After his father died in 1870, Grubicy became involved with a bohemian group of Milanese artists, poets and writers known as the Scapigliatura, who sought to blur the differences between art and life.

"[5] Grubicy's passion for Divisionism was so strong that he convinced Segantini to rework an already finished painting, Ave Maria by the Lake, in a Divisionist technique.

He continued to act as an independent talent scout, and in 1891 he helped organize the first large exhibition of Italian Divisionist painting at Milan's Brera Tiennale.

In writing about this work Grubicy introduced the concept of Symbolism in Italian painting when he hailed the piece as embodying a new aesthetic which he called "mystico-ideist".

The work took shape as an interchangeable sequence of paintings that reflected his emotional experiences over the long winters at Miazzina on the shore of Lake Maggiore.

Grubicy took a photograph of the polyptych as he intended it to be seen, and based upon that image the work has been reassembled for several exhibitions since his death, most recently at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 2009.