On the bicentennial of the birth of Giovanni Fattori (Livorno, 1825 - Florence, 1908), Livorno is preparing to celebrate one of its most illustrious sons with a major cultural event. From Sept. 6, 2025 to Jan. 11, 2026, the Tuscan city will host a series of initiatives dedicated to the painter who revolutionized 19th-century Italian painting. The beating heart of the celebration will be the major exhibition Giovanni Fattori. A Revolution in Painting, set up at Villa Mimbelli, home of the Museo Civico named after him, which will reopen specifically for the exhibition after rearrangement work.
The initiative marks not only Fattori’s return to his hometown, but also the rebirth of a place symbolic of Leghorn culture. More than 200 works including paintings, drawings and etchings-many of which are little known or previously unpublished-compose an exhibition itinerary that recounts the artist’s most authentic essence: an observer of nature, landscape and humanity, a narrator of the social and military reality of his time. Curated by Vincenzo Farinella, the exhibition presents a powerful selection of works that span Fattori’s entire career, from his early apprenticeship to his last, intense trials. Horses, fields and peasant women, soldiers of the Risorgimento, golden sheaves, skies lit by light, the sea and tamarisks: Fattori’s world unfolds before the visitor’s eyes in a sensory and historical journey, capable of conveying the colors, scents and dilated rhythms of the Mediterranean summer.
The selected works express the Leghorn master’s pictorial revolution: an art that rejects academicism and embraces freedom of expression, the value of “macchia” as a vehicle of truth and humanity. Each painting is a fragment of reality captured with a sincere, never rhetorical, deeply empathetic gaze. “Free art satisfies and consoles and distracts,” Fattori asserted, and his canvases demonstrate this with disarming force. Throughout his life, the Leghorn artist never renounced his awareness and pride in the fact that he had “always the blood of Leghorn jibbling” in his veins and that he therefore felt so emancipated, both in his great works, witnesses to the uprisings and spirit of the Risorgimento and his belonging to the new and powerful language of the Macchiaioli, and in his last and intense trials.
The reopening of the Fattori Museum represents the first concrete step in W FATTORI, the major cultural promotion project launched by the City of Livorno to enhance not only the figure of the artist but the city’s entire heritage. Villa Mimbelli, closed for restoration in view of the bicentennial, is thus transformed into a dynamic cultural center.
In fact, alongside the main exhibition, the project includes the redevelopment of key spaces such as the Granaries of Villa Mimbelli, home to the Museo Mediceo, which tells the story of the Medici family’s role in the birth of Livorno. There are also plans to open a food court within the park, restore the Piccolo Teatro Storico for cultural events, and develop new services such as a bookshop, art library and a playroom.
W FACTORS is a multifaceted project that goes beyond the exhibition: a long-term program aimed at a diverse audience, from children to families, youth to adults. Through collaborations with local associations, the City of Livorno intends to ensure maximum visibility and accessibility to the Factorian heritage, creating opportunities for enjoyment and dialogue throughout the city. The objective is twofold: on the one hand, to celebrate Fattori and reaffirm its central role in the history of Italian art; on the other, to invest in culture as a lever of urban development, social inclusion and collective identity. With this in mind, each intervention on Villa Mimbelli and its appurtenances is configured as part of a shared process of regeneration, in which historical memory becomes an engine of the future.
Alongside the exhibition and the renovated Fattori Museum, the project extends throughout Livorno with I luoghi di Fattori, an urban itinerary designed to immerse citizens and visitors in the painter’s universe. Squares, historic buildings and landscape views become stages in an itinerary that combines biography and context, artistic vision and collective memory.
From the Duomo to the Teatro San Marco, from the artist’s birthplace to the statue dedicated to him in Largo del Cisternino, passing through iconic landscapes such as the Tamerice d’Antignano or the Bagni Palmieri, the route invites visitors to rediscover the city through Fattori’s eyes. The stages will be accompanied by interactive plaques equipped with QR codes, through which to access a dedicated site with text and audio content. A multidisciplinary approach combining culture, tourism and technology, designed to offer an authentic and engaging experience.
The entire project is promoted by the City of Livorno, in collaboration with the Matteucci Institute of Viareggio, with the patronage and contribution of the Region of Tuscany and the Piacenza Foundation. Fondazione Livorno and the Maremma and Tyrrhenian Chamber of Commerce serve as main sponsors, joined by Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Castagneto Carducci as sponsors and Howden SpA as technical sponsor.
“The path of enhancing the great talents of Livorno continues, from Modigliani to Mascagni, from Caproni to Piero Ciampi, to arrive today at Giovanni Fattori, the ’master’ of the Macchiaioli, in the bicentennial year of his birth,” says Luca Salvetti, mayor of Livorno. “An artist who remained tied to his own city, although he also worked elsewhere, and who was able to immortalize it in unforgettable views visible live even today (I’m thinking of the stretches of waterfront, the Antignano tamarisk...). With the exhibition, and with the redevelopment of the civic museum center dedicated to Giovanni Fattori, we intend to enhance one of the most important artists of the Italian nineteenth century and relaunch him internationally.”
"Giovanni Fattori: a revolution in painting. The word ’revolution,’ linked in the title of the exhibition to Fattori’s name, might at first glance surprise art lovers and connoisseurs. In reality," explains curator Vincenzo Farinella, “Fattori was a doubly revolutionary painter: Both in the heroic years of the ’macchia’ and the Castiglioncello school, when he was one of the major protagonists of the radical renewal of Italian art that took place in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century, and in the years of his maturity and old age, when his break with academic rules and perspective space, appreciable in many of his paintings and memorable etchings, proposed him as a decisive master for the young artists who were entering the twentieth century.”
“With the bicentenary of Giovanni Fattori we celebrate not only a great master of painting, but also the most authentic soul of Livorno,” stresses Angela Rafanelli, councillor for culture of the Municipality of Livorno. “Fattori bequeathed us a free, profound and unrepeatable gaze, capable of truthfully recounting nature, daily toil and humanity. In this exhibition and cultural journey, the city can be found and recognized: in places, landscapes and people. It is a tribute that starts from Livorno and speaks to the world, giving Fattori back the centrality he deserves and strengthening the indissoluble bond between the artist and his land. With the W Fattori project and the reopening of the Museum after restoration, we want this anniversary to be not only a celebration but a new beginning for the continued enhancement of our cultural identity, which is open, alive and participatory.”
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| Livorno, for 200 years of Giovanni Fattori a major exhibition with more than 200 works |
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