Livorno celebrates its Macchiaiolo Fattori, with 200 works

LIVORNO - On the bicentenary of the birth of Giovanni Fattori (1825-1908), Livorno pays homage to one of its most extraordinary artists with a major exhibition: "Giovanni Fattori. A revolution in painting", which will be held from 6 September to 11 January 2026 in the rooms of Villa Mimbelli, formerly home to the Civic Museum dedicated to him and recently completely restored. The exhibition is curated by Professor Vincenzo Farinella and features over 200 works including paintings, drawings and etchings by the Macchiaiolo, many of which are little-known or even unpublished, inviting you to discover Fattori and his pictorial revolution as an artist of nature, of the Macchiaioli and of social and military life captured in its most human aspects. In the many canvases of the Macchiolo, the themes and subjects dearest to him return, the horses, the fields and the peasant women, together with the soldiers and the Italy of the Risorgimento, but also the tamarisks or powerful oxen, flooded by the sun and wrapped in skies full of light. The exhibition is divided into sections that retrace the free vision of an artist who in his long life has maintained the firm awareness of having "always arrogant Livorno blood" in his veins. The exhibition, promoted and organized by the Municipality of Livorno in collaboration with the Matteucci Institute of Viareggio, was presented today in the Municipality headquarters by the mayor Luca Salvetti, together with the curator of the exhibition Vincenzo Farinella, the councilor for culture Angela Rafanelli, the president of the Livorno Foundation Luciano Barsotti and the director of the Chamber of Commerce, Pierluigi Giuntoli. "It is an exhibition of international scope - said Mayor Salvetti - which has the aim of bringing the figure of Fattori beyond national borders because this artist of ours has all the characteristics. We realized this when we came into contact with the Hermitage, which was interested in his works. We combined this belief with the fact that the museum complex of the Fattori museum could be revitalized and regenerated precisely with the appointment of the exhibition. We put the two things together, we relied on the highest expressions of the scholars linked to Fattori and a truly worthy exhibition will come". The great retrospective, explained the curator of the exhibition Farinella, "was born as a celebration of the bicentenary of Fattori's birth, and also as a demonstration of how much the city of Livorno is tied to this great artist. The desire to realize it, organized in a chronological way with the ability to account for Fattori's entire career, from the beginning to the end, in over 50 years of work documenting it with many works, drawings, paintings, etchings and pastels, many of which have not been seen for a very long time". For Farinella "it is a completely different exhibition compared to similar exhibitions also because the latest exhibitions on Fattori have all been organized in a completely different way, that is, according to a thematic organization, while ours has the desire to retrace step by step the entire career of this artist from Livorno".