Italian painting of the Belle Époque and modern life on display at Palazzo Cucchiari in Carrara – Carlo Franza's blog

Always in search of the most intriguing aspects of culture and almost as if it were a book to leaf through, the Giorgio Conti Foundation of Carrara offers a new, splendid chapter dedicated to the art of our country. Curated by Massimo Bertozzi, open at Palazzo Cucchiari di Carrplow the exhibition “Belle Époque. The Italian painters of modern life. From Lega and Fattori to Boldini and De Nittis to Nomellini and Balla”which will continue until October 27, 2024 .

It will be four months of full immersion in one of the most interesting and fascinating aspects of Italian art history. In the Curator's understanding, in fact, there is the will that the exhibition Belle Époque. The Italian painters of modern life. From Lega and Fattori to Boldini and De Nittis to Nomellini and Balla follow the traces of the changes in painting after the Unification, from the overcoming of regional schools to the recomposition of a national imprint, to aim straight for an artistic culture suited to the modern times of the “New Italy”. It is a process that from the last Macchiaioli heartbeats leads to the effervescence of scapigliatura up to the final results of divisionism, that is, from Fattori and Lega to Boldini and De Nittis to Nomellini, Balla.

Not to mention that other artists present in the exhibition with their works bear the names of Signorini, Spadini, Pellizza da Volpedo, Zandomeneghi and Corcos, and then Antonio Mancini, Tranquillo Cremona, Moses Bianchi, Emilio Longoni, Angelo Morbelli, Gaetano Previati, and many others. In total there are around ninety works – including paintings on canvas and wood, watercolours, pastels and sculptures in bronze and plaster – which span a period of time from 1864 to 1917.

In the first decades after the Unification, in fact, the painting of the “new Italy”, although still conditioned by the tradition of the regional schools, tried to seek a national and international dimension, in the discovery of the themes of modern lifewhich is no longer life in the fieldsattentive to the frugal poetry of nature, but city ​​lifeanimated by the feverish search for material well-being but also for new worldly and cultural satisfactions.

Therefore intellectuals, writers, composers and artists in general are also asked to have a different consideration for entertainment, leisure and the intelligent use of free time, which for some social classes becomes socially useful time, for a new way of living in private and to appear in public. It is in this context that the business world, high finance and aristocratic enterprise, and no longer just academies and other public institutions, become promoters of fine Arts and, as collectors or patrons, important figures of reference for artists and dealers.

There is therefore a betrayal of the ideals of the Risorgimento, in which the artists had participated with coherence and civil courage, and the conservative involution of the national political class, leading to the disenchantment of the intellectuals, from whom only the most famous artists freed themselves thanks to the private recognition of the new entrepreneurial bourgeoisie and the liberal aristocracy, which were also soon disappointed by the results of the Italian “revolution”.

So that history painting, cloaked in a “patriotism” mixed with regional intonations, is replaced by representations of modern life, supported by clear narrative rather than ethical intentions, where the influence of literary suggestions, especially French, acts as much as and perhaps more than the updating of figurative languages.

The cooling of ideal impulses and the lure of worldly seductions push the artists of the new generation to feelings of repulsion and rebellion, which are also influenced by the suggestions of the “life of bohemian”, generate the “dualism” of the Scapigliati and their traveling companions: on the one hand the drive towards noble and lofty ideals, on the other the satisfaction with the most degraded aspects of civil life.

In the most apathetic and difficult hour of the new Italy, what will be defined as the “Giolittian age”, only the reaction of the artists seems in fact in step with the times: like a magician pulls the rabbit out of the hat, some painters praise from painting pointillist, the last true Italian contribution to European art, with futurist intemperance and metaphysical divination.

To better understand this epochal transition in Italian painting, the exhibition itinerary has been conceived in seven sections (and an interlude) divided as follows:

1. Modern times: no longer just the rural spaces and activities, the theater of action of the painters, increasingly attracted to outdoor practice, become the urban spaces, the streets and squares, but also public parks and gardens and the new discovery of seaside places.
2. Home and family: comfort of living and ways of living: when the home also becomes a place to to exhibitwith the living rooms, the dining rooms, the studios that become public spaces, where one shows oneself, even to oneself, pleased with one's opulence, but also with one's elegance or one's sobriety.
3. The painters of modern life: finally artists are no longer just artists uprooted of bohemian life but begin to enjoy a different social consideration, which welcomes them into the most exclusive salons and circles, so they themselves, their atelier and even their families become elegant and aesthetically suggestive subjects of painting.

Interlude: The field of sculpture: between romantic retreat and modernist anxieties, between religious mysticism and worldly mysticism, the characteristics of liberty sculpture are summarized, between the Pascoli symbolism of Leonardo Bistolfi and the aristocratic elegance of Paolo Troubetzkoy

4. Old and new myths: modernity immediately becomes habit, whereby the continuous search for distractions or other forms of stupor animates new desires, for an exotic or simply more natural elsewhere, or for other worlds, produced by the use of substances or by mystical and esoteric practices: in both cases these are contexts in which some artists stumble and leave their testimonies
5. Poor homeland: the Italy of the people: ancient needs and new expectations. Despite everything we believe in the future.
6. Ladies' paradise: when worldliness shows off the “social status” of beauty, at the theater or in the café, at horse races, for a walk on the street or in the living room at home, the Gentleman become the protagonist: those who are satisfied with govern the menage familiar, some vent themselves in philanthropic and cultural activities, some even think of influencing the government of the country… but the condition of the women it's always the same …
7. Waiting tomorrow: the abandonment of naturalism provides sensitivity of spirit and clear mind, in search of an expressive language suited to the reality of dreams and the suggestions of symbols; pointillist painting becomes the natural expression of Symbolism, almost a national version of Art Nouveau, the field of action of the “Italian secession”, open to the genesis and debut of the avant-garde.

Carlo Franza