Advertising Switzerland: Giovanni Segantini's Panorama for the 1900 Paris World's Fair Author(s): Hans A.

Lthy Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, Vol. 19, Swiss Theme Issue (1993), pp. 34-41 Published by: Florida International University Board of Trustees on behalf of The Wolfsonian-FIU Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1504102 . Accessed: 07/10/2012 17:05
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Advertising Switzerland: Giovanni

Panorama

Segantini's
Fair

for

the

1900

Paris

World's

By Hans A Lithy

HansA. Luthyis co-director of the Swiss Institutefor Art Research. Since 1979 he has been a memberof the International Committeefor Art Historyand a boardmemberof manyassociations and academies of art and science. A GettyScholar in 1985-1986, he has served as presidentof the Cantonof ZurichCommittee for the Preservationof Historic Monuments,a memberof the UNESCO Committeefor Florence,and general secretary of the Swiss National Committee"ProVenezia."

he end of the nineteenth century,thefin-de-sicle, produced some of the strangestideas in the historyof art.In 1894 GiovanniSegantini (fig. 1) formulatedsuch an idea for the 1900 ParisWorld'sFair,one f the grandest projects of the time. Segantiniproposed to create an immense panoramaof the Engadine,the high valleyon the southern border of Switzerlandnear Italy.The Engadine had recently introduced winter tourism,a hitherto unknown complement to the Sommerfrische,when many summer visitorsfrequented Swiss resorts. Severaldevelopments led to this extension of the short summer season; in the beginning English tourists, always keen to expand their pleasures, saw fresh possibilities in snow and ice, such as skating,curling,sledding, sleigh-riding,and-very slow-skiing. The Badrutt family,owners of the PalaceHotel in St. Moritz,built the first facilitiesfor these new sports. An earlystatisticshows three hundred guests for the 1884-1885 winter season in St. Moritz.As the often colossal hotel buildings and installations demanded amortization,hotel owners in St. Moritz,Pontresina,and Maloja had to advertise their features.1Segantini'spanoramaaddressed this need. Segantini was born in 1858 in Arco, at that time an Austrianvillage in the South Tyrol.He left Arco in 1863 for Milan,where he later studied art at the Accademia. In Milanand the adjacent landscape of the Brianza,he cultivated a realistic style tending to rather sentimental subjects, like shepherdesses kneeling before a cross. In 1886 he moved to Savognin in the Oberhalbstein,a Grison valley between the Engadine and the capital of the Grisons, Chur,where he developed his own neo-impressionist technique in large presymbolist compositions. The iconography still followed earlier patterns, depicting natives in the essential round of life, but now against the background of the Alps. With his unique approach, Segantini struck essential feelings in contemporary society and won a basketful of gold medals at important exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. However his technique resulted in slow production, and he finished no more than three or four paintings a year. His agent and dealer, Alberto Grubicyin Milan,tried to compensate for this disadvantageby placing articles and reproductions in relevant art journals.When Segantini moved to the small village of Malojain 1894, he was one of the most popular artists of the day. Malojais situated at the west end of the Engadine, some miles from St. Moritz. Tourism was booming not only in St. Moritz, where the Badrutts built the Palace as a flagship hotel in 1883, but also in Maloja (fig. 2) and-east of St. Moritz-in Celerina, Samaden, and Pontresina. The reasons why Segantini
1. Regula Bucheler, "Hohenrausch, die Entwicklungdes Tourismus im Engadin in den letzten 150 Jahren,"in Giovanni Segantinis Panorama, exhibition catalogue (1991), 19-36, see bibliography. DAPA1993 35

Photographsfrom the Swiss Institutefor Art Research except where noted.

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in Kursaal Fig.2. TheHotel ca. Maloja, 1900.

moved to Maloja remain obscure. He had lost his Austrian citizenship but never acquired either Italian or Swiss nationality. Therefore he could not marry the mother of his four children, Bice Bugatti, and there were rumors about this clandestine circumstance in Savognin. To appease, Segantini offered to paint a fresco in a new village church, but this was declined by the conservative Catholic community. Another reason may have spurred his decision to move higher in the Alps. Malojais beautifully situated on the edge of the Engadine high valley and presents one of the most spectacular views of the Alpine mountain range. Compared with the menacingly close mountains surrounding Savognin, the Engadine offers a wide vista of peaks, slopes, and ridges; in the valleys the four lakes of Sils, Silvaplana,Champfer,and St. Moritz mirror the sky and the mountains. In his last three years in Savognin, Segantini began to shift his motifs to clearly symbolistic themes. The Punishment of Luxury from 1891 (WalkerArt Gallery, Liverpool) shows a fantastic vision of women flying over a desert of ice; The Evil Mothers from 1894 (Museum of Art History,Vienna), a still-controversial painting, symbolizes the guilt and expiation of unmarried mothers, also shown in an icy landscape, caught in the branches of dead trees. In MalojaSegantini continued to choose symbolistic topics such as Vanity, a beautiful redhead contemplating herself in a mountain lake but recognizing in the water an ugly dragon. Segantini's symbolism always seems to hark back to personal situations, and he often combines his feelings with a sentimental, even naive touch. His concept of the Engadine panorama arises from these same sources: Segantini did not want to re-experience the suspicious attitude of the natives toward his common-law wife and family as he had in Savognin, and to win good will, instead of painting a church wall, he proposed a way to draw tourists to the newly developed area and bring prosperous times to the Alpine population in the Engadine. In fact, sales promotion of the Engadine hotels has been described as very poor-trivial and stereotyped.2 Nonetheless, the number of availableguest beds was expanding from year to year, and nearly all the inhabitants of St. Moritz depended for a living, in one way or another, on

2. Die Welt GiovanniSegantini,exhibition des catalogue(1976-1977),29, see bibliography. 36 DAPA 1993

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Fig.3. Giovanni Segantini, draft his pavilion the for at 1900Paris World's Fair, and charcoal blackchalk. St Museum, Moritz. Segantini
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foreign guests drawn mainly from Germany and Northern Italy (fig. 4). Large sums were invested not only in buildings and sports facilities but also in the narrow-gauge railway from Chur to Thusis and the stagecoach lines from Thusis in the north and Italyin the south. Segantini's panorama project was, in this context, an excellent one. He must have developed the first idea for his panorama soon after settling in Maloja.We do not know about his original contacts with hotel owners in the Engadine, but in 1897 a committee was formed to support the project and raise the necessary funds. The artist, who since 1883 had hired an agent to commercialize his production, tried for once to organize the project himself, which we know through many letters and memoranda in the ensuing years. Initiallyhe designed a huge templelike pavilion seventy-four meters in diameter and eighty-four meters high (fig. 3). The building was to be erected in the area of the Swiss contribution to the world's fair,near the Trocadero.The interior was to be equipped with the Engadine panorama in the round, and two real roads would have permitted real traffic,not just pedestrians but carriages too. In the foreground Segantini projected actual objects, such as trees and huts, to enhance reality.A letter to Grubicy suggests that Segantini also hoped to experiment with mechanically movable parts to produce additional effects. The whole project needed, according to Segantini, funding of three million Swiss francs, not including Segantini's fee. Apparently at first the committee believed it could raise this huge sum. The reason for their optimism was Segantini's passionate conviction that he could make the Engadine famous worldwide. In 1897 the painter gave numerous speeches in which he explained the project to businessmen and citizens in the which we would call a press release Engadine. He also wrote a "proclamation," in his exhaustive book on panoramas,3 says that today; Stephan Oettermann, Segantini's text-not to mention the panorama-strikes him as one of the most fantastic concoctions of its kind. The artist identifies himself as the painter of the Alps who can mediate between the beautiful nature of the Engadine landscape and the public. He proposes a unique project that
3. Stephan Oettermann, Das Panorama (1980), 142, see bibliography. DAPA1993 37

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Fig.4. Season's Greetings cardfromthe Palace Hotels in Malojaand Nice, 1898.

Fig.5. Giovanni Segantini, draft the overall for conception left of LaVita, sectionof the La Naturatriptych Vita-La LaMorte, charcoal black and Foundation chalk,1898-1899. forArt,Culture, History, and Switzerland. Kusnacht,

Fig.6. Giovanni Segantini, draft LaNatura, middle secfor La tionof the triptych Vita-La Natura-La Morte,charcoal andblackchalk,1898-1899.

would glorify the Engadine. He, Segantini, would be the one to show the world the unequaled light on the elevated snowfields and glaciers. He would give visitors the illusion of being right in the midst of all this beauty. There would be electric ventilators to supply fresh mountain breezes, and lighting effects to simulate morning, afternoon, and evening. Acoustic devices would imitate rippling brooks, lowing cattle, and tinkling cowbells. After this introduction Segantini goes into detail: compared to its original dimensions the project has already decreased; the circumference is now 220 meters, and the building is to be 20 meters high. Segantini promises to paint not only natural beauty but also the important hotels between Malojaand Pontresina, the starting point of the Bernina Pass. In the center the artist plans to erect an artificial mountain 16 meters high; a platform, from which the whole could be seen, would crown the top. The mountain would be naturalistic, with cliffs, small bridges over rivulets, and plants such as rhododendrons. Segantini counts on 2,000 visitors every half hour and 5.7 million during the six months of the exhibition. At the entrance to the pavilion, Segantini sees advertising panels for tourism, promotion and sale of native products, and prominent mention of the hotels depicted in the panorama itself. At the end of his statement, Segantini requests the sum of half-a-millionSwiss francs to continue with the project. He wants the money in paid-in shares and promises huge gains by developing a plan for further exhibitions in every metropolis in Europe and the United States.4

The end of the story came all too soon. Earlyin 1898 Segantini had to abandon the project for two main reasons. The cash and guaranties of the hotel for and owners did not equal the money needed, and space in the Paris exhibition Foundation Art,Culture, was either not available or much too costly. However the huge triptych La Switzerland. Vita-La Natura-La Morte, now in the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz, Kiisnacht, History,
4. M. Montandon, Segantini (Leipzig: Bielefeld, 1906), 111;reprint in Oettermann, Das Panorama, 142-144; Italianversion in Annie-PauleQuinsac, ed., Segantini. Trent'anni (1985), 642-645, see bibliography. 38 DAPA1993

draft Segantini, Fig.7.Giovanni sectionof forLaMorte, right La Naturathetriptych Vita-La and LaMorte, charcoal black Foundation 1898-1899. chalk, and forArt, Culture, History, Switzerland. Kusnacht,

takes up some of the basic themes of the panorama (figs. 5, 6, and 7). Segantini died at the age of forty-one while working on La Natura. The triptych was exhibited at the 1900 ParisWorld'sFair,and visitors from all over the world admired the inherent symbolism of the cycle of life from birth to death. The failure of the project now seems inevitable. Oettermann points out that the era of huge panoramas was over, and in a general way he was right. On the other hand, the whole project corresponded perfectly with the character of Segantini, even in its contradictions. Segantini developed, first in Italybut more clearly in Savognin, a theory of the personal mission of his art. The message was addressed to mankind, and he was deeply convinced of his role in improving society. His principalbelief in an ideal harmony between nature and the human being met with a lively response fromfin-de-siecle intellectuals, such as Hermann Hesse and RainerMariaRilke. Segantini visualized a better world where all would live in mutual peace, including animals and plants. In his important paintings after 1886, he exerted his divisionismlike technique to bind landscape, animals, and human figures together (fig. 8). In fact, he never painted the human being as an individual but more as an intensification or an emanation of nature. However his proposal for promoting tourism in the Engadine was inconsistent with other personal preferences. In a letter to the painter Giuseppe Pellizza,dated 28 December 1894 from Maloja,he explained his exodus from Milanby citing the all-too-busy life and the noise in the city. He wanted to go where he was not molested by the egalitarianwhistling of a train;where there was always silence, interrupted only by the barking of a dog or the roaring of the wind.5 The increasing number of tourists in Switzerland (two million guest nights in 1875, twenty-two million in 1913) changed not only the character of the natives but also the complexion of the villages and the landscape. Segantini must have been aware of this danger, and we can only presume a temporary shift of priorities in his life. One would be his wish

5. Quinsac, Segantini. Trent'anni, 627-628, see bibliography.

DAPA 1993

39

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Fig.8. Giovanni Segantini, zur Ruckkehr Heimat home), oil, (Returning 161.5 x 299 cm, 1895. NationalGalerie,Berlin.

to be accepted in Malojaas a fellow citizen; actually,in a letter he declared Malojato be his native country. Another would be his wish for social and economic advancement. Sources tell us much about the earlier misery of the family. During the years in Maloja,Segantini earned more money than ever before but spent it all too quickly. He enjoyed his fame and received many visitors (and admirers). He designed a large project for his own palatial residence, to be built on the ruins of a castle in Maloja.For a time, the panorama project led him to believe that he could solve his financial difficulties in future. In any case, the rather ingenuous inclusion of grand hotels in the panorama seems to be unique in the manifold history of the genre. [

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Select Bibliography BarbicanArt Gallery,London. Panoramania, exhibition catalogue. 1988-1989. Kunsthaus Zurich. Giovanni Segantini, exhibition catalogue. 1990-1991. Lithy, Hans A. and Corrado Maltese. Giovanni Segantini. Zurich: Orell-Fussli, 1981. Luthy,Hans A. Review of two books by Annie-PauleQuinsac. Art Bulletin, vol. 69, no. 2 (June 1987): 307-311. Oettermann, Stephan. Das Panorama-Die Geschichte eines Massenmediums. Frankfort am Main:Bichergilde Gutenberg, 1980. Quinsac, Annie-Paule.Segantini. Catalogogenerale. 2 vols. Milan:Electa, 1982. Quinsac, Annie-Paule,ed. Segantini. Trent'anni di vita artistica europea nei carteggi inediti dell'artista e dei suoi mecenati. Oggiono-Lecco: Cattaneo, 1985. Segantini Museum, St. Moritz and Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck. Giovanni Segantinis Panorama und andere Engadiner Panoramen, exhibition catalogue. 1991. Swiss Institute for Art Research. Die Weltdes Giovanni Segantini, exhibition catalogue. Zurich, 1976-1977 DAPA1993