Painter of modern life, Federico Zandomeneghi (Venice 1841 - Paris 1917) was on the glittering Parisian scene between the 800s and 900s the singer of the emancipated woman, represented in the various moments of everyday life, from the toilet ritual to walks in the Bois, from reading to evenings worldly at the theater.
The exhibition, curated by Francesca Dini and Fernando Mazzocca, promoted by the Bano Foundation, will present one hundred works including oil paintings and pastels, which retrace, from its beginnings, the extraordinary career of Zandomeneghi, witness and main actor of the transition from naturalism committed, with paintings of social denunciation, to a painting that was able to interpret the novelties of Impressionism in a very personal way.
Through an unmistakable style and a very refined use of the pastel technique, Zandomeneghi fixed on the canvas, the physiognomies, the gestures, the charm of the Belle Époque, creating the female imagination of the Parisian woman. From Paris, the city that welcomed him and saw him as a protagonist with Giovanni Boldini and Giuseppe De Nittis of the triad of the Italiens de Paris, he was able to grasp the charm and unique atmosphere of its squares, boulevards, the social life that flowed in the cafés and theaters.
The exhibition itinerary will allow you to rediscover a true talent and an artistic personality hitherto not adequately valued, through paintings largely unknown to the general public, coming from the most important and prestigious public institutions - including the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery in Piacenza, the Civic Museum of Palazzo Te in Mantua – and the most exclusive Italian, English and French private collections.
Federico Zandomeneghi was a son of art. Great natural talent and full of temperament, he however preferred painting to the family vocation that should have led him to sculpture. His grandfather Luigi had been a close friend of Canova and his father Pietro had created the grandiose monument of Titian in the Basilica dei Frari in Venice. Fled from Venice to avoid being drafted into the Austrian army, after having followed Garibaldi in the expedition of the Thousand, in Florence (1862-66) he frequented the Macchiaioli, becoming a particularly good friend of the critic Diego Martelli. In 1866 he returned to Venice and, from 1874, he settled in Paris where Zandò – as he was usually called – came into contact with the Impressionists, in particular Degas and Renoir, and became a protagonist, together with De Nittis and Boldini, in that extraordinary workshop of the so-called “painting of modern life”. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants (1879, 1880, 1881, 1886) and, in the last years of the century, had a particularly happy relationship with the great merchant Durand-Ruel. A personal exhibition of his at the Venice Biennale in 1914 did not achieve the hoped-for success and only after 1922 did his art gain adequate recognition.
