Alberto Issel

This is an overview of landscape painting in the Liguria and Piedmont regions in the nineteenth century, as expressed through the paintings and drawings of a leading artist of the day, Alberto Issel (Genoa 1848 – 1926), and other artists who were his contemporaries, such as Alfredo De Andrade, Antonio Fontanesi, Ernesto Rayper, Serafino De Avendaño, Tammar Luxoro, Vittorio Avondo and Carlo Pittara.
The idea for the exhibition sprang from a donation by Miriam Chiareno Bonamico to the Museo Attilio e Cleofe Gaffoglio of a canvas by Alberto Issel entitled Il pittore Rayper mentre dipinge a Carcare. The catalogue published by Skira for the exhibition in Rapallo aims to present the themes running through the artistic production of painters from Liguria and Piedmont regions in the period spanning the mid 1860s to the 1880s. In that short time a group of artists with a selfless love for art produced many paintings that sought to represent the real: they depicted views of rural life, forests and seas, and they also captured moments in farming, marine and military life.
Evidence of the artistic and human intensity of their presence in the places they chose can be found in those works in which the painters depict one another absorbed in painting and immersed in the landscape.
The publication does not divide the paintings according to a painter belonging to the Ligure or Piedmont regions, nor is there a division based on the traditional typology of “Scuola Grigia” and “Scuola di Rivara”; rather, the publication looks for the uniqueness of a “poetic prose”, as defined by Francesco Poli, meaning a fascinating ambiguity between modern sensibility and nostalgia for the past, which in pictorial language is characterised by a sense of meaningful development in continuity and not a stylistic breaking down into parts. The aim is to present the fervid atmosphere of newness that pervaded landscape painting between the Liguria and Piedmont regions which, crossed by inter-regional and international influences, was translated into a unique intellectual and sentimental fusion that lasted for more than fifteen years. Terminology that seeks to lay stress on regional cultural identities is therefore, totally incongruous, given that the painters – all of whom came from the well-to-do classes - frequently travelled to France, Switzerland, and Italy, in particular between Florence and Rome.
The catalogue comprises an introductory essay by the curator, Piera Rum (Alberto Issel: le ragioni di una mostra) and also essays by Francesco Poli (La poesia e la prosa del vero nei paesaggisti liguri e piemontesi), Alessandra Gagliano Candela (Alberto Issel dalla pittura di paesaggio alle arti decorative), Daniela Magnetti (Dal Grigio al Verde. La pittura di macchia tra Liguria e Piemonte) and Loredana Rocchiero (Nello studio di Alberto Issel).
Rapallo, Museo Attilio e Cleofe Gaffoglio
29 April – 30 July 2006

The official catalogue is available at the exhibition bookshop and at the Skira bookstore in via Torino 61 in Milan and from June 7 2006 in all Italian bookstores.