Exhibition ” I Macchiaioli” at Palazzo Blu | Pisa

The exhibition ‘I MACCHIAIOLI’, will be on display at the Palazzo Blu in Pisa, from 8 October 2022 to 26 February 2023.

It is a retrospective of over 130 works, mainly from private collections and from museums such as the Uffizi Galleries, the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, the Gallery of Modern Art in Genoa and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

The exhibition is produced and organised by Fondazione Palazzo Blu and MondoMostre, with the contribution of Fondazione Pisa, and curated by Francesca Dini, an art historian and one of the most authoritative experts on this movement, which found its ideal environment in Tuscany.

The term ‘Macchiaioli‘ was coined in 1862 by a reviewer of the Gazzetta del Popolo to define those painters who, around 1855, had given rise to an anti-academic renewal of Italian painting in the realist sense. The meaning was derogatory and played on a particular double meaning: ‘darsi alla macchia’ was understood as acting furtively, illegally.

The exhibition

The exhibition at Palazzo Blu is divided into 11 sections and recounts the adventure of a group of young progressive painters, both Tuscan and non-Tuscan.

The exhibition brings together the ‘key’ works of this journey with the aim of marking the different moments of the Macchiaioli’s research, their confrontation with other artists and with the different European schools of painting.

Among the artists in the spotlight at Palazzo Blu are the Tuscans Telemaco Signorini, Odoardo Borrani, Raffaello Sernesi, Giovanni Fattori, Adriano Cecioni, Cristiano Banti, Serafino De Tivoli, who are joined by the Neapolitans Giuseppe Abbati, the Venetians Vincenzo Cabianca and Federico Zandomeneghi, Giovanni Boldini from Ferrara, Silvestro Lega from Romagna, Vito D’Ancona from Pesaro and Nino Costa from Rome.