Giuseppe Pellizza was born in Volpedo  on 28 July 1868 in the Piedmont village of Volpedo where he spent all his life; he was one of the greatest exponents of  Divisionism in Italy. His work,  exhibited in some of the major Italian museums, expresses the desire to represent reality without any prejudice and it is strongly connected to  his area of origin and to the rural culture.

His most famous masterpiece, ‘Il Quarto Stato’ (The Fourth Estate) consecrated his fame and became the universal symbol of the fight for the workers’ rights. It is a mammoth canvas exhibited at the ‘Museo del Novecento’ in Milan and  painted between 1898 and 1901 using as the background, one of Volpedo’s squares and as models his fellow villagers.

The free visit to the Pellizza museum complex includes: the entry to the artist’s studio, restored to its original conditions thanks to a careful work of restoration and enriched by color studies, sketches and other works of the artist. We will pass through the ‘Piazza del Quarto Stato’, the square used by Pellizza as the background for his famous painting where today you can see its 1:1 scale reproduction. The entry to the ‘Museo didattico’, with an itinerary that winds along explanatory panels, documents, various objects and in-depth analysis on the construction of the work of art, together with the engaging multimedia installation named  ‘L’umanità in cammino. Il racconto del Quarto Stato’.