File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - De Grada Raffaele, Paesaggio.jpg

Purchased on the antique market in 1983, this significant example of Raffaele De Grada’s mature period completes the important corpus of works in the Cariplo Collection tracing his artistic trajectory, from the early Glarus Alps of 1913 to the mature Tuscan Landscape or Pond and the evocative Milanese view of the 1940s entitled Snow or Snowfall.

The work is dated 1953 and has the same perspective as Surroundings of San Gimignano (1952, private collection) with twisted olive trees in the foreground against a landscape gently sloping away in the distance to the hills in the upper section. The view was a recurrent subject in the artist’s repertoire as from the 1920s, when he moved from Switzerland to Tuscany and began to establish an international reputation with participation in the 1922 Venice Biennial (Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della città di Venezia).

The painter initially broke the Sienese landscapes down into clearly distinct blocks under the influence of the Tuscan primitives and the work of Paul Cézanne, which was celebrated in a major exhibition at the 1920 Venice Biennial. As a result of the De Grada’s definitive move to Milan in 1929, these squared volumes gradually gave way to a freer and more fluid type of painting that softens the outlines, as documented by Landscape in Versilia (Milan, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, first shown in the III Mostra d’Arte del Sindacato Fascista di Belle Arti di Lombardia in 1932).

De Grada’s constant and intense work on the same subjects, above all views of Lombardy and Tuscany, resulted in a thematically homogenous type of landscape painting. The artist started from direct analysis of reality reinterpreted through his models of reference to arrive at a personal and intimate vision of landscape that is distinguished in mature works like the one considered here by a sophisticated range of colours based on a few shades of pink and softer outlines.