Boldini and the Belle Époque
The eighth great art exhibition organised by Como’s Municipal Cultural Department is dedicated to Boldini and the Belle Époque, with more than 110 painting from some of the most important museums and collections in Italy. The exhibition of 2011 has been set up by Sergio Gaddi and Tiziano Panconi and focuses our gaze on the fascinating period of the Belle Epoque and its relationship to the genius of Giovanni Boldini, whose creative energy and optimism revolutionised the story of the turn of the century, to the touch of an unmistakeable darting brushstroke that brought with it real beauty and joie de vivre.
Literature and fashion, music and luxury, art and bistrot life, all to the sensual rhythm of the can can, signalled an extraordinary social and cultural rebirth. Paris was very much at the heart of this international cultural phenomenon which spread to the other European capitals and to the elegant ambiences of the Italian cities, with Milan, Venice, Naples and Florence leading the way. They were times in which technological developments revolutionised people’s lives, creating personal prosperity and wellbeing such as had never before been seen. Customs changed and the sensual attraction of women became a force that the no-longer housebound lady was fully aware of and able to exploit as her social role grew in importance.
Amidst this not-to-be repeated euphoria of the time, Giovanni Boldini of Ferrara broke onto the scene, leaving his home town for Florence in 1864 to then move on to London and finally to Paris where he became a real celebrity, producing splendid portraits of the most fashionable figures of the time. His immense popularity crossed the Atlantic as his aristocratic manners and vocation for high society made him something of a Lothario, moving easily as he did among the great and good to become a reference point for a significance group of artists.
The exhibition at Villa Olmo provides us not only with a rich selection of the best works of Boldini, who played a central role in the development of the Macchiaioli movement, but also illustrates his relationship to other extraordinary Italian artists, including Giuseppe De Nittis, a sublime interpreter of sophisticated and metropolitan elegance, Federico Zandomeneghi, whose introspective tensions are expressed in ways close to those of French impressionism and Vittorio Corcos, who brought the timeless magnetism of womanhood to his canvasses.
