Cesare Mainella (1885-1975) - Farra di Gradisca

Mainella Cesare
Born in Venice on 9/06/1885 - 21/01/1975
Technique: Tempura and pastel on cardboard
Title: Farra di Gradisca
Year: 1918
Dimensions: 58.5 cm x 42.5 cm

He was born into a family of artists: his father, Raffaele, was a watercolorist and architect, known in Venice and in France, while his mother Fanny was the daughter of Giulio Carlini, a famous 19th-century portraitist and, moreover, one of the first women to graduate from the Venice Academy. His godfather at baptism was the painter Giacomo Favretto. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. He was a classmate of Amedeo Modigliani at the Free Nude Academy. In 1906 he obtained the “Qualification for teaching drawing in technical and normal schools” together with eight other candidates, including Guido Marussig and Mario Crepet. The teaching staff during Mainella’s study years included prominent names such as Ettore Tito for figure drawing, Guglielmo Ciardi and Luigi Nono for landscape and seascape painting, Antonio Zotto for anatomy, and Pietro Paoletti for art history. He refined his study of figure and composition under the guidance of the portraitist Laurenti and in Positano enriched his painting qualities with the Neapolitan landscape painter Vincenzo Caprile. There he experimented with a particular tempera painting technique similar to oil that Mainella would recall under the name tempera Caprile. He finally completed his studies at the Grand Chaumier Academy in Paris, where he enrolled in 1911 in the painting and printmaking section, thus perfecting his knowledge of graphic techniques (etching and lithography). With Semeghini and Gino Rossi he was one of the first exhibitors at Cà Pesaro, and with Italico Brass he was among the leading organizers of the Artistic Circle in the Palazzo delle Prigioni in Venice. His adventurous spirit led him at a very young age to Argentina, where he obtained several prestigious commissions. At the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Italy to participate as a volunteer. After ten years of activity in Venice, he left again in 1928 for Peru, settling in Lima, where he exhibited his works successfully enough to be invited to decorate the crypt of the cathedral S.M. Ausiliatrice. Returning to Italy, in 1936 he once again decided to depart for Abyssinia. In Addis Ababa he executed large mural decorations in the viceroy Rodolfo Graziani’s palace, in addition to portraits and landscapes. The African period was interrupted by a short stop in Naples, where in 1940 he was asked to set up the Ethiopian Pavilion at the Exposition of Oltremare. He then remained blocked in Africa by the war events and, as a civilian prisoner, was transferred to Southern Rhodesia, where he stayed for another six years. There he produced numerous portraits, landscapes and studies which he later displayed in his last show in Venice at Bevilacqua La Masa in 1968.