FABRE AND ITALY
GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino
Artist: François-Xavier Fabre
Dates: 11 March – 2 June 2008
Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torin presents a sole Italian leg of an important retrospective traveling exhibition dedicated to François-Xavier Fabre (1766-1837), founder of the Montpellier museum. Possibly the most extensive presentation of the works of an artist who was greatly esteemed in his lifetime and who receives more and more appreciation in our days, as attested by the interest raised in neoclassical experts in the last thirty years, by the success of his works in the art market, and by the recent acquisitions of many of his paintings by British and American museums.
Winner of the Gran Premio di Roma di Pittura in 1787, at the beginning of his artistic career, Fabre was one the promises of the new classical painting style, established by the success of his master, Jacques-Louis David. Historical circumstances and personal attachments led him to Florence, where he progressed in his career and where his success never died out despite the marginal importance of the town’s artistic circles compared to those in Paris. Mainly a portrait painter, though also a history and landscape painter, from 1793 to the early 1820s, he worked for the cosmopolitan high society that enjoyed staying in Tuscany; the reason why his works ended up scattered across Europe, thwarting, at length, due recognition of his talent.
This collection of paintings kept in Italy (Florence, Rome, Turin…), as well as in Poland, Lithuania, Finland, Switzerland, England, Scotland (National Gallery of Scotland), Ireland and in the United States (Getty Museum in Los Angeles), not to mention those in the French museums (Louvre, Marmottan Museum and Library, Nantes, Poitiers, Montauban) around the opulent nucleus kept in the Montpellier museum, re-establishes the artist’s real magnitude, allowing us to understand his success and to better identify his originality.
In fact, despite having remained faithful to David’s teachings and his refusing any concession to romanticism, Fabre was rather receptive to the influences of his contemporaries and to those of the classical masters of the past, and capable of renewing himself through personal investigations, specially in the field of landscapes. His style is characterised by a perfect technique, great elegance and an indisputable variety owing, in particular, to the diversity of the genres he engaged in.
Catalogue: Somogy Editions d’Art - Paris
Address:
FONDAZIONE TORINO MUSEI
GAM - Palazzo Madama - Borgo Medievale - Museo d'Arte Orientale
Via Magenta 31 10128 Torino
tel. +39 011 4429518 fax. +39 011 4452550
Website: www.gamtorino.it or www.fondazionetorinomusei.it
Opening hours: Tuesday - Sunday from 10 A.M to 6 P.M., Thursday from 10 A.M. to 10 P.M.
Closed on Monday. The ticket office closes one hour before.
Image Credits: The Duchess of Feltre and her Children, oil on canvas, 1810, by Francois Xavier Fabre
