13 to February 15, 2025.

The Sun (Studio) represents a crucial stage in the creative journey that led to the creation of the Roman masterpiece. It is a visual experiment in which painting is pushed toward an almost abstract result: the sun, portrayed in a central position on a raised horizon, radiates a set of colored segments arranged in a strictly controlled sequence. This composition accentuates an intense backlighting that tends to eliminate any underlying landscape detail, depriving the image of conventional figurative elements and focusing everything on the luminous force of the rising star.

Giuseppe Pellizza, The Sun (study) - detail (1903-1904;oil on canvas)
Giuseppe Pellizza, The Sun (study) - detail (1903-1904; oil on canvas)

Parallel to the exhibition of the new acquisition, Pinacoteca Tortona will present a nucleus of 28 works by Pellizza that are rarely included in the usual exhibition itineraries, focusing on his early years. These include works such as Portrait of the Parents (1885), Self-Portrait (1885-86), Head of a Little Girl (1887), and several sketches and landscape impressions dating between 1888 and 1892, such as Bozzettino, Evening and Village Impression, alongside the famous Il cammino dei lavoratori (1898-1899), the forerunner of Il Quarto Stato. Special attention is also paid to Boy Pulling a Rope (1889) and Cliff at Sturla (1890). The exhibition also includes works by the masters who influenced the young Pellizza, Cesare Tallone and Pio Sanquirico.

The exhibition is part of a larger calendar of initiatives dedicated to the artist, including Pellizza da Volpedo (1868-1907). Masterpieces scheduled at the Milan Gallery of Modern Art from September 26, 2025 to January 25, 2026, in which Pinacoteca Tortona is participating with a major loan. With the focus The Young Pellizza, the Pinacoteca thus completes the portrait of the artist by delving into the formative years that defined his stylistic signature and thematic choices.

Giuseppe Pellizza, Ragazzo che tirazzo una corda - detail (1889)
Giuseppe Pellizza, Ragazzo che tirazzo una corda - detail (1889)

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo’s career began in 1883 in Milan, the city that saw him enroll at the Brera Academy from January 1884. There he attended courses in ornament, life drawing, perspective, architecture and art history, while at the private studio of Giuseppe Puricelli he joined the practice of copying from life, as evidenced by some youthful portraits, including his Self-portrait preserved in Tortona. In 1886, with Puricelli’s departure for Russia, Pellizza switched to the studio of Pio Sanquirico, where copying from life on living models was common practice. Those years saw an evolution in his painting technique, which became freer and livelier, inspired by contemporary artists Attilio Pusterla, Filippo Carcano, Giovanni Sottocornola and Emilio Longoni.

In the fall of 1887 the painter moved to Rome to study at the Accademia di San Luca, but the methodology of the Roman school did not satisfy him and prompted him to continue his studies in Florence at the Accademia di Belle Arti under Giovanni Fattori. There he formed friendships with colleagues Plinio Nomellini and Guglielmo Micheli. Seeking a more stimulating confrontation with complex subjects, Pellizza later chose the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, where he was admitted as a “particular pupil” of the famous portrait painter Cesare Tallone, despite being out of age. The relationship with Tallone proved decisive, as during that period Pellizza intensified his study of life drawing and portraiture, delving deeper into techniques and themes.

Giuseppe Pellizza, Cliff in Sturla -detail (1890)
Giuseppe Pellizza, Scogliera a Sturla - detail (1890)

During the summer of 1889 the painter returned to Volpedo and devoted himself to landscape impressions characterized by quick, sketchy brushstrokes, a technique similar to Tallone’s, used during educational excursions in the Bergamo valleys. After a brief experience in Paris in 1890, where he visited the Exposition Universelle in the company of his friend Edoardo Berta, Pellizza returned to Bergamo to resume his academic career. His growing interest in the human figure set in an environmental context and in outdoor themes led him to also enroll at the Accademia Ligustica in Genoa, a renowned landscape school. Of his brief stay in Liguria, which lasted only one month in November 1890, some marinas set between Sturla and Quarto remain, preserved right in the collection of the Tortona Art Gallery.

The Tortona initiative is also part of the celebrations dedicated to Pellizza da Volpedo, inaugurated in 2025 by the release of the documentary film Pellizza pittore da Volpedo by director Francesco Fei with Fabrizio Bentivoglio, produced by Apnea Film and distributed by Nexo Studios. The planned exhibitions and cultural initiatives thus offer a comprehensive analysis of the artistic evolution of one of the protagonists of Italian pointillism, reconstructing both the initial stages of his training and his creative peak.

The Sun by Pellizza da Volpedo: the Pinacoteca di Tortona exhibits the artist's early work
The Sun by Pellizza da Volpedo: the Pinacoteca di Tortona exhibits the artist's early work


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