A major exhibition in Asti on Boldini and the myth of the Belle Ã?poque.

From November 26, 2022 to April 10, 2023, Palazzo Mazzetti in Asti will host the exhibition Boldini and the Myth of the Belle Époque. Curated by Tiziano Panconi, the exhibition project aims to recount the Belle Époque, salons, noblewomen and fashion, and the rarefied atmospheres of an extraordinary era.

More than eighty works, including Blonde Lady in Evening Dress (ca. 1889), Princess Eulalia of Spain (1898), Bust of a Lying Young Woman (ca. 1912) and The Voile Blouse (ca. 1906) will feature in a chronological and thematic narrative. A rich selection of works will be exhibited, focusing on the artist’s ability to exalt female beauty and reveal the most intimate and mysterious souls of the noble protagonists of the time. Boldini was able to psychoanalyze his subjects, his “divines,” making them pose for hours, for days, sitting in front of his easel, talking to them without tiring of asking them the most unseemly questions, until he understood them deeply and thus grasped their spirit. To be portrayed by Boldini meant taking off the robes of aristocratic haughtiness; it was necessary to play along and accept his provocations, responding in tone to premeditated insolence but, finally, conceding, even if only mentally, by knocking down the ideological wall of haughtiness, beyond which deep fragilities were concealed.

He caught the fleeting moment on the fly, that moment when a more sincere glance revealed the state of mind and body mimicry became more expressive. In the years of maturity and then senility, the long, swirling brushstrokes, imprinted like energetic sabers of color, dynamically reshaped the bodies of his divine creatures.

The exhibition is produced by Fondazione Asti Musei, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Asti, the Piedmont Region and the Municipality of Asti, organized by Arthemisia, sponsor Gruppo Cassa di Risparmio di Asti and with the contribution of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Torino. Catalog published by Skira.

Image: Giovanni Boldini, The Voile Blouse (c. 1906; oil on canvas, 72 x 63.5 cm; Sacerdoti Ferrario Collection)

A major exhibition in Asti on Boldini and the myth of the Belle Époque.

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