Macchiaioli

DEFINITION

An Italian school of painting associated with a group of artists who met at the Caff?? Michelangelo in Florence around 1860 and rebelled against prevailing academic strictures. They did much of their painting outdoors to capture light, shade and color. The Macchiaioli style can be described as a form of pre-or proto-Impressionism in which "macchie", the Italian word for blotches or dabs, are used boldly, rejecting drawing and form in favour of overall effect. Like ???Impressionism???, the name ???Macchiaioli??? became ???official??? after a critic of the Italian newspaper the "Gazzetta del Popolo" used the term to deride the style???s willfully sketchy, indefinite qualities. At the particular moment in history in which the Macchiaioli painters lived, the fight for Italian independence, this interest in the here and now was intimately bound up in intense social interest and a fiercely democratic political orientation. Sources: Excerpted from writing by Clarice Zdanski for the AskART Bulletin Board section of the artist Jerry Ross; Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchiaioli