Alberto Bonomi belonged to the second generation of Lombard Divisionist painters who gravitated to Alberto Grubicy’s gallery, first in Milan and, from 1910 onwards, in Paris.¹ Despite Bonomi’s having participated in major exhibitions like the Esposizione Internazionale di Milano in 1906, the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1909, the Venice Biennale three years later, the Esposizione Nazionale di Torino in 1919 and the first Roman Biennale in 1921, the artist won relatively little critical acclaim, also due to the fact that his output was curtailed by his premature death.² He was a lawyer by profession and is described in texts of the period as “an amateur, in the finest and most noble sense of the word”.³ At the only solo exhibition devoted to him, in 1919,⁴ twenty-five of his works were presented, but the often generic titles and lack of illustrations do not permit us to establish with certainty whether Alberi controluce (Trees in Silhouette) was among them. 

Francesco Federico Cerruti purchased the painting from Paul Nicholls at the Milan International Antiques Fair in 1990, when it was on display in a small exhibition, entitled Bagliore e Oscurità, on the use of light in early 20th-century Italian painting.⁵ 

The composition of Alberi controluce resembles, indeed mirrors, that of another painting by Bonomi - perhaps his most famous - entitled Val d’Adige. Paesaggio con alberi spogli (Betulle) (Adige Valley. Landscape with Bare Trees - Birches), dating to around 1908, which entered the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome in 1923, with the Alberto Grubicy bequest (fig. 1).⁶ The two canvases are similar in subject and size. They are characterised by closely interwoven short, regular strokes, and above all a varied palette: lively and based on red, pink and blue tones in the Cerruti painting, and more subdued, ranging from blues to greys as if to evoke a misty landscape, in the work held by the Rome museum. 

Critics consider the latter emblematic of the artist’s affinity with coeval Belgian and Dutch art, as is evident from his occasional use of non-naturalistic colours (as in Alberi controluce) and from the essential treatment of the subject and the arabesques of the trees, which appear almost to possess a Symbolist expressiveness. These elements reference and pay tribute to the dominant traits of Vittore Grubicy’s work.⁷ 

Like many second-generation Divisionist painters influenced by Alberto Grubicy, who sought to promote the movement abroad, Bonomi produced only landscapes:⁸ a genre that offered artists using the Divisionist technique many more interpretive possibilities that were less naturalistic and freer than those of firstgeneration painters. This led Gaetano Previati to write about them in the catalogue of the Exposition des dernières pietres divisionnistes italiens, organised at Alberto Grubicy’s Paris gallery in 1912 and in which Bonomi himself⁹ participated, thus triggering new forms of experimentation. 

Silvia Maria Sara Cammarata 

¹ A.-P. Quinsac, “Cinquant’anni di studi sul Divisionismo italiano. Un consuntivo”, in Milan 2016, p. 59. 

² A. Scotti Tosini, “Milano tra primo e secondo Divisionismo”, in Milan 1995-96, p. 93; Comanducci 1945, p. 83; Calzini 1919, p. 217; Trento 1990, p. 442. 

³ Calzini 1919a, p. 267. 

⁴ Milan 1919. 

⁵ Milan 1990. 

⁶ A. M. Damigella, in De Marchis 1969, pp. 41, 226, cat. 66; S. Frezzotti, “La Galleria nazionale e il Divisionismo”, in D’Agostino, Frezzotti 2013, pp. 22-23. 

⁷ G. Piantoni, “Alberto Grubicy, mecenate e mercante”, in Trento 1990, pp. 256-257; see also Damigella 1981, p. 230; A. M. Damigella, “Il lungo tempo del divisionismo, tra realismo, simbolismo, avanguardie”, in Rovigo 2012, pp. 34- 35. 

⁸ Damigella, “Il lungo tempo del divisionismo” cit., p. 34. 

⁹ G. Previati, “Preface”, in paris 1912, s.p.