Masaniello Luschi (1942-1995) - Darsena vecchia

Oil on canvas 35x50, accompanied by a handmade Salvestrini gilded frame, with a small silk-mixed panel, Masaniello Luschi, considered by art professionals to be the leading exponent of traditional Labronican painting of the Tuscan second half of the twentieth century.
A tradition rooted in what was one of the most innovative artistic movements, “the Macchiaioli.”
This movement, born in the second half of the 1800s, had as founder-master the painter Giovanni Fattori, who managed to gather around him a substantial group of young painting talents and to embark on the difficult path that would later prove to be the fortune of the “macchia.”
That historic group sowed a creed and, following the master’s dictates, gave birth in the subsequent decades to new and valid apostles of Livornese conventional 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 completely personal imprint, also a master for the younger generations and, around the 1970s and 1990s, helped to continue a tradition that still constitutes today an indispensable pillar of Italian culture.
He had painting in his blood and, endowed with important graphic foundations, managed to immortalize on canvas with extreme simplicity every 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 disappeared beccolini, the areas of the pontine bridge.
Portraits and still lifes, studies of animals, seascapes, a polyhedral range of subjects, each always tackled with utmost passion and painterly strength.
His was a painting made of simplicity and modesty, rich in color, tactile, real; distant from the modern and from new expressive forms.
He loved painting from life, in daily contact with nature, with people, with his places, with the smells of the earth.
His brushstrokes were decisive, sure, full of color, and created on the canvas typical macchiaiolo-scented scenes.
Numerous masterpieces were created, especially between 1985 and 1994, in the fullness of his artistic maturity, when gallery owners, critics and collectors daily lauded him.
Significant exhibitions throughout 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 artistic quality attained.
Unfortunately, at the height of his artistic ascent, a serious illness took him away on June 11, 1995, burying forever those fantastic and inimitable “brushes,” extraordinary witnesses of a time and a true passion, leaving posterity the mark of his passage, his incomparable paintings.

Masaniello Luschi is currently considered the greatest exponent of traditional Labronican painting, a tradition that originates from what was one of the most revolutionary artistic movements of the past: the MACCHIA.
This movement, born in the second half of the 1800s, had as its author the Livorno-born painter Giovanni Fattori, who gathered around him a large group of young talents, who, despite not receiving 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, studied their works with love and self-denial until absorbing the most recondite secrets, so that today, he himself is considered a 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 groundwork, which allows him to capture on the canvas with immediacy the chosen subject, he devotes much of his time to painting from life, always in search of subjects that time has left unchanged. His own Tuscany, rich in evocative views providing endless new inspirations. An introverted, quiet man always surrounded by devoted students, Masaniello Luschi lives as if enclosed in a poetic world, avoiding those who would pursue “Modern at any cost,” not because he rejects new expressive forms a priori, 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 a meaning today. Even the notable successes of his personal exhibitions corroborate the validity of the beliefs rooted in him.
“Last Supper,” commissioned by the Curia Vescovile for the Livorno Cathedral, is the sure proof of his reached artistic maturity.
Something that will endure through time.

Maurizio Ansaldo