The exhibition-trip to the artist’s atelier

The exposition Hayez. The workshop of the Romantic painter. , open to the public from October 17, 2023, to April 1, 2024, at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, was organized and promoted by Fondazione Torino Musei, GAM Torino and 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE, and curated by Fernando Mazzocca and Elena Lissoni, in collaboration with the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, from which comes an important nucleus of about fifty drawings and some important paintings, many of which were in the studio of the painter who was professor of painting at the Accademia for forty years. And it is precisely the idea of ideally letting the visitor enter thepainter’s atelier that is at the basis of an exhibition project that puts the paintings and drawings in direct relation, for the first time, allowing us to reconstruct and understand the creative process and method of the master of the Risorgimento.

The exhibition itinerary is scanned through ten sections in chronological succession, starting from his formative years between Venice and Rome, where he frequented Canova’s studio, approaching the neoclassical experience, to his first affirmation in Milan, with his participation in major public commissions and institutional competitions-including the Great Painting Competition held by the Brera Academy that saw the success of the Laocoon – and to the final trials of the maturity. To these sections is added a special focusdedicated to the relationship between the artist and the city of Turin, with the exhibition of the series of drawings for the Silks of the Crusaders, his most ambitious and demanding work, executed between 1833 and 1850 and destined for the Palazzo Realedi Turin, where it can still be admired today.

In addition to previously unpublished works and some of the most popular masterpieces – such as The Meditation from the Musei Civici di Verona – Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti and theSecret Charge from the Musei Civici del Castello Visconteo in Pavia, juxtaposed with The Council at the Vendetta, a prestigious loan from Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna. – an important selection of sketches and drawings, visual notes that the artist used as a basis and starting point in creating compositions, as well as a highly refined production of d’après, drawings and watercolors that faithfully reproduce some of his most famous works.

A “civil painter,” an interpreter of the destinies of the Italian nation, capable of extending the breath of his painting from history tocurrent political events, Hayez was also among the greatest portrait painters of all time, succeeding in interpreting the spirit of his own era with his production.

Concluding the exhibition tour are in fact two emblematic paintings: theEcce Homo, the extreme work of his maturity, begun in 1867 in the aftermath of the Third War of Independence, through which Hayez seems to make himself the interpreter of a universal grief in the face of the horrors of war; La Meditation, a work symbolic of the Risorgimento, represented by the figure of a discreet young woman who becomes a metaphor for the “beautiful and lost” homeland.

Complementing the exhibition is a structured educational itinerary for children and students of different age groups, as well as workshops and guided tours for families to discover the beauty but also the Risorgimento values that characterize the work of a great “civilian” painter who was able to interpret the spirit of his time.

The exhibition catalog, edited by Fernando Mazzocca and Elena Lissoni, was produced by 24 ORE Cultura Editore.