Raffaele De Grada - House with a Grape Pergola

Landscape has always been a central theme in artistic research, both as a setting, as a backdrop, and as a subject itself. The naturalistic depiction of landscape has been a major aspiration for artists of every era. Each historical period has offered its own interpretation of landscape, contributing to the evolution of its depiction: first with an exploration of space, through Brunelleschi's perspective in the early Renaissance; then with atmospheric rendering in the sixteenth century; and finally with the depiction of every single vibration of light on objects in Impressionism.

We can see how this evocative view was created by Raffaele De Grada with a remarkable Post-Impressionist technique. The artist uses rapid, hatched brushstrokes to quickly delineate shapes and volumes. This allows him to capture, with each brushstroke, the effects of light and atmosphere on objects, and to instantly convey a highly lyrical glimpse onto the canvas with precise chromatic and environmental conditions. The entire color palette is in fact designed to reflect the precise atmospheric conditions intended to be represented in a coherent evolution of plein air painting. As with the Impressionists, the perspective grid is not eliminated, but the spatial depth of the path with the pergola is determined exclusively through the modulations of color, applied in large, dense strokes. Through this technique, Raffaele De Grada manages to transfer to the canvas the intense vibrations emanating from the glimpses of light through the vegetation. By adopting this stylistic modality, the representation of the view takes on a great vital charge, in the immediacy and freshness of the execution.

Raffaele De Grada (Milan 1885 – 1957). In 1913 he made his debut with a solo exhibition in Zurich. He was interested in landscape painting, but sought new solutions based on nature and mood. His first Italian solo exhibition took place in 1921 in Florence at Palazzo Antinori, attracting the attention of critics and the Florentine art scene. In 1922 he moved to Giramonte, near Arcetri. That same year he was invited to the Venice Biennale, where he participated in almost every subsequent edition. In 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of the Novecento Italiano in Milan. In 1928, he had a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale. In 1929, he took part in the second exhibition of the Novecento Italiano at the Permanente in Milan. In 1930, he moved to Milan. He continued to devote himself to landscapes: those of the Milanese suburbs, of Brianza and of Tuscany, comparing himself with the paintings of Corot and Cézanne.

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