in Nineteenth-Century Painting, Faces and Places in Nineteenth-Century Painting
Bottegantica Gallery, Milan
Sixty works by Emilio Longoni, Giovanni Fattori, Ettore Tito, Filippo De Pisis, Giorgio Morandi and other artists trace the evolution of the landscape genre and its relationship with contemporary portraiture in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Italian masters.
A great adventure of the gaze runs through all Italian figurative art of the second half of the nineteenth century. The artist 'opens his eyes' to the reality that surrounds him; what he sees, or what he imagines, for the first time acquires its own value and is filled with meanings, as happens in literature. The landscape becomes a paradigm of sensations, a deposit of memories, a laboratory of the imagination: it becomes a "pretext" for the soul.
The exhibition Volti e Luoghi nella pittura dell'800 (Faces and Places in Nineteenth-Century Painting), curated by Enzo Savoia , is dedicated to this fascinating theme, to the different visions and interpretations of nature that followed one after the other in Italian painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. This new exhibition of Galleria Bottegantica in Milan (via Manzoni 45), opens March 18th and continues through May 14th, 2016.
The exhibition aims to be a tribute to the genres of Italian portrait and landscape painting and to the fortune obtained by both during the second half of the nineteenth century. The theme of the portrait is analyzed in the broadest sense: not only in images of faces or whole figures, but also groups - in familial or official situations, mundane or intimate. All will encourage reflection on how portraits relate with the genre of landscape.
A selection of 60 emblematic works by the main artists of the time - from Emilio Longoni, Giovanni Fattori, Ettore Tito, Filippo De Pisis, Giorgio Morandi, Edoardo Tofano, Stefano Bruzzi to Guglielmo and Beppe Ciardi, Ulisse Caputo, Vincenzo Irolli, Egisto Lancerotto, and many others - recounts the evolution that led portraits and landscapes to emancipate themselves to become expressive genres with a strong spiritual value, channels of the emotionality of the subject, in a definitive embrace between nature and states of mind.
Among the paintings on display is the seductive and intimate Confidences by Edoardo Tofano; the monumental composition of La Canefora by Ettore Tito; the bright colors of Pescatori di Telline nella baia di Palermo di Francesco Lojacono; the sweet brightness of Arco sulla Laguna by Beppe Ciardi; the intimate elegance of Chiffons by Ulisse Caputo; the silence evoked by Faticando Insieme by Stefano Bruzzi or Lago Glaciale by Emilio Longoni; up to the multicolored Giorno di Festa by Egisto Lancerotto.
Faces and Places in Nineteenth-Century Painting offers an unprecedented journey into the geography of a landscape that has become a mirror of human experience, up to the point of touching the restlessness of modern sensitivity on the threshold of the twentieth century.
Milano, febbraio 2016
