Suburbio, by Matteo Olivero from 1920, is a valuable pointillist essay; a large canvas that frames an anonymous figure that passes in the background of the outskirts of the beloved Saluzzo, his adopted homeland since 1905. Presented at the 1920 Venice Biennale, Suburbio was widely appreciated by the public and by the artists themselves during the Venetian event, it was purchased on that occasion by the Bolognese collector Cesare Germani, and became one of the most mature and intense results of the repertoire of a painter who has always been dedicated to life, committed to researching the effects of natural light through the decomposition of a Divisionist matrix. The composition exploits solutions that often recur in Olivero's paintings of the same years, in particular the expedient of the isolated subject in the foreground in a desert setting with dazzling light that leaves your retina tired. On the right of the large canvas, a vigorously backlit silhouette, accompanied by a very long purple shadow, walks along the empty road flanked by the rails that curve towards the low buildings of a station; in the background, among clouds of smoke, a single dot of pure red emerges to warm the icy whites of a winter sky.