Summary: The exhibition focuses on the antecedents, birth and highly successful debut period of Macchiaioli painting, spanning the experimentation of the 1850s and the masterpieces of the 1860s. Over 80 works from major Italian museums, institutions and private collections exhaustively document the history of the movement from its origins to 1870, also through compelling juxtapositions with paintings by coeval artists. The experimentation conducted by the Macchiaioli was a crucial step in the renewal of figurative languages that became a priority in the mid-19th century. These young artists met up at the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence, and it was there that they developed the concept of the macchia, or patch. Their bold experiments led to "modern" Italian art, which actually received its first recognition in Turin, at the Promotrice delle Belle Arti in May 1861. After being proclaimed the capital of the Kingdom of Italy that same year, the city experienced an extraordinary period of cultural ferment. Indeed, in 1863 Turin began to build its civic collection of modern art – now the GAM – with the aim of documenting the contemporary art of the time. The exhibition establishes a telling dialogue between Macchiaioli painting and the prestigious 19th-century collection at the GAM, offering a new opportunity for study. In this respect, special attention is given to Antonio Fontanesi – on the bicentenary of his birth – the Piedmontese artists of the Scuola di Rivara (Carlo Pittara, Ernesto Bertea, Federico Pastoris, Alfredo D’Andrade) and the Ligurians of the Scuola dei Grigi (Serafino De Avendaño, Ernesto Rayper). New and original elements emerge from comparisons with the painting of Cristiano Banti, Giovanni Fattori, Telemaco Signorini and Odoardo Borrani, the leading lights of the all-important period under examination...

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