Giovanni Segantini

Giovanni Segantini's early life was marked by profound hardship and poverty. Born Giovanni Battista Emanuele Maria Segatini in 1858 in Arco, then part of the Austrian Empire, he lost his mother at age seven and his father a year later. This left him stateless, a status that would complicate his life, including preventing his legal marriage to his lifelong partner, Bice Bugatti. He spent time in a reformatory in Milan, where a chaplain recognized and encouraged his drawing ta…