An exhibition in Domodossola on Lorenzo Peretti, the artist who worked for only 12 years

Lorenzo Peretti (1871 - 1953). Nature and Mystery is the exhibition organized by Collezione Poscio in the exhibition space of Casa De Rodis from May 26 to October 26, 2024 in Domodossola. The exhibition, curated by Elena Pontiggia, investigates the figure of painter Lorenzo Peretti (Buttogno, 1871 - Toceno, 1953). The exhibition includes about eighty works and traces the short life of this singular artist, who painted for only a dozen years, never exhibited in his life, and did not let anyone into his studio. The exhibition presents all of his major works, including the visionary Bosco dei druidi (Forest of the Druids), c. 1898, his most important pointillist landscapes of the Vigezzo Valley, and early, anticipatory non-finished paintings of the early 20th century.

On display are, among others, the three striking portraits of Carlaccin, a Vigezzo peasant painted by both Cavalli and Fornara and Peretti. Works by his friends Ciolina, Rastellini, Fornara himself and Arturo Tosi make up the second section of the exhibition. Also documented are the artist’s trip to Lyon in 1893-94 and the works that just followed, including Ritratto del padre Bernardino, lent by the Musei Civici di Domodossola, a touching human document in which Peretti reconciles with his deceased father, who had opposed his painting vocation. Peretti’s irregular and tension-filled pointillism is then analyzed, the greatest examples of which are exhibited. Ample space is devoted to his recently found Philosophical Testament, a document of his desire to reconcile Christianity with theosophy, which is a central aspect of his personality. For him, nature is a reflection of the infinite and there is nothing in the world that is not a reverberation of God. After a large section of drawings, the exhibition concludes with an anthology of his unfinished works, including Undergrowth and the important Paris, 1903. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by SAGEP with an analytical text by Elena Pontiggia and an essay by Davide Brullo.

Notes on the artist

Lorenzo Peretti Jr (Buttogno 1871-Toceno 1953) was born into a family of artists. His grandfather Lorenzo (1774-1851) was called “the Raphael of the Vigezzo Valley.” His father, Bernardino, was also a painter, but countered his son’s artistic vocation. It was not until 1889, when he died leaving him a substantial inheritance, that young Lorenzo could devote himself to painting. In 1890-92 he studied with Carlo Giuseppe Cavalli and especially with Enrico Cavalli at the Rossetti Valentini school in S. Maria Maggiore, where he had for a companion Carlo Fornara, with whom he formed a lively friendship. In 1892 he saw Fontanesi’s exhibition in Turin, by which he was initially influenced. Perhaps as early as 1893, and certainly in 1894, he made a trip with Fornara and Enrico Cavalli to Lyon, where he studied the material painting of Monticelli and French painting from Delacroix and Courbet to the Impressionists, Seurat and Cézanne. At the end of 1894 he became interested in pointillism, but in 1896 he rejected Morbelli and Pellizza da Volpedo’s proposal to exhibit with the pointillists the following year. He created in this period, with Adolfo Papetti, an esoteric and theosophical library, now unfortunately lost. In 1897 he made a trip to Munich. Meanwhile, he approaches symbolism and paints a nature inhabited by visions (The Spirits of Evil; The Forest of the Druids, 1898). At the beginning of the new century he probably stopped painting. In 1902 he published in “L’Indipendente” Fornara’s article Dell’Arte nella società. In 1903 he made a trip to Paris, where he returned again in 1906-1908, dividing his time between the capital and nearby Montrouge. In 1910 he became editor of the “Popolo dell’Ossola.” In the 1920s he drafted his spiritual testament In Supreme Identity. Metaphysical Invocation, in which he reconciles the Christian religion with the theosophy of Schuré and Guénon. From this time nothing more is known about the artist, who passed away in Toceno in 1953.

Practical information

Hours: Friday from 3 to 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m.

Admission: €5.00; free: children and students with ID

An exhibition in Domodossola on Lorenzo Peretti, the artist who worked for only 12 years

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