Cosmopolite and traveller, Giovanni Boldini (1842, Ferrara – 1931, Paris), after the first years of training spent in Tuscany, Paris and London, settled permanently in the French capital where he developed his own unmistakable style and became the most fashionable portrait painter of high society. His portraits are the peculiar image of Belle Époque cultural and historical period. But he was not only a portrait painter. His art ranges over different genres and techniques, from views to still-life, from painting to graphic.
The first exhibition in China allows to see Boldini’s complete artistic path: it is composed by nine sections, on the basis of thematic criteria related to the artist’s life and to the influences by art movements of his time, emphasizing some basic steps of his career.
At the very heart of the exhibition –curated by Barbara Guidi in collaboration with Maria Luisa Pacelli-, 37 works from the collections of the Giovanni Boldini Museum of Ferrara document the artist’s work in full and point out Boldini’s role in the renewal of Italian and international painting.