June 1 - 4 2012
Exploring the Macchiaioli
This course is an opportunity to enter the world of I Macchiaioli, the group of painters in Tuscany who emerged in mid-19th century Italy, through talks, visits and a studio demonstration of their progressive techniques.
The period in which these painters came together is known for its political and social upheavals. The order established after the defeat of Napoleon was being challenged across Europe by new ideas of liberalism and national identity.
The rebellion in attitudes towards art’s practices and subject matter is less well remembered. Still little studied outside Italy, the Macchiaioli represented the opposition in their homeland to the academic conventions that dominated the teaching and making of art. Their advance complemented, and identified with, the movement for national independence, the Risorgimento.
Through talks and visits to galleries, we will discover the individual artists who, from the 1850s onwards, shared common artistic and political sentiments but developed diverse priorities. The major personalities include Giovanni Fattori, the longest-lived and possibly most innovative and personally expressive of the artists, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini. Many in the group remained active until late in the century and some continued beyond.
We will look at the social and artistic contexts in which they worked, their choices of subjects to paint and the influences from abroad that took them out of the studio to paint ‘au plein air’.
The combination of intense colours and sharp tonal contrasts applied in patches, or macchie, established a style that reflected the experience of natural phenomena with new spontaneity and immediacy. We will examine the artists’ intentions in adopting the approach that gave the group its name and will have the chance of putting the technique into practice ourselves at a special workshop session.
Although their experiments with evoking natural phenomena anticipated the effects soon to emerge in French painting, the Macchiaioli were not Impressionists. These distinctive, diverse treatments of modern life will be among the comparisons explored in lectures.
The course will also consider how the painters combined the Romantic tradition and their classical heritage with modern realism, and look at their importance for the development of Italian painting later in the century and at their place in European art.
Martin Holman, a British art historian currently living in Florence, will lead the course. His particular area of interest is postwar and contemporary art on which he has written extensively. He has also organised exhibitions in British public galleries and is especially associated with shows by artists associated with Arte Povera, the Italian movement that came to prominence in the 1960s. Martin is a regular contributor to The Florentine.
Please view the sample programme attached below.
Calendar
| from | to | days | hours | fee (€) | combined with | note |
| 01/06/2012 | 04/06/2012 | 425,00 |