Filippo Palizzi (Vasto 1818 - Naples 1899)

Filippo Palizzi (Vasto 1818 – Naples 1899) was the younger brother of Giuseppe. His dedication to painting “reality” seems to have been very much influenced by his brother’s move to Naples in 1854, bringing with him the new tendencies from France.
From his brother’s artistic ideas, Filippo developed a style of painting in which the theme of faithful representation of “reality” is expressed through the force of colour. It is no longer the drawing that creates the abstract scheme in which objects take shape, rather it is colour that acquires shape. Thus, there are no sharp contours, but instead delicate shifts from one form to another.
In this way, Filippo played a decisive role in the development of Neapolitan painting and in introducing the unique aspects that distinguish this branch of Italian art.
The idea of a realism not conditioned by overly superficial or purely sentimental emotions but consisting of robustly expressed feelings centres on the forms and objects of nature. At the same time, this idea is linked in Filippo’s work to a strong democratic tension that also led him to the themes of Garibaldi and the Risorgimento.