Funerale bianco
Edoardo Berta (1867–1931)

Edoardo Berta, Funerale bianco (White Funeral), 1900–1902, oil on canvas. Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano Collezione Città di Lugano

Edoardo Berta was born in Giubiasco, near Bellinzona. He studied under Cesare Tallone at the Accademia di Brera in Milan and the Accademia di Carrara in Bergamo. During his studies, he met Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo with whom he visited the Paris Exhibition in 1889 and cultivated a sincere 20-year friendship, documented by an extensive correspondence. In addition to his work as an artist, he was an active member of the Committee for the Conservation of the Historical and Artistic Monuments of the Canton of Ticino, in which capacity he headed the earliest work restoring and cataloguing the canton’s historical and artistic heritage.

White Funeral was his first important painting in Symbolist and Art Nouveau style and was displayed in numerous exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad, such as the Swiss National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Vevey in 1901, the first Turin Quadriennale in 1904 and the International Art Exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1904.

A snowy landscape, depicted in icy tones with a composition marked by prominent vertical and horizontal lines, forms the backdrop for a funeral procession of young girls. It is an original reworking of the theme of the winter funeral, developed by Giovanni Segantini, and the procession of girls dressed in white painted by his friend Pellizza. The Symbolist aesthetic, evident here for the first time, would also characterize Berta’s future work, distinguishing his landscape painting that he systematically rendered in Divisionist style from 1906 onwards.

The painting, of which there is one another version in the collection of the City of Locarno, was recently restored, revealing the delicate palette of whites, greys and blues, and the lively touches of colour that the artist uses to depict the light playing on the girls’ faces and flowing robes.