Art Movement

The movement grew from your small number of artists, lots of whom was revolutionaries in the uprisings of 1848. The artists met in the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence through the 1850s to talk about art and politics. These idealistic teenagers, dissatisfied using the art with the academies, shared a wish to reinvigorate Italian art painting techniques by emulating the bold tonal structure they admired such old masters techniques as Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Tintoretto. They also found inspiration within the paintings of their French contemporaries with the Barbizon school.

They thought that areas of light and shadow, or “macchie” (literally patches or spots) were the chief aspects of a masterpiece of design. The word macchia was widely used by Italian artists and critics inside the nineteenth century to spell it out the sparkling quality of a drawing or painting, whether because of sketchy and spontaneous execution or to the harmonious breadth of the overall effect.

A hostile review published on November 3, 1862 inside the journal Gazzetta del Popolo marks the first appearance on the net from the term Macchiaioli. The word carried several connotations: it mockingly implied that the artists’ finished works were only sketches, and recalled the saying “darsi alla macchia”, meaning, idiomatically, to cover inside the bushes or scrubland. The performers did, in fact, paint most of them are employed in these wild areas. This sense with the name also identified the artists with outlaws, reflecting the traditionalists’ view that new school of artists was working away from rules of art, in line with the strict laws defining artistic expression at the time.

In its early years the newest movement was ridiculed. Lots of its artists died in penury, only achieving fame on the end of the 19th century. Today the job from the Macchiaioli is way better known in Italy than elsewhere; a lot of the work is held, away from criminal record, in private collections there.
The Macchiaioli were the topic of an exhibition on the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome, October 11, 2007 - February 24, 2008, possibly at the Villa Bardini in Florence, March 19 - June 22, 2008. Another exhibition with the Macchiaioli happens to be being held in the Terme Tamerici in Montecatini, Italy August 12, 2009 - March 18, 2010.

Artists

Many of the most important artists from the Macchiaioli are:

• Giuseppe Abbati
• Saverio Altamura
• Odoardo Borrani
• Vincenzo Cabianca
• Vito D’Ancona
• Giovanni Fattori
• Silvestro Lega
• Telemaco Signorini