The bad mothers
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| Le cattive madri |
|---|
| Giovanni Segantini , 1894 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 105 × 200 cm |
| Austrian Gallery Belvedere |
The Bad Mothers (Le cattive madri) is one of the most famous paintings by the painter Giovanni Segantini . It dates from 1894 and is the youngest of four pictures in which Segantini takes up the motif of the "woman in the tree". The three other pictures are “The fruit of love” (Il frutto dell'amore) from 1889, “The punishment of the lustful” (Il castigo delle lussuriose) from 1891 and “Angel of life” (L'angelo della vita) from 1894. The pictures are Segantini's first symbolist works.
origin
The two winter pictures are based on the poem "Nirvana", which refers to a Buddhist legend and was written in Sanskrit by the monk Pandjavalli de Mairondapa in the 12th century . Segantini's friend Luigi Illica translated the poem into Italian. It is said:
Up there in the infinite spaces of heaven / Nirvana shines
there, behind the strict mountains with gray spikes /
Nirvana seems!
[...] So the wicked mother in the icy valley / through eternal glaciers
where no branch is green and no flower blooms / floats around.
Your son got no smile, no kiss / o useless mother?
So the silence will torment you / hit you and poke
tears icy larva in your eyes / made of ice!
Look at them! With great effort it staggers / like a leaf! ...
And there is only silence about their pain; / things are silent.
Now from the icy valley / trees appear!
There from every branch a soul calls out loudly / that suffers and loves;
and the silence is defeated and the so human /
voice says:
“Come! Come to me, mother! give me the breast, the life, I have forgiven!… “
The phantasm to the sweet call /
flying rushes and offers the trembling branch / the breast, the soul,
oh miracle! Look! The branch has a heart! The branch has life!
Now! It is the face of a child sucking /
greedily and kissing the breast ...!
maternity
Segantini was deeply affected by the theme of the mother who refuses to love her newborn and is only redeemed after long suffering in the reunion with the child. He lost his mother when he was seven years old and was later rejected by his half-sister. That may be one reason why, as an adult, he transfigured motherhood into an ideal and elevated the good mother to the secular Madonna who knows herself to be in harmony with creation. Possibly unable to come to terms with one's own loss and feeling of abandonment, he painted the pictures of bad mothers and heartless women suffering for their deeds. Segantini's granddaughter Gioconda Leykauf-Segantini wrote: “Reading the poem 'Nirwana' by Luigi Illica left a deep impression on my grandfather. It revolves around the subject of denied motherhood, the punishment of wicked mothers who have to endure long suffering before they are redeemed. "
photos
The fruit of love (1889)
Together with the picture “Angel of Life”, “The Fruit of Love” forms the counterpart to “The Evil Mothers” and “The Punishment of the Lustful”. The motif is reminiscent of the depiction of the “Madonna with the Child”, which shows the holiness and motherhood of the Virgin Mary, combined with the fertility of nature: the tree, a symbol of the tree of life, is just beginning to sprout and shows the first leaves. Segantini painted a peaceful and harmonious mother-child relationship, even if the posture of the mother and the right hand, which does not embrace the child but rests on a branch, shows a certain detachment.
The mother's long, red-blonde hair, which has got caught in the branches in other pictures, falls loosely over her shoulder in two long strands. The somewhat older child is loosely wrapped in a veil-like, transparent cloth. It smiles happily and relaxed, it is holding an apple in its left hand. In the background on the left a cow is grazing, even if the pasture is still brown, as if the snow had just melted.
The picture is in the possession of the Museum of Fine Arts , Leipzig .
The punishment of the lustful (1891)
Two half-bared women float side by side, floating halfway above the ground, asleep through an icy mountain landscape. Some of them have long red hair caught in the branches of a birch tree sticking out of the snow. A second birch is half buried in the snow on the left. Two other women are floating in the background on the left.
Segantini's attitude towards women was shaped by the spirit of the time when women should stay at home and look after their children. Although he did not obey Catholic rules in his private life - for example, he refused to marry his life companion and mother of his four children, Bice Bugatti - his work was strongly influenced by religious ideas. He condemned women who refused to motherhood and only enjoyed the joys of love; for him they were evil, vain and sterile. Segantini describes in this picture a passage from the poem quoted above: "So the wicked mother floats around in the icy valley through eternal glaciers, where no branch is green and no flower blooms ..."
The floating figure represents the souls of women who have aborted and are forced to float in an icy valley as punishment, waiting for redemption. In contrast to the heat of their passion during their lifetime, the punishment of these souls is a long journey through a mountainous, snowy landscape, where it is still and cold. The arid tree traps the flowing hair of one of the women in its branches, as if even the landscape couldn't bear to let these 'unnatural' creatures pass without taking revenge.
The picture is owned by the Walker Art Gallery , Liverpool .
The Bad Mothers (1894)
In the winter landscape of Alp Tussagn east of Savognin with a view of Piz Toissa and Piz Curvér , a birch tree protrudes from the snow in the right half of the picture. In a counter-oscillation to the bending of the tree, a woman with closed eyes hovers in front of the tree; her red-blonde hair hangs over the branches. Her naked body is surrounded by a veil-like robe that lets the belly, which is bulging like a pregnancy, shine through. A child's head, which grows from a branch twisted like an umbilical cord, is sucking on her right breast, as described in the poem.
The woman's posture seems to show pleasure and pain at the same time. The drinking child is a sensual experience for the mother, which is expressed by the head turned backwards and the lips open. In the poem, the mother offers the calling child not only the breast but also the soul. Segantini expresses this through the shape of the large branches and the woman's body, which together form a heart. After the child has forgiven the mother and the time of suffering is over, mother and child can float together into salvation, into nirvana shimmering golden in the background .
Two further groups of women can be seen in the background: a group of three on the left and another on the right. The child of the woman on the left is just piercing the layer of ice, whereby the mother, through her hair grown into the tree, is connected to her child by a root like an umbilical cord. On the right, a little behind this scene, two women hover who were able to free themselves from their trees.
The picture is owned by the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere , Vienna .
Angel of Life (1894)
As the last picture in this series, Segantini painted the conciliatory "Angel of Life" as a peaceful counterpart to the disturbing winter pictures in which he depicted the "Bad Mothers" from the poem "Nirvana". With this he closed the circle to the picture “Fruit of Love”, which he had painted first. Almost floating in the center of the picture sits a young woman in the posture of a Madonna on the branches of a birch and lovingly embraces her child. It hugs the life-giving breast with confidence, which can be seen through the robe. The first green leaves are showing on the tree, the snow has melted in the mountain landscape, and there is a puddle of water in the background.
The picture is owned by the Galleria d'Arte Moderna , Milan .
See also
literature
- Karl Abraham : Giovanni Segantini. An attempt at psychoanalysis . In: Writings on applied soul science, volume 11, F. Deuticke , Leipzig / Vienna, 1911/1925
- Beat Stutzer, Roland Wäspe (ed.): Giovanni Segantini . Gerd Verlag Gerd Hatje , Ostfildern 1999 (Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, March 13 to May 30, 1999; Segantini Museum St. Moritz, June 12 to October 20, 1999), ISBN 3-7757-0561-9
- Reto Bonifazi, Daniela Hardmeier, Medea Hoch: Segantini. A life in pictures . Werd Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-85932-280-X
- Hans Zbinden: Giovanni Segantini. Life and work . Paul Haupt Publishing House , Bern 1964
- Bianca Zehder-Segantini (Ed. And editing): Giovanni Segantini's writings and letters . Verlag von Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig undated (1912)
- Gioconda Leykauf Segantini (ed.): Giovanni Segantini, 1858–1899: from writings and letters; da scritti e lettere (bilingual). Innquell-Verlag, Hof 2000, ISBN 3-00-004997-5
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Beat Sulzer, Roland Wäspe (ed.): Giovanni Segantini . Verlag Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern 1999, p. 51 f.
- ↑ Documentation Segantini Museum St, Moritz (PDF; 2.3 MB) accessed August 24, 2008
- ^ Bianca Zehder-Segantini: Giovanni Segantini. Writings and letters . Zurich 1934