Radical Light at National Gallery

Radical Light at National Gallery is an unusual exhibition that focuses on a group of painters known as Divisionists. Looking at the their drive to represent the common people and comment on their disatisfaction with modern civilization, the exhibition also highlights their belief in the use of physics to create the best paintings.

Nothern Italy was home to a group of avant garde artists in the late 19th century that were, like many other artists in the country, worried that Italy was lagging behind in their artistic merits in comparisson to the rest of Europe. The exhibition of Radical Light at National Gallery shows their work in an exhibition that defined their age and their beliefs.

Wishing to highlight the conditions of the countrymen, the Divisionists took to representing social and political scenes in a movement that worked for art for the good of humanity. With workers leaving the fields for the cities, the artists took to the countryside to paint the Swiss Alps, the rural area of Volpedo, and the women rice workers of Piedmont, where they took up the causes of the oppressed and attempted to become the agents of social change through their work.

But the Divisionists were also interested in the advancement of phsyics and how their understanding of the world had been changed by it. Their influence from the study of optical science led them to believe that applying paint to canvas in a certain way increased the luminosity of the painting as a whole, and their work took off from the French style of pointilism to a new and varied way of working with dots and strokes.

An often over looked but yet no less important collection of works, Radical Light brings together over fifty works from the most influential of the Divisionist painters in the first exhibition of its kind in the UK. Rare loans from private collections and groups of works from the galleries of Europe and North America bring paintings from the likes of Umberto Boccioni, Giovanni Segantini, Angelo Morbelli and Emilio Longoni to the National Gallery for this beautiful exhibtion.

On show until the 7th September, you book tickets for the exhibition Radical Light at National Gallery by phoning 0870 906 3891 for more information. Tickets can also be booked at the gallery in person.

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