Giuseppe Fiammingo circa 1890-ap 1925

Giuseppe Fiammingo remains a largely overlooked figure in Italian painting of the first quarter of the twentieth century, whose career can be traced only through a small number of appearances at major artistic events in Milan.

Originally from Riposto, on the eastern coast of Sicily, he appears to have been active between 1910 and 1925, during which time he exhibited regularly at the Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente in Milan. He participated in the Permanente’s Trade Union Exhibitions of 1915 and 1924, the National Art Exhibitions of 1923 and 1925, and the Milan National Art Biennials of 1920 and 1922, demonstrating that he enjoyed a degree of recognition within Lombardy’s artistic circles.

In January 1918, the celebrated magazine Emporium reproduced one of his works, Notturno (“Night”), as a full-page colour illustration (fig. 1), revealing an artist drawn to twilight atmospheres and subjects imbued with Symbolist poetry. The catalogue of the 1925 National Exhibition at the Brera in Milan includes a painting entitled L’Alba (“Dawn”), which appears to confirm Fiammingo’s interest in the changing cycles of light, from dusk to daybreak.

Treated in an intimate manner, these subjects transform the landscape into a vehicle for meditation on nature and states of mind. Despite the scarcity of surviving information about him and the apparently brief nature of his artistic career, Giuseppe Fiammingo emerges as one of those Italian painters receptive to the later developments of Symbolism and Divisionism, favouring atmospheric painting in which effects of light convey a profoundly lyrical vision of the world.