Print by Giovanni Fattori - On lookout or White wall - 1872
Giovanni Fattori - On the lookout or White Wall
Year: 1871 - oil on panel, 56x37 cm
Preserved at: Marzotto collection, Valdagno, Italy.
Giovanni Fattori was born in Livorno on 6 September 1825. His brother Rinaldo, 15 years older, owner of a successful business bank, acted as his father. Giovanni abandoned his studies and went to work for his brother where he learned to read and write.
Indisputable artistic inclinations push the family, even if they were disadvantaged, to enroll him in Giuseppe Baldini's private school (the only painter in the city).
But Giovanni is not reunited with Baldini. He judges him vain, frivolous and inconclusive. He therefore moved to Florence to study at the Academy of Fine Arts.
And it is here that his personality as a man and an artist was consolidated. With his classmates he frequents the “Caffè Michelangelo” where we talk about art and revolution. The ferocious pranks that Fattori was capable of inflicting on his unfortunate victims are still famous.
The clear opposition of his parents saved him from the war in which Giovanni enthusiastically wanted to participate.
Fattori did not love "art history" nor even the French Impressionists. He preferred “realism”. “Realism brings the accurate study of the present Society, realism shows the wounds from which it is afflicted, realism will send our customs and habits to posterity”. In his famous painting “The Battle of Magenta”, which contributed to his fame, his focus is not on glorious acts of heroism, but on the transportation of the wounded after the battle.
The style is particular and has a fixed point: the stain. For Fattori there are no contour lines, but his observation of reality tells him that the correct representation of this what is seen must be done through spots of color. The eye is struck only by colors. So no shades or chiaroscuro but juxtaposition of colors to be coordinated with each other based on the "tone", the "value" and their convenient "ratio". In fact, in Fattori's drawing network, contour lines do not exist.
His reflection on everyday life was always conducted with rigor and authenticity, even when, now famous, he frequented the much hated "aristocratic caste".
Peasants, rural life, less flashy and more rough aspects of the reality of the time. Nature, for Fattori, is anything but a rural idyll, but a cruel and hostile reality where men and animals are companions in their destiny of suffering.
Fattori left a strong and tangible mark on numerous artists such as Pelizza da Volpedo and fellow Livorno citizen Amedeo Modigliani.
