The General, Circa 1950

Mino Maccari   Famous Artists

The General is a work of art created by Mino Maccari (1924-1989) in the mid-20th century. Watercolor on paper. On the back: linocut on paper. Signed by the artist. 

Mino Maccari (Siena, 1924-Rome, 16 June 1989) was an Italian writer, painter, engraver and journalist, winner of the Feltrinelli Prize for painting in 1963 and the first winner of the Forte dei Marmi Satire Prize in 1973. After completing his secondary education, he enrolled at 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 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 held until 1942. In 1928 he was the author of the small volume published by Vallecchi (Florence) Il Trastullo di Strapaese (songs and engraved wood) which collected fascist songs (the same book was confiscated several times from Antonio Gramsci during his detention). With the transfer of the editorial staff of Il 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 worked in Turin at La Stampa as editor-in-chief and had the writer Curzio Malaparte as its director. His presence in the cultural and editorial world of the fascist regime was very intense, he wrote and collaborated with several magazines: Quadrivio, L'Italia Letteraria, L'Italiano and Omnibus by Leo Longanesi; then, during the war, on Bottai's Primato and, subsequently, again on Pannunzio's Il Mondo (from the first issue, in 1949), up to Federigo Valli's Documento. His graphic production was also vast, ranging from Vallecchi's Album (1925), to Strapaese's Il trastullo (1928), to Linoleum (1931). In 1934 Maccari illustrated Antonio Baldini's La vecchia del Bal Bullier and in 1942 he published the Album portfolio, followed by Come quando fuori Piove and Il superfluo illustrato. For his pictorial work rich in evident chromatic accentuations and quick brush strokes, the violent drawing combined with the lively line 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, tempera, etc. is immense,sometimes in collaboration with prestigious publishing houses; it is worth mentioning, just as an excellent example, the 32 black and white 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, from Siena and a great member of the Torre contrada, painted the Palio of August 16, 1970 won by Selva. In 1973 he was awarded the Political Satire Prize of Forte dei Marmi, a prize created that year. He died without much fanfare, in silence, at the age of ninety, in Rome, on June 16, 1989.