A new exhibit in Palazzo Strozzi explores the ties between Old Europe and the New world. The “Americans in Florence” exhibit highlights the profound impact Florence had on many American artists who embraced impression and lived in Italy in the 19th and the 20th centuries.
This historic connection between North America and Florence is even more relevant as Florence celebrates the 500th year anniversary since the death of Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine namesake of America.
“Visitors will be able to study the work of artists who, while not explicitly subscribing to the Impressionist movement, played a crucial role in forming the new generations of American painters-men like William Morris Hunt, John La Farge and Thomas Eakins. These will be followed by the great forerunners, artists such as John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who could boast of strong cosmopolitan leanings. The main part of the exhibition will consist of work by artists of remarkable quality who spent time in Florence”. According to Palazzo Strozzi’s official web site.
The American Impressionist group known as the “Ten American Painters-men” will be the main part of the exhibition, artists like William Merritt Chase and Frederick Childe Hassam, who spent part of their lives in Florence.
The quality of the exhibition will be guaranteed by female portraits in which “women symbolise the modern American nation.–young girls, adolescents and even children, often dressed in white, embody the purity and the hopes of an entire nation”.
For more information, visit the Palazzo Strozzi website.
