Giovanni FATTORI

Livorno, 1825 - Florence, 1908 Tuscan Landscape Signed Gio Fattori lower left Oil on canvas applied to cardboard, 11X30 cm Provenance: Milan, Mondial Gallery Milan, private collection Exhibitions: Mostra dei Macchiaioli, Galleria d'Arte Moderna Palazzo Pitti curated by M. Borgiotti, Florence, 1946, ad vocem Commemorative exhibition, Fiftieth anniversary of the death of Giovanni Fattori, Palazzo Gallarati Scotti, Milan, 1959, ad vocem. Borgiotti, Florence, 1946 Mostra commemorativa, Cinquantenario dalla morte di Giovanni Fattori a cura di M. Borgiotti, Palazzo Gallarati Scotti, Milan, 1959 Maestri dell'800. Esposizione-vendita dal 14 ottobre al 4 novembre 1961, Mondial Gallery, Milan, 1961, no. 22 Publications: M. Borgiotti, Mostra dei Macchiaioli, Florence, 1946 M. Borgiotti, Genio dei pittori italiani dell'800, Milano, 1964 Giovanni Fattori is certainly the greatest painter of the Macchiaioli throughout the Italian 19th century, and in his works we find an interest in the traditional landscape and an attention to social themes and scenes of daily life. From a very young age the painter showed a great predisposition for painting and drawing, which led him in 1846 from Leghorn to Florence to the Academy of Fine Arts, where he became a professor in 1869. In 1848 he took part in the Risorgimento uprisings and from the fifties began to frequent the Caffè Michelangelo, the avant-garde environment that saw the birth of the ideas of the Macchiaioli. For him, adhesion to this movement was a response to the impatience he felt towards the historical-celebratory painting typical of the Academy, which led him to investigate the reality of landscapes, animals and humble people, in order to fully grasp their suffering and portray their difficulties. The work presented here is pervaded by a sense of tranquillity, with the sun of the Maremma characterizing the volumes of the landscape through large fields of colour rich in light: the theme of agricultural life is expressed in all its majestic simplicity of great compositional balance, characteristic of the painter's work. Reference bibliography: M. Borgiotti, Poesia dei Macchiaioli, Milan, 1958, ad vocem G. Malesci, Catalogazione illustrata della pittura a olio di Giovanni Fattori, Novara, 1961, ad vocem P. Nicholls, M. Borgiotti, La lezione pittorica di Fattori, Aldo Martello Editore, Milano, 1968, ad vocem L. Bianciardi, L'opera completa di Giovanni Fattori, Milano, 1970, ad vocem R. Monti, Le mutazioni della Macchia, Roma, 1989, ad vocem