Giuseppe Cominetti began his art studies in Turin but soon moved to the Genoese hinterland, finally settling in Genoa in 1902 to complete his education. He thus became part of a circle of Ligurian painters and artists centered around the studio of sculptor Pietro Capurro, which encompassed the entire Genoese artistic scene of the early 20th century, including Merello, Bistolfi, Plinio Nomellini, and the poet Camillo Sbarbaro.
Genoa was a hub of styles and artists in those years, especially considering that Marinetti himself, a law student in the Ligurian capital, was also active in the city. He would soon electrify the global art scene with his Futurist Manifesto.
Cominetti’s early years in Genoa marked the transition to Divisionism: but it is precisely towards Marinetti’s Futurism that Cominetti’s aesthetics somehow moved, while not forgetting the Divisionist aesthetic and the themes linked to the world of work and his love of the human figure.
In 1909, he moved to Paris, where he was able to interact with artists of the caliber of Boccioni and Severini, as well as with Marinetti himself. He was persuaded by Marinetti to also sign the Futurist Manifesto, from which, however, he quickly distanced himself, both due to his individualism, which prevented him from truly joining artistic groups and movements, and to Futurism’s rejection of the representation of the human body, which meant so much to Cominetti.
While the outbreak of the First World War interrupted his artistic production, given the painter’s call to arms, the immediate postwar years were marked by the theme of work and the use of color as a thrill that conveys movement but also manages to immortalize emotion. The final part of his life was spent between his studios in Paris and Rome: in 1928, he was the victim of a car accident that caused his death two years later.