Attilio Pusterla - At The Market (1894)

oil on canvas, 100 x 70 cm
signed lower centre: ‘A. Pusterla 94’
Exhibitions: Milan, Exposition de la Permanente, 1895
Bibliography: Exposition de la Permanente 1895, official catalogue, Milan, 1895, p. 12, no. 88
The author is Attilio Pusterla, trained at the Brera Academy, very close to Vittore Grubicy and a leading figure in socially engaged Divisionism. He painted Nel Mercato in 1894 and presented it the following year at the Permanente in Milan. The work was created at a time when the artist was focusing his attention on urban reality and the social dynamics of everyday life, observed with a modern eye and without idealisation. The composition is built on a marked spatial and luminous contrast: in the foreground, Pusterla inserts a still life of winter vegetables, painted with analytical and chromatic attention, reminiscent of the great tradition of the 17th century.
In the background, bathed in a softer light, the market scene itself takes shape, with female figures busy shopping. Pusterla thus juxtaposes two different registers: on the one hand, a cultivated homage to the history of painting, and on the other, a frank and humble representation of popular life at the end of the 19th century. The choice to insert the market scene in the background accentuates the social character of the work, transforming the painting into a reflection on social reality, often invisible to most people.
At the Market belongs to the most intense and significant period of Attilio Pusterla's research, when the Divisionist language gave way to a lucid and participatory vision of social reality. Painted shortly before his final departure for New York, it is one of his last Italian works. Shortly afterwards, the repression of the Milanese workers' movements of 1898 would be the event that irreversibly marked his relationship with Italy.