Plinio Nomellini
1866–1943 · Italian Divisionist painter
Plinio Nomellini (Livorno, 1866 – Florence, 1943) was an Italian painter associated with Divisionism. His career took him through Livorno, Florence, Genoa and Torre del Lago, and it traces the shift in Italian painting from late nineteenth-century naturalism to Symbolism and landscape work in the early twentieth century.
The son of a customs official, he attended the municipal school of arts and crafts in Livorno and, thanks to recommendations, entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he studied under Giovanni Fattori. He exhibited regularly in Florence and took part in the Exposition Universelle of 1889. In 1890 he moved to Genoa, where he worked mainly in watercolour. His paintings with labour themes brought him trouble: in 1894 he was arrested on suspicion of anarchism and, after months in prison, acquitted, with his fellow artists helping to fund his defence.
In 1902 he settled in Torre del Lago, initially as the guest of his friend Giacomo Puccini. Around 1907 he embraced Symbolism and helped create the Dream Room at the Venice Biennale. In 1919 he moved to Florence, where he concentrated on landscape. During the 1920s he became an early and enthusiastic supporter of Fascism, most visibly in the painting Incipit Nova Aetas. He served as president of the Gruppo Labronico from 1928 until his death.
His legacy lies in the renewal of Italian landscape painting in the early twentieth century and in the links he forged between Tuscan painting and the artistic circles of Genoa and Venice.