Giovanni Factors (Livorno, 1825 - Florence, 1908) was the spokesman of a powerful painting, capable of interpreting the transformations of the modern vision throughout the second half of the XNUMXth century.
To this extraordinary interpreter, the Bano Foundation, in its ten-year project on XNUMXth-century Italian painting, is dedicating an anthology, scheduled for Palazzo Zabarella, from 24 October 2015 to 28 March 2016, which re-proposes to the general public the image of one of the major protagonists of European art.
The exhibition, curated by the most accredited experts of the Livorno painter, Francesca Dini, Giuliano Matteucci and Fernando Mazzocca, presents over one hundred paintings, capable of reconstructing, through a compelling chronological and at the same time thematic cut - from the defiant Self-Portrait of 1854, where he was already able to reveal the revolutionary strength of his painting, to the last masterpieces executed at the beginning of the twentieth century - the extraordinary versatility of a long creative story that saw him grapple with different themes and genres.
Indeed, Fattori passed very easily from the landscape, of which he was one of the most surprising interpreters, to the portrait, achieving equally astonishing results, to the chronicles of contemporary history, where he witnessed an era, to scenes of popular life, where he knew how to share humanity's moods and most dramatic problems.
The itinerary set up inside Palazzo Zabarella entirely traces his career, from the revolution of the Macchiaioli, in which he played a leading role, entrusted to the small formats of the legendary tablets, such as La Rotonda di Palmieri, up to the achievement, in the large formats, of an epic dimension where the historical and social changes that have transformed our country are reflected, finally experimenting with new iconographic and formal territories that brought him closer, for the results achieved, to other solitary geniuses such as Courbet or Cézanne.
His talents, after training in the academic field, were revealed rather late, when, after the age of thirty, he had participated in the animated evenings of the Caffè Michelangelo which was the lively stage of the so-called "macchia" revolution in Florence. But compared to the other painters who were part of the Macchiaioli movement, Fattori immediately stood out for his strong and independent personality, capable of the most courageous choices.
In the dramatic masterpieces of his maturity, such as Il muro bianco (In vedetta) or Lo staffato, expressed with a language that goes beyond the dimension of denunciation to reach a universal perspective, Fattori was a lucid interpreter of the disappointment of a nation, emerging from the Risorgimento, who has not been able to realize those ideals of social justice in which the younger generations had believed. This is the greatness of him, which immediately made it a classic, compared to the masters of the fifteenth century, such as Beato Angelico, Paolo Uccello, but also to Goya and the contemporary Cézanne.
Lived in Florence from 1846, he however often returned to his native Livorno, but also to Castiglioncello, the favorite place of the Macchiaioli, of which he was able to represent, like few others, the clear light. His last destination was the Tuscan Maremma, a harsh and wild land which, thanks to the masterpieces of his last years, became a legend, such as Cézanne's Provence or Gauguin's Polynesia.
In contact with different natural scenarios, with different historical situations, when he evokes the events of our Risorgimento in his military-themed paintings, with men, whose existential and social condition he is able to render, his style changes continuously: from the splendid painting with colored and dazzled spots of the youthful tablets, to the more dramatic visions characterized by a new perspective setting and by an ever more powerful drawing of the paintings of his maturity, up to the deformation of the last works which seem to anticipate, in their disconcerting modernity, the avant-gardes of the twentieth century.
Within the exhibition itinerary, his graphic production will also be accounted for, with a section that will present a dozen sheets engraved with etching on zinc, capable of demonstrating how much Fattori, also in this field, has reached absolute tops, both from the point of view from a technical and stylistic point of view, despite its activity only starting in the XNUMXs. As with the paintings, the recurring subjects are the protagonists of real life, whether they are peasants or soldiers, surrounded by a nature always investigated with great emotion.
