Finally an important exhibition on Carlo Bossoli, a fascinating Ticino artist of origin, Italian by adoption and globetrotter by vocation. The Giovanni Züst cantonal art gallery of Rancate (Mendrisio) proposes it, filling a real gap, from 20 October 2024 to 23 February 2025, edited by Sergio Rebora with the scientific coordination of Mariangela Agliati Ruggia and Alessandra Brambilla.
Bossoli (Lugano, 1815 – Turin, 1884) was, at the turn of the mid-nineteenth century, one of the most appreciated, and disputed, artists in Europe. His views, his evocative paintings of historical events, his portraits were appreciated by kings – from the Savoys to Queen Victoria -, princes, the best nobility and the most sophisticated bourgeoisie. Those who could not afford his beautiful oils or his masterful tempera paintings bought reproductions on the market, especially the English one. London publishers published the album “The War in Italy” in 1859, where he recounted the Battle of Solferino and other episodes of the War of Independence or “Wiew of the Crimea” (1853). The Savoys, who elevated him to “Our history painter”, commissioned 150 tempera paintings and lithographs from him. They document the railway companies of the Kingdom, in particular the birth of the Turin-Genoa, but also other historical events. 105 tempera paintings tell the Piedmontese and national wars of 1859, 1860 and 1861, the years
of the unification of Italy. Bossoli is a “wandering” painter. While still a child, following his family, he moved away from his native Lugano to Odessa. Here, the governor, Count Mikhail Voroncov, and his wife Elizaveta set their eyes on the young artist, who also entrusted highly prestigious works to other Ticino workers to beautify the city. In 1840 he returned to Italy, to Milan, an already famous artist; here he documents, like a real reporter, the events of the Five Days of March 1848.
Nobles and wealthy bourgeois commissioned him to paint views of their gardens and palaces. He is a successful artist, but he can’t resist 
long nowhere. He travels through many countries: England, Ireland, Russia, Spain, Morocco…. These are the years in which old Europe allows itself to be overwhelmed by the magic of the East and the Exotic and he knows how to recreate those atmospheres suspended between dream, legend and reality in a perfect way, having experienced them up close and loved. To contextualize Bossoli’s art, in the section dedicated to exoticism, a period room will be recreated with “Turkish” furnishings by the Piedmontese cabinetmaker Giuseppe Parvis.
Since 1853 he has lived in Turin with his sister Giovanna and his nephew Francesco Edoardo (Odessa, 1830 – Turin, 1912), also an artist, to whom a section in the exhibition is dedicated. Here he built a fascinating oriental-style residence, in memory of his numerous travels. He dies in the Piedmontese capital but, at his explicit request, he is buried in the Lugano Cemetery, the homeland which, despite his cosmopolitan life, he had never stopped frequenting and loving. To the fully illustrated catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition, has
contributed by a group of Swiss and Italian scholars who supported the curator Sergio Rebora, offering original contributions on the various aspects of Bossoli’s art: Riccardo Bergossi, Matteo Bianchi, Maria Cristina Brunati, Alberto Corvi, Paolo Crivelli, Luca Mana, Giorgio Picozzi.
The exhibition brings together more than 100 works by the artist and his nephew, documenting all the many aspects of his art. They are loans granted by Italian and Swiss public institutions and important private collections. Many are exhibited for the first time.
Carlo Bossoli, born in Lugano but who moved with his family to Odessa as a child, devoted himself to self-taught painting at an early age and specialized in urban and landscape views, including large ones (the famous panoramic ‘cosmorami’), mainly using the virtuosic technique of tempera thanks to which he obtains effects of extraordinary expressive effectiveness. Between 1844 and 1853 he lived in Milan and from 1853 in Turin, a city where he established himself as one of the artists most requested by aristocratic and upper-class clients; its cosmopolitan clientele can boast the House of Savoy, Queen Victoria of England and Empress Eugenie of France. Bossoli often makes long trips throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, places that he reproduces in his paintings, transmitting their romantic charm and exotic suggestions; he also witnesses, like a reporter armed with a pencil and brush rather than a camera, the historical events of 1948 and the Second War of Independence and the innovative revolutions of his time, including the birth of the railways. However, he returned to Lugano, a never forgotten homeland, on several occasions and here, by his will, he was buried. The exhibition presents the life and work of this extraordinary international artist. For the first time, the pictorial production of Francesco Edoardo Bossoli (1830-1912), Carlo’s nephew and close collaborator, is also brought back to public knowledge. The works come from public institutions and Swiss and Italian museums and from private collections, with quite a few unpublished works, considered missing or not exhibited for some time: an opportunity to take a wonderful journey into the nineteenth century to discover places that are often transformed or no longer exist
Carlo Franza