Masaniello Luschi (1942-1995) - Darsena vecchia

A 35x50 canvas painting with a hand-gilded Salvestrini frame, featuring Masaniello Luschi, considered by art professionals to be the foremost exponent of traditional Livornese painting of the Italian Twentieth Century.
A tradition that traces back to what was one of the most innovative artistic movements, the Macchiaioli.
This movement, born in the latter half of the 19th century, had as founder-master the painter Giovanni Fattori, who managed to gather around him a considerable group of young painting talents and to undertake the difficult path that would later prove to be the fortune of the “macchia” (the stain).
That historic group sowed a creed and, following the master's dictates, gave birth in the following decades to new and valid apostles of conventional Livornese painting.
Following those dictates, Masaniello Luschi began to paint as a self-taught artist, fascinated by the art of those eminent masters, studying and absorbing their secrets.
In a few years he became, with a wholly personal stamp, also a teacher for the younger generations and, around the 70s and 90s, allowed a continuation of a tradition that remains today an indispensable cornerstone of Italian culture.
He had painting in his blood and, endowed with important graphic foundations, he managed to immortalize on canvas with extreme simplicity any real vision that presented itself to his eyes.
The bucolic scenes of his Tuscany, the countryside in spring, the autumns and snowy winters, the characteristic views of his city such as the old Venice, the old fortress, the vanished beccolini, the/ the pontine areas.
Portraits and still lifes, studies of animals, storms at sea, a polyhedral range of subjects, each tackled always with the utmost passion and painterly force.
His was a painting made of simplicity and modesty, rich in color, material, real; distant from modernism and new expressive forms.
He loved painting from life, the daily contact with nature, with people, with his places, with the scents of the earth.
His brushstrokes were decisive, sure, full of color, and created on the canvas scenes of macchiaiolo flavor.
Numerous masterpieces carried out especially between 1985 and 1994 at the height of his artistic maturity, when gallerists, critics and collectors daily sang his praises.
Important exhibitions all over Italy (Florence, Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Turin, Soave, etc.) represented the fame of this artist, for whom the Curia Vescovile of Livorno even commissioned the famous “Last Supper” for the Cathedral, a painting of considerable size, a symbol of the painting quality attained.
Unfortunately, at the height of his artistic ascent, a grave illness took him on June 11, 1995, burying forever those fantastic and inimitable “brushes,” exceptional witnesses of a time and of a true passion, leaving posterity the mark of his passage, his incomparable paintings.

Masaniello Luschi is currently regarded as the greatest exponent of traditional Labronico painting, a tradition that traces its origin to what was one of the most revolutionary artistic movements of the past: the MACCHIA.
This movement, born in the second half of the 19th century, had as its maker the Livorno-born painter Giovanni Fattori, who gathered around him a considerable group of young talents, who, although not seeing immediate recognition of their artistic vein, continued to blindly believe in the Master’s dictates; and it is by following those dictates..
Masaniello Luschi many years ago began to paint, fascinated by the art of those eminent masters; they studied his works with love and self-denial until absorbing the most hidden secrets, so that today he himself is regarded as the master capable of continuing, albeit with a wholly personal imprint, that tradition which must absolutely not be dispersed, because it constitutes one of the most significant milestones of Italian culture. endowed with a notable graphic base, which allows him to capture on the canvas with immediacy the chosen subject, he dedicates much of his time to painting from life, always in search of subjects that time has left unchanged. His own Tuscany, rich in evocative glimpses, a source of ever-new inspirations. Introverted, quiet, always surrounded by devoted disciples, Masaniello Luschi lives as if enclosed in a poetic world, avoiding those who would want “the Modern at any cost” not because he outright rejects new expressive forms but because he believes with absolute conviction that his way of painting, done with simplicity and modesty, with only the aid of colors and brushes, still has meaning today. Even the notable successes that his personal works achieve confirm the validity of the beliefs rooted in him.
“Last Supper,” commissioned by the Curia Vescovile for the Cathedral of Livorno, is the sure proof of his attained artistic maturity. Something that will endure over time.

Maurizio Ansaldo