Borning life

Motherhood is a key theme in the work of Giovanni Segantini, and it is linked to many key elements in his research, such as earth, nature, fertility and the female figure.
In his painting, the mystery of motherhood, which holds a sacred value for the artist, is expressed through various declinations, from his Due madri (Two mothers) to his Angelo della vita (Angel of life) through to Castigo delle lussuriose (The Punishment of Lust) or his Cattive madri (Bad Mothers). These are paintings destined to become iconographic topoi, of which the figurative persistence was to be felt well into 20th-century painting.
Starting out from such a decisive theme in Segantini’s work, the exhibition (part of the collaboration between the MAG and the Mart, begun between the two institutions in 2013) is designed to suggest a number of readings of the notion of maternity: along a time span starting in the mid-19th century up to the mid-20th century, the exhibition aims to investigate the themes of childbirth and motherhood, and therefore also of childhood, drawing on the works of artists present in the Mart and MAG collections.
Starting, for example, from the painting by Natale Schiavoni, a 19th-century revisiting of the Raphaelite Virgin Marys, continuing through the profane versions of Umberto Moggioli and Tullio Garbari, drawing directly on Segantinian models, right up to the sculptures by Andrea Malfatti, the creator of a touching marble work entitled Cure materne (Primo bagno). Alongside these artists, we also find Eugenio Prati, Medardo Rosso and Umberto Boccioni, Massimo Campigli and Felice Casorati, in a series of evocations ending up with the likening to these great artists to works somewhat closer to us timewise, such as that by Vanessa Beecroft, Pregnant Madonna (2006).