Armando Spadini
1883–1925 · Italian painter of the Scuola Romana and Florentine Impressionism
Armando Spadini (Poggio a Caiano, near Florence, 29 July 1883 - Rome, 31 March 1925) was an Italian painter and one of the representatives of the so-called Scuola Romana. The son of a craftsman and a seamstress, he trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he met Ardengo Soffici and Adolfo De Carolis, and in 1909 won the national art scholarship that took him to Rome in 1910.
In Rome he moved in a close circle of writers and artists, with the critic Emilio Cecchi among his strongest supporters, who regarded him as one of the most gifted painters of the new century. Far from the avant-garde and metaphysical painting, his work belongs to a twentieth-century Impressionist line, with family scenes, nudes and portraits of his wife Pasqualina Cervone. He exhibited with the Secessione Romana in 1913 and 1915, and had a solo show at the Casina Valadier in 1918. Ill with chronic nephritis from 1917, he gained wide recognition at the 1924 Venice Biennale, which gave him a room of thirty-seven works.
His legacy remains mainly in Italy: the 1931 National Quadrennial in Rome dedicated a room to him, and a bust of him stands among those of illustrious Italians on the Pincio in Rome.
Works (1)
A work by Armando Spadini dated 1918 and held in Rome. The available record offers little more, so the specific subject and the circumstances of its commission cannot be stated with confidence. Its landscape format of roughly 61 by 82 centimetres suggests a medium-sized canvas, perhaps meant for an intimate setting rather than a large history piece. To learn about its composition, palette and meaning, a dedicated study of the artist is the best starting point.
Where to see the work
- Rome Metropolitan City of Rome · 1