PIER MARUSSIG
(Trieste 1879 ~ Pavia 1937)
The Bridge over the Stream (Upper Brianza), 1931
Oil on canvas, cm 75x90
Signed lower right P Marussig
On the back label of Galleria Milano, Milan, 1932, no. 1705 and Galleria d'Arte Genova, 1941, no 68.
Essential Bibliography and Exhibitions:
Galleria Milano, Milan, 1932, no. 1705.
Posthumous exhibition of Pierio Marussig, Galleria d'Arte Genova, Genoa,
June-July 1941, no. 68.
Piero Marussig, exhibition catalogue, Galleria d'Arte Genova, 1941.
Piero Marussig, general catalogue edited by N. Colombo, C. Gian Ferrari and E. Pontiggia, Silvana editoriale, 2006 p. 204 fig. 628.
II Collective Exhibition of the Arts of the 20th Century, exhibition catalogue edited by G. Cribiori, Pavia, 2007 Tav 41; The Itinerant Art of Italian 20th Century Art, Allemandi, 2011
Marussig's attention to the landscape during the 1930s reflects the influence of Tosi, especially in the more fluid handling of the brushstrokes. The colour becomes more subtle, less brilliant and deliberately veiled; the tints become softer and, in the case of our painting, blend into each other conveying a feeling of tonal harmony of great elegance that enhances the light strokes that animate the canvas.
The link with the Novecento style, to which Marussig fully adhered from the early 1920s, is almost completely dissolved; a certain severity remains in the architectural composition, mediated as mentioned by Tosi's work, but above all by Marussig's Parisian experiences in his youth.
