FORTE DEI MARMI. An illuminating fresco on Tuscan and non-Tuscan painting, from De Chirico to Nomellini, resurfaces at Villa Bertelli in Forte dei Marmi in a spectacular exhibition, following the recommendation of a knowledgeable critic, Elisabetta Matteucci, representing the Fine Arts society. The exhibition, which will occupy the spaces of the villa until 30 June (free entry, every day from 4pm to 7pm) is a double praise: to the private collector who collected these forty paintings and to the painters who have acted as interpreters by creating them. Removed from the walls of a villa in the Pisan plain, they are offered to the public who thus has the opportunity to breathe a truly non-museum atmosphere, refreshing their memory with forgotten landscapes, from the Livorno coast to Puccini’s lake, from the Florence of the historic streets of Rosai to the suggestions by De Pisis.
Collecting from the old days
What was collecting in the past? It was contemplation. Now, with the auction system, everything is bought for bargains, the work of art is weighed in a rush and escape. Before, however – and the critic was an example of this Diego Martelli who invented the Macchiaioli – before acquiring a painting or a sculpture, one became friends with the artist, one frequented their dens, from the “Giubbe Rosse” in Florence to the “Greco” café in Rome, from the “Michelangelo” café, always in Florence (where Fattori was at home) at the Brera cafés in Milan. And then in the living room, we spent hours looking at portraits and landscapes. In this exhibition at Villa Bertelli in Forte dei Marmi, much space is dedicated to the group that worked around Giacomo Puccini in that “Bohéme Club” that the Lucca master would eternalize in the very famous work on Parisian artists influenced by Impressionism. The group around Giacomo Puccini, who experienced the astonishing beauties of Lake Massaciuccoli, came instead from the lessons of Fattori and Telemaco Signorini, were post-Macchiaioli, however, as Sgarbi well writes, “Labronici”, who from 1920 had associated themselves and bore the names of Tommasi brothers, Mario Puccini, Ulvi Liegi, Plinio Nomellini, Gino Romiti, Raffaello Gambogi, Oscar Ghiglia, Giovanni Bartolena.
They were and were very different in character and colours: they all frequented the Bardi café in Livorno, but they all felt refractory to the stormy movements of the twentieth century, from Abstractionism to Futurism until the return to order. Bright in colors (see Ghiglia), intrigued by the show like Nomellini (he painted the dancer Isadora Duncanguest of Eleonora Duse in Lido di Camaiore in Versilia), fascinated by the landscape like the Tommasi family, who were repeatedly enchanted by the scenery of the Apuan Alps, punctual narrators of crowded squares like Bartolena, arrived with Renato Natali also narrating the lush port docks of Livorno assembled by liberating American soldiers and picturesque young ladies dedicated to brotherhood. In short, a generation rich in suggestions and production that the Pisan collector, tracked down by Elisabetta Matteucci, managed to bring to the walls of his home. Matteucci is the daughter of Giuliano who, from a modest gallery in Viareggio, managed to open others, successfully, in Cortina, Milan and Paris, as he was considered the greatest expert in Macchiaioli.
The works on display
In the exhibition at Villa Bertelli, very well directed by Ermindo Tucci, then an admirable De Chirico appears, with a dreamed-of basket of fruit, and then a painting by the Ferrarese De Pisis, who brought the soul back to the reality of the image, again a painting of Ardengo Soffici, essayist, poet and painter who dominated the Cinquale and invented the “Quarto Platano” in Forte dei Marmi where they flocked Ungaretti And Guttuso, Mount them And Catarsini, Repaci And Moravia, a celebrity event that brought prestige to Versilia in the 1960s. And on which there will soon be an exhibition at Villa Bertelli. Finally for those who love the very Florentine Rose BrassThere are poignant works to remember him among the great masters of the twentieth century.
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