MACCHIAIOLI PAINTINGS IN FIRST U.S. SHOWING

The lazy charm, shimmering colors and use of natural light in a group of paintings at UCLA instantly brings to mind the work of everybody’s favorites, the French Impressionists. But the art, never before shown in the United States, is Italian, and Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery director Edith Tonelli doesn’t condone the comparison.

“Viewers will immediately react to the Macchiaioli paintings by likening them to the Impressionists,” said Tonelli recently, “because of what the art looks like and because it was made at the same time. But the Macchiaioli art has a historical, social and cultural context of its own and we have to see the work in that broader context.”

b To that end, Tonelli collaboratively curated “The Macchiaioli: Painters of Italian Life 1850-1900,” on view at the Wight Gallery through April 20, with Dario Durbe, director of the Macchiaioli Archives in Rome, and UCLA art history professor Albert Boime.

The 150 paintings in the exhibition introduce Americans to the Macchiaioli, a group of 19th-Century mostly Tuscan artists. Inspired by pre-Impressionist and then Impressionist artists, they painted their contemporary countryside and compatriots with broad strokes, patches of color and a natural, freer style, rebelling against the polished, academic training of their predecessors.

Scenes of contemporary life and sunbathed landscapes by such artists as Giovanni Fattori, Odoardo Borrani, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini are included in the exhibit. An illustrated time line with a videotape presentation orients viewers historically and socially.

The “context” of the Macchiaioli was the Italian struggle for freedom from Austrian rule and for the creation of a unified national identity--the Risorgimento movement of the late 1840s to the 1860s. Most of the Macchiaioli (so dubbed by a derisive art critic, who labeled them I Macchiaioli , or painters of splotches and patches) involved themselves either civilly or militarily in the conflict. Some went to war; many gathered for talk of art and politics at the Florentine Caffe Michelangiolo.

“The Macchiaioli were very much involved in the social and political events of their time,” Tonelli explained. Passionately patriotic, “they saw themselves as a kind of parallel to the nationalists, developing a style to support the uprising. That’s why they didn’t reject the term (Macchiaioli); they felt they were creating a new art form as they and others were creating a new Italy.

“And they were more immersed in their own culture, unlike the Impressionists, who were more internationally and artistically directed.” Though some Macchiaioli later painted in Europe, most of their art “stayed right in Italy.”

This regionalism was one reason why the Macchiaioli have not received the widespread popularity the Impressionists have enjoyed, Tonelli said. It also posed a challenge for potential American museum curators.

“This was a very involved and complicated show to put together,” continued Tonelli, who received a master’s degree in painting from New York’s Hunter College, and a doctorate in American studies from Boston University. Indeed, she and her staff have been working on the project since she took over as Wight director in 1982.

“Though there have been other Macchiaioli shows, they have always been in Japan and Europe,” she explained, and besides one Macchiaioli painting in Rhode Island, the works are held in private collections and museums scattered throughout Italy. After speaking to the heads of the Macchiaioli Archives and “realizing the complexity of getting these treasures here, we thought we might as well do the most comprehensive show we could. The turning point occurred when Alitalia (Airlines) came in with support for shipping, handling and security.”

Organizing the exhibit, in conjucntion with the Maccialioli Archive and the city of Florence, was worthwhile for several reasons, Tonelli said, the main one being that the Macchiaioli art had not been shown in the United States. “The fundamental reason for our involvement was our interest in supporting projects that will open up new areas to the general public and to scholars.

“When these works go back to Italy, they will once again be segregated in various museums and collections. This is a rare opportunity for scholars to see it all together and to begin to make comparisons and judgments and to do new thinking and research. Curating the exhibit was that kind of process for us as well.”