Mino Maccari, Mermaid, Charcoal Drawing, 1980

Mermaidt is a Charcoal Drawing realized by Mino Maccari (1924-1989) in 1980s. Hand-signed on the lower margin. Good condition on a white paper. Mino Maccari (Siena, 1924-Rome, June 16, 1989) was an Italian writer, painter, engraver and journalist, winner of the Feltrinelli Prize for Painting in 1963 and first winner of the Forte dei Marmi Satira Prize in 1973.After completing his secondary education, he enrolls in university. An interventionist like many young people of his time, he took part in the Great War at the age of nineteen as a field artillery officer. At the end of the conflict he resumed his university studies in Siena and in 1920 he graduated in law. In 1924 he was called by Angiolo Bencini to take care of the printing of the magazine Il Selvaggio, openly uncompromising fascist, revolutionary and anti-bourgeois, where his first engravings were published. After a few years of coexistence between work at the newspaper and the law firm, at the beginning of 1926 he left the legal profession to take over the direction of Il Selvaggio which he would hold until 1942. In 1928 he was the author of the small book published by Vallecchi (Florence), Il Trastullo di Strapaese (little songs and engraved woodwinds) which collected fascist songs (the same book was seized several times from Antonio Gramsci during his detention). with the transfer of the editorial staff of the Selvaggio in 1925 from Colle di Val d'Elsa to Florence, Maccari collaborated with Ardengo Soffici, Ottone Rosai and Achille Lega. In the meantime, between 1927 and 1930, he made himself known to the general public as a painter by participating in various national exhibitions. Also in 1930 Maccari works in Turin at La Stampa as editor-in-chief and has the writer Curzio Malaparte as director. His presence in the cultural and editorial world of the fascist regime is very intense, he writes and collaborates with various magazines: Quadrivio, L'Italia Letteraria, L'Italiano and Omnibus by Leo Longanesi; then, during the war, in il Primato di Bottai and, subsequently again, in Il Mondo di Pannunzio (from the first number, in 1949), up to Documento by Federigo Valli. His graphic production is also vast, ranging from the Album of Vallecchi (1925), Il trastullo di Strapaese (1928) to Linoleum (1931). Maccari illustrated in 1934 La vecchia del Bal Bullier by Antonio Baldini and in 1942 he published the Album folder, followed by Come quando fuori Piove and Il superfluo illustrata.For his pictorial work full of evident chromatic accentuations and fast brushstrokes, the violent drawing combined with the lively stroke of the graphic sign of his engravings, he is recognized by critics as a complete artist. In 1962 he was also entrusted with the presidency of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome and managed to obtain a personal exhibition at Gallery 63 in New York. His production of drawings, watercolors, temperas, etc. is endless, sometimes in collaboration with prestigious publishing houses; it is worth mentioning, just as an excellent example, the 32 b/w and color drawings with which he illustrated Il gusto di vivere, a volume that collects writings by Giancarlo Fusco, edited by Natalia Aspesi and published by Laterza in 1985. Maccari, Sienese and great contradaiolo della Torre, painted the Palio of 16 August 1970 won by Selva. In 1973 he was awarded the Political Satire Award of Forte dei Marmi, an award born in that year. He died without great fanfare, in silence, at the age of ninety, in Rome on June 16, 1989.