An exhibition in Turin on the birth of Macchiaioli painting

The GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin is hosting, from October 26, 2018 to March 24, 2019, the exhibition I Macchiaioli. Italian Art Towards Modernity, which aims to analyze the antecedents, the birth and the initial season (the happiest one) of Macchiaioli painting, with works dating from the 1950s to the 1960s. The experience of the Macchiaioli proved fundamental to the renewal of Italian art in the 19th century: in Florence, the young frequenters of the Caffè Michelangiolo gathered to fine-tune the so-called macchia, a courageous experimentation that would lead to a modern Italian art, which was also established in Turin, where the Macchiaioli participated in the exhibitions of the Promotrice delle Belle Arti. And it was precisely in 1863 that the then Civic Collection of Modern Art, the founding nucleus of today’s GAM, was born, with the aim of documenting contemporary art.

The exhibition, organized and promoted by Fondazione Torino Musei, GAM Torino and 24 ORE Cultura - Gruppo 24 ORE, is curated by Cristina Acidini and Virginia Bertone, with the technical-scientific coordination of Silvestra Bietoletti and Francesca Petrucci, and sees the collaboration of the Matteucci Institute of Viareggio. The exhibition features more than 80 works from Italy’s most important museums, institutions and private collections, in a rich artistic account of the movement’s history from its origins to 1870, with fascinating comparisons with their Italian contemporaries. A key aspect of the exhibition is then the dialogue of the masterpieces on loan with the GAM’s 19th-century collection, to encourage an unprecedented opportunity for study: special attention is thus given to Antonio Fontanesi, whose bicentenary of birth is being celebrated, to the Piedmontese artists of the Rivara School (Carlo Pittara, Ernesto Bertea, Federico Pastoris and Alfredo D’Andrade) and to the Ligurians of the Scuola dei Grigi (Serafino De Avendaño, Ernesto Rayper), identifying new and original elements of comparison with the painting of Cristiano Banti, Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini, and Odoardo Borrani, protagonists of this crucial artistic season.

The itinerary will begin with an account of the protagonists’ training, necessary to fully appreciate the innovative contribution of the Macchiaioli within the history of art. From the works of academic painters and masters of Romantic or purist taste, such as Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Luigi Mussini, Enrico Pollastrini, Antonio Ciseri, and Stefano Ussi, to the young future Macchiaioli painters such as Silvestro Lega, Giovanni Fattori, Cristiano Banti, and Odoardo Borrani: through the comparison of works, their traditional education, respectful of the great Renaissance examples, will be highlighted. Many of the works are those that took part in the first Promotrici di Belle Arti and the first National Exhibition in Florence in 1861, and there will also be a chance to talk about the International Exhibition in Paris in 1855, which was a decisive event for the young Macchiaioli, arousing great curiosity and emulation towards the new “objective” and direct vision. In this setting, the dialogue that prompted some artists between Piedmont, Liguria and Tuscany to conduct research “on the real” will be presented to the public. These were years of experimentation in which research on color-light, conducted en plein air, created a common denominator among painters linked in groups and cenacles, the best-known example of which was the Tuscan Macchiaioli.

It then moves on to deal with the experimentation of macchia applied to the renewal of historical and landscape subjects, with works from the 1950s and early 1960s, during which the friends sometimes found themselves close to each other painting the same subject from slightly varied angles, so as to highlight their common path and the fruitful dialogue woven in those years of profound changes not only artistic, but political and cultural in a broader sense. Next, the Turin exhibition proposes the figurative choices of the Macchiaioli from the Unification of Italy to capital Florence and the environments in which the Macchiaioli language matured: from the eventful summers spent in Castiglioncello, on the estate of the critic Diego Martelli, to the quieter autumn and spring afternoons in Piagentina, in the immediate Florentine suburbs, where the artists had retreated to work sheltered from the transformations of modern Florence, accentuated since 1865 by its role as the capital of united Italy.

The last section of the exhibition places the crucial experience of two magazines alongside the works: the “Gazzettino delle Arti del Disegno,” published in Florence in 1867, and the “Arte in Italia,” founded two years later in Turin and accompanying Italian artistic events until 1873. In the columns of the “Gazzettino,” Martelli, Signorini and other critics presented their sensitive and acute reading of contemporary European expressions and their awareness of a further evolutionary turning point in painting, which left behind the albeit glorious language of the “macchia,” which, by that time, was showing that it had fulfilled its innovative role. A commitment on the critical front that was ideally destined to continue in the monthly “L’arte in Italia,” a magazine that contributed to the renewal of the Piedmontese artistic milieu with personalities such as Giovanni Camerana, among the most lucid supporters of the research on the real conducted by Fontanesi and the Rivara School. What the exhibition restores is thus an opportunity not only to admire absolute masterpieces of Macchiaioli painting, but to allow a better understanding of it by emphasizing the dialogue that united artists from various parts of Italy in research aimed at modernity.

Exhibition hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Mondays. Last admission one hour before closing. Tickets: full 13 euros, reduced 11 euros.

Image: Odoardo Borrani, Il 26 aprile 1859 in Firenze (1861; oil on canvas, 75 x 58 cm; Viareggio, Matteucci Institute)

An exhibition in Turin on the birth of Macchiaioli painting

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