Small valley in Volpedo
Date: 1905 ; Volpedo in terms of modern geography
Art Form: Painting
Dimensions: 62 X 89 cm (24.41 X 35.04 in)
Vallon à Volpedo is part of Giuseppe Pellizza's conspicuous landscape production in the early years of the twentieth century. The painting is set on the red foliage of the chestnut tree moved by the wind, which organizes the space by cradling the gaze between the soft slopes and the central plateau to direct it into depth, where it is lost beyond the short horizon. A small figure of a peasant woman, bent over the path that descends irregularly among the vegetation on the right, is barely identifiable in the purple shadow, merged into the landscape of which it is an inseparable part as well as the leaves and branches, rocks and shrubs, in peaceful harmony with the cyclical and inevitable flow of the seasons. Pellizza uses a warm palette to recreate the seductive colors of late October, however lit up by the cold blue of the sky streaked with white clouds in a bold game of dissonances. The frayed brushstroke punctuates the earth with green and orange transparencies, modulating the backlight effects to simulate the vibration of the foliage, while above it suggests the movements of the crisp air with lilac and blue notches that chase each other and overlap in a mosaic of throbbing lights . In the painting Pellizza achieves the desired synthesis between the solid structure of the whole, truly meditated with the constant exercise of drawing, and the absolute mobility of the lights, which does not destroy the volumes but confirms them, achieved with a divisionism capable of overcoming every rigidity and evoke a lyrical, dreamy and enchanted world, beyond appearances.
