The Marmottan Museum, known for its large collection of Monet paintings, has a new exhibition on offer celebrating the work of the lesser-known painter Giovanni Segantini, a European master of ‘divisionism’, a neo-impressionist variant of pointillism, much in the style of Seurat.

Subtitled “I Want To See My Mountains” (the artist’s last words before dying at the age of 41), the exhibition present around 60 of his drawings, pastels and paintings of Alpine scenes, plus an Anselm Kiefer project created in homage to Segantini, with the same name, but in Italian “Voglio vedere le mie montagne“.

A lover of the Swiss and Italian countryside, Giovanni Segantini died too soon and does not have the same profile as some artists of his era (only a cult following among specialists), despite the fact that some of his paintings were part of a Swiss Modernities exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in 2021.

The retrospective organised at the Marmottan Museum brings together around sixty works, almost all with scenes of mountain life, and includes important loans from the Segantini Museum in Saint-Moritz, the Modern Art Gallery of Milan and numerous private collectors.

The presentation documents the successive stages and progressive ascension of the painter, starting in Milan and reaching an elevation of 2,700m in the mountains, with each room based on a specific place and its elevation.

The beauty of the changing landscape fascinated the painter, and he fell deeply in love with the wild nature of Savognin, where he stayed for eight years. Here, he made some of his most beautiful paintings of animals, the cycle of life and the links between Man and Nature, including a painting actually named ‘Nature’, started in Schafberg at an altitude of 2,837 metres.

Alas, he would never finish it – after suffering from sudden strong abdominal pains (acute peritonitis), he passed away at 41.

As an admirer of Segantini’s work, contemporary artist Anselm Kiefer created a series of four paintings between 1988 and 2025. These are presented as part of the exhibition.

And a catalogue of the exhibition (212 pages, 33€) is available from your local Amazon. Choose your country below to find it.

---

The exhibition Giovanni Segantini – I Want To See My Mountains is at the Marmottan Museum (here) from 29th April to 16th August 2026

Open every day except Mondays, from 10am-6pm (9pm Thursdays)

Admission: 14€ / 9€ / free for under-7s

Website / Facebook / Instagram

What3Words ///managers.thing.wording

Voir cette publication sur Instagram

Une publication partagée par Musée Marmottan Monet (@museemarmottanmonet_)