The Belle Époque , salons, noblewomen and fashion: it is the overwhelming world of Giovanni Boldini , a genius of painting who more than any other has been able to restore the rarefied atmospheres of an extraordinary era. Literature and fashion , music and luxury, art and bistro mingle in the sensual rhythm of the can-can and produce an extraordinary social and civil rebirth.

From 26 November 2022 to 10 April 2023 Giovanni Boldini , one of the most loved Italian artists of all time, is celebrated with a major exhibition at Palazzo Mazzetti in Asti .

After the successes of the Chagall exhibitions. Color and magic, Monet and the impressionists in Normandy, the Macchiaioli. The adventure of modern art, the collaboration between the Asti Musei Foundation and Arthemisia continues to attract crowds of visitors to Asti. The new project, curated by Tiziano Panconi, is dedicated to the undisputed genius of Boldini.

80 magnificent works - including Blond Lady in Evening Dress (c. 1889), Lady in Pink (1916), Reclining Bust of a Young Man (c. 1912) and The Voile Blouse (c. 1906) - are the protagonists of a chronological and thematic narration at the same time. The exhibition presents a rich selection of works that best express Boldini's manner, his ability to uniquely enhance female beauty and reveal the most intimate and mysterious soul of the noble protagonists of the time .

An exhibition that emphasizes the artist's ability to psychoanalyze her subjects, her "divines", making them pose for hours, for days, sitting in front of her easel, talking to them without getting tired of asking the most inconvenient questions , until you understand them deeply and thus grasp their spirit, scrutinizing their soul.

Being portrayed by Boldini meant taking off the clothes of the aristocratic pride with which every great lady worthy of her coat of arms was lavishly endowed. It was necessary to play the game and accept its provocations, responding in kind to the premeditated insolences but, finally, giving in, even if only mentally, by bringing down the ideological wall of arrogance, beyond which deep fragilities were hidden.

He seized the fleeting moment on the fly, that unique moment in which a more sincere glance revealed the state of mind and the mimicry of the body became more expressive, the moment in the making between one action and another, when the motor force of a gesture was exhausted, promptly regenerating in the next one. In the years of maturity and then of senility, the long and swirling brushstrokes, imprinted like energetic saber strokes of colour, dynamically remodeled the bodies of his "divine" creatures and his style, both classic and modern, was the best response to the aesthetic and progressive vocations expressed by the upper social classes.