Piero Focardi (Settignano, 1889 - Cannes, 1945) son of the painter Ruggero, was initiated into the study of art by his father at an early age. In fact, he began exhibiting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence at the age of just thirteen, achieving moderate critical success with his first panels that were influenced by Tuscan naturalism. For the first few years, therefore, Piero Focardi's pictorial activity took place alongside that of his father, even in the first adherence to the divisionist methods learned thanks to the knowledge of his paternal friend Plinio Nomellini (1866-1943). Soon, however, Piero decides to move from Settignano to move to Lake Garda, precisely on the Brescia shore. Around the 1910s, he settled in Padenghe sul Garda, and then moved permanently to the lakeside town of Maderno, where he concentrated all his pictorial activity. A large part of Piero Focardi's production is in fact dedicated to the description of the lake: through a loose and very luminous palette he creates a series of seascapes and views that portray the placid life on the shores of the lake. The waters shine with the sunlight that floods the views created through a lyrical and intimate divisionism, which often hides a poetic symbolist inspiration. Even the scenes of daily life, all captured around the lake and in the surrounding countryside, are constructed through small filaments of divided colour. Piero Focardi's activity, so linked to these places, earned him the well-deserved title of "painter of Garda". With his personal, spontaneous and brilliant Divisionism he participates in various Italian exhibitions, including the Florentine Promotrici. Among the most important exhibitions are those of the Group of Italian Divisionist Painters, with whom he exhibited in Florence, Rome, Milan, Brescia, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin and above all in Paris in September 1907. The exhibition, organized by Alberto Grubicy, in the city Greenhouses on the right bank of the Seine, in collaboration with the Dante Alighieri Society, he immediately became a real magnet for French critics, who were fascinated by the numerous thematic and technical declinations of Italian Divisionism. The effect is astounding: the en plein air paintings of our Divisionists are arranged inside the transparent windows of the structure, on which the natural light of the sun rests. Among the paintings by Achille Tominetti (1848-1917), by Rubaldo Merello (1872-1922), by Benvenuto Benvenuti (1881-1959) by Gottardo Segantini (1882-1974), there are also those by Piero Focardi, well received by the French critics . Piero Focardi's pictorial activity reached its peak in the first decades of the twentieth century. But after the war and with the birth of Fascism, to which he is deeply opposed, he is forced to abandon Lake Garda to move to the Ligurian coast. Here too he creates a series of marines of great luministic impact, always distinguished by that clear and vibrant Divisionism. Around the 1940s, to escape fascism, he chose voluntary exile in Cannes, where he died in 1945, at the age of only fifty-six. Among the first works exhibited by Piero Focardi, there is a series of Studies from life presented at the Florentine Exhibition of 1903, together with the exciting landscape entitled November. In these first rehearsals, the very young artist seems to create a perfect conjunction between en plein air studio and pointillist technique. Small horizontal blocks of divided color release a vibrant luminosity delivered precisely by the combination of complementary tones. Thanks to this balanced and precise approach, Piero Focardi achieved immediate critical acclaim. In 1904 he took part again in the Florence Exposition with Crocevia a Settignano and All'aratro, presenting two subjects of Macchiaioli origin. His compositional spontaneity led him to obtain the consent of the merchant Alberto Grubicy, who invited him to exhibit at the Italian Divisionist Exhibition in Paris in 1907. Barely eighteen, he arrived in the French capital with a conspicuous group of Divisionist works that reflect his love for the land where he chose to live, the Lombard shore of Lake Garda: Return from Mass, Bathers on the Lake, Midsummer Day, Padenghe Castle, Summer Sunset, Holiday Day on Lake Garda, Spring, Winter Sunset and Shade. Among the other works by Piero Focardi there are Piante sul Garda, kept at the National Gallery of Rome, La Valtenesi, Pasture on the Garda, The Garda of Monte Pizzoccolo, Reflections and reflections, Domestic life, Breakfast time, In the countryside, Joyful solemnity in the family and a chat close to home.