Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868–1907) was an Italian Divisionist painter best known for Il Quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate, 1898–1901), a monumental canvas depicting striking workers advancing toward the viewer that became one of the iconic images of late-nineteenth-century socialist art. Trained at the Brera and in Florence, Rome, and Bergamo, Pellizza spent most of his career in his native Volpedo in rural Piedmont, where he produced rural genre paintings and Symbolist allegories alongside his socially engaged masterpieces. He took his own life at thirty-eight after the death of his wife and infant daughter.

Pellizza painted with rigorous Divisionist technique — separated dabs of pure color applied to a luminous ground — combined with monumental compositional structure derived from Renaissance fresco traditions. His palette favors silvery whites, blue-greens, and warm earth tones.

Pellizza's Quarto Stato is one of the most celebrated political paintings of the late nineteenth century and a cornerstone of the Italian Divisionist movement.