Casadei Maceo (1899 – 1992) – Still Life With Earthenware Pitcher – Gouache – Signed

Gouache on paper by Maceo Casadei, an Italian painter.
This composition is dominated by blue and brown tones, which give it a great softness. We can see an earthenware pitcher, a pot filled with vegetables (a head of garlic in particular), a wire basket. A little to the side, a bright blue cigarette packet catches the eye. As in all of Casadei's gouaches, we appreciate the velvety side of the gouache, which reinforces the tranquility of the composition.
The work is signed at the top right. The name of the work, the medium and the name of the author also appear on the back.
The work is in excellent condition. It is placed under glass, in a discreet modern wooden frame with a silver patina, also in excellent condition.

The artist
Maceo Casadei was born in 1899 in Forli, Romagna (Italy). He began painting at a very young age, in the studio of the painter Giovanni Marchini. In 1912 he emigrated with his family to Lyon, where he attended the École libre du nu and met his compatriot Pietro Angelini, who had also emigrated to France. He was mobilized during the First World War. He then returned to Lyon, then to Romagna, to devote himself actively to painting. He also worked as a photo retoucher and, in the 1920s and 1930s, he alternated his presence in Romagna and Lyon, painting murals and theater scenes out of necessity. In 1941, he was sent to the front as a war reporter. From 1941 to 1943, he took thousands of photographs and produced personal works on war subjects, which were exhibited at the Galleria Il Milione in Milan in 1942. In 1946-1947, he stayed in Venice where he frequented Filippo De Pisis. From the early 1950s he lived and worked assiduously in Forlì, where he carried out an intense promotional activity in the field of visual arts. In 1959 he executed his most important decorative work in the church of the Servi di Maria in Rome.
In 1968 Casadei donated 150 of his works to the city of Forlì, which have since been on permanent display.
Several Italian museums hold works by Casadei. Others have been the subject of numerous public sales, in Italy and in Europe.
As a painter with a rare capacity for synthesis and characterized by an extremely refined use of color, Maceo Casadei made a particular contribution to the figurative tradition of the twentieth century by firmly maintaining his references to reality and knowing how to translate them into a highly sophisticated painting, ready to capture those perfect moments in which even the most prosaic elements become, in an artistic fiction that goes beyond documentary art, openings towards the marvelous.

Object visible at the gallery (07240).
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