“A great, fabulous life” and “an incomparable ability to capture souls”. This is how Vincenzo Gemito was described by Sylvain Bellenger, director of the Museo di Capodimonte in her preface to the catalogue of the exhibition “Gemito. Dalla scultura al disegno “, presented in Naples at the Museo di Capodimonte from 11 September to 15 November 2020.

Born in Naples in 1852, his personal history immediately took on the qualities of drama: abandoned at birth at the church of the Santissima Annunziata Maggiore, which conducted an orphanage, Gemito spent his childhood in the streets of the city, from which he drew his first and fundamental source of inspiration.
He reached world fame at the age of 25 with one of his most famous popular subjects, the Fisherman, presented at the 1878 Paris Universal Exposition. He then returned to Naples, recalled by his family, where he set up his first foundry and experienced a period of intense artistic productivity, followed by profound crises of mental instability that would lead him to isolate himself. Twenty years of darkness followed by his late output, which this exhibition presents by bringing out the sculptor’s close relationships with the artists of the European artistic Secession and Metaphysical painting in the early twentieth century. He died in Naples in 1929.

The exhibition and catalogue are divided into nine sections in which Gemito’s works are arranged chronologically and associated with those of his contemporaries. Two sections deal in depth with the two great loves of his life: the Frenchwoman Mathilde Duffaud and the Neapolitan Anna Cutolo.