From Saturday, May 16th to Sunday, September 6th, 2026, Palazzo Blu will host the exhibition "The Gioli Brothers and Painting in Pisa between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries".
With this exhibition, Palazzo Blu continues its in-depth exploration of figurative culture between the 19th and 20th centuries, already explored through important exhibitions such as those on the Macchiaioli, the era of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Belle Époque.
The exhibition offers a broad fresco of painting in Pisa and its surrounding area between the 19th and 20th centuries, connecting different generations of artists and conveying the richness of a cultural context in constant dialogue with Italy's main artistic centers.
Within this journey, brothers Francesco Gioli and Luigi Gioli represent a central, but not exclusive, hub: their experience is part of a broader network of relationships rooted in the Macchiaioli era and developed in the subsequent declinations of naturalism and landscape painting.
The exhibition is divided into six sections and builds a choral narrative, featuring Gioli alongside significant protagonists and interpreters of the art scene between the 19th and 20th centuries. Particular emphasis is placed on figures such as Adolfo Tommasi and Spartaco Carlini, alongside artists such as Plinio Nomellini, Vittorio Matteo Corcos and Amedeo Lori, who contributed to defining the face of painting in the Pisan territory.
In this context, the Gioli's work stands as a balance between tradition and renewal: on the one hand, the connection with the Macchiaioli's experience, on the other, the openness to a more modern vision of the landscape and reality.
Through paintings and drawings –the latter also presented as an autonomous language and not just preparatory – The exhibition restores the complexity of an artistic season that sees Pisa as an active place of elaboration, comparison and experimentation through the numerous paintings and an unpublished core of drawings, presented as an autonomous language and not just preparatory. Coming directly from the Gioli archive, still kept by the heirs, these drawings are exhibited to the public for the first time.
The exhibition thus offers a new reading of local figurative culture, placing it within a broader historical and artistic framework and helping to strengthen Palazzo Blu's role as a point of reference for the study and valorization of art between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
More information: https://palazzoblu.it/mostra/the-gioli-brothers-and-painting-in-pisa-between-the-nineteenth-and-twentieth-centuries/?lang=en
