Name: In Asti, Boldini and the Myth of the Belle Époque
Start: 2022-11-26T11:14:00.000+01:00
End: 2023-04-10T11:14:00.000+02:00
Location: Asti

Overview

A major exhibition at Palazzo Mazzetti in Asti celebrates Giovanni Boldini, one of the best-loved Italian artists of all times.

An extraordinary social and civil renaissance where music and luxury, literature and fashion, art and bistro mingle to the sensual rhythm of the Can Can. This is the Belle Époque and the overwhelming world of Giovanni Boldini, the genius of painting who, more than any other, was able to render the rarefied atmospheres of an extraordinary era.

Over 80 magnificent works–including Blonde Lady in Evening Dress (c. 1889), Princess Eulalia of Spain (1898), Bust of a Reclining Young Woman (c. 1912), The Voile Blouse (c. 1906)–present Boldini's style at its best, his unveiling of the most intimate and mysterious soul of the nobility of his time.

An artist capable of psychoanalysing his subjects, his 'divines', talking to them, asking them the unseemliest questions; making them pose for hours, days, in front of his easel, until he peered into the deepest recesses of their souls.

Posing for Boldini meant playing along, accepting his provocations, responding in kind to his premeditated insolence and, finally, indulging, if only mentally, and conceding one's own profound fragilities to the artist's brush. Boldini was able to capture the fleeting moment, that imperceptible second that revealed true state of mind.

The exhibition, by Fondazione Asti Musei, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Asti, the Region of Piedmont and the Municipality of Asti, and organised by Arthemisia, welcomes us with the boldness of his era and leads us to the discovery of those passions we still relive today when admiring his works.