GIUSEPPE DE NITTIS. PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE

traveling

From Puglia to Paris, the brief parable of Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) is full of successes and recognitions. A large monographic exhibition at Palazzo Reale, curated by Fernando Mazzocca and Paola Zatti, resumes the phases of his journey with 90 works, including oil paintings and pastels, from Italian and international collections. Including two important nuclei from the GAM of Milan and the Pinacoteca of Barletta, the author's hometown, who returns to the Lombard capital after the great 2005 exhibition at the Mazzotta Foundation, curated by Renato Miracco. Having concluded his training experience with the "Resin School" in Portici, the talented painter arrived in the French capital at just 21 years old, coming into contact with the artistic environment, and with Degas, Caillebotte and Manet. Having returned to Italy due to the Franco-Prussian war, he is in Naples, where he paints the eruption of Vesuvius in a sequence of small, almost cinematic paintings. Then returning to Paris he exhibited those works in the first Impressionist exhibition, in Nadar's studio, in 1874, and subsequently in various official exhibitions. In his canvases he alternates landscapes with scenes of life (in the photo: Amazon at the Bois de Boulogne) and urban glimpses, painted "en plein air" in a mobile atelier set up in a rented carriage. Thus, among scaffolding and moving crowds, he fixes the images of Paris and London, modern and constantly changing cities. With a style that borrows from photography the particular cuts, set on the diagonal; to which is added the reference to Japanese art, captured in its innovative scope. His canvases are like snapshots, with increasingly faster and more fluid brushstrokes that convey the atmosphere of exteriors, with cloudy skies or at sunset; and those of the interiors, where the characters pose among reflections of lights, iridescent silks and screens. From February 24th to June 30th. What it is It is a large monograph dedicated to the Apulian painter, among the most famous "Italiens de Paris". Chosen because the phases of the artist's journey are reconstructed, highlighting the originality of his style.

details