2 – The Melezzo and its plain

On the plains where the light, softened by stagnant vapours envelops everything, blurring it to the point where it almost vanishes, the painter will perhaps decide that impasto is the expressive medium best suited to his feelings; but on the alpine plateaus where, in the rarefied, pure air, the light etches the smallest details with sharp precision, glorifying them in a solar apotheosis, anyone experiencing this shining limpidity that is the most marvellous feature of alpine environments, and wishes to attempt to reproduce it with art, will be logically led toward divisionism, which, with its minute, investigative brushstroke will analyse the blades of grass and the mottling of boulders in the foreground, and with its sinewy filaments will follow the imposing shapes of distant yokes and, with the additional breakdown, with the prismatic irradiation of colours, will provide the chance to reflect this grandeur onto a painting.

Carlo Fornara, Taccuini 1891-1892 (Notebooks 1891-1892) from Bello di colore, Scheiwiller 1969

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