Alpine Transparencies

As modern-day mountaineering progressively established itself during the first decade of the 1900s, Longoni began to spend more time among the Alpine peaks. Beginning with short forays halfway up the mountain, these later turned into long stays spent painting amid the sheltered mountain pastures, often protected only by the portable smokescreen-hut and the help of fellow mountaineers. The alpine theme would become, in Longoni's mind, the ideal subject for a rigorous and continued pictorial experimentation. He preferred glaciers and small lakes scattered on the hill, where he could study the refraction of light on the ice and the decomposition of the sky's colors reflected on the clear mountain waters. In this painting, the mirror-like water is represented as a subtle partition between heaven and earth. The artist's fragmented brush strokes seems to underline the centuries-old stratification of air, cloud, earth, water, and minerals, which come together in an interplay between chromatic and formal relationships. Presented at the Venice Biennale in 1910, the piece gained reasonable success, particularly for its optical illusions and the crystalline rendering of the mountain's pristine atmosphere.