Franco Marzilli (1934–2010) - Paesaggio romano

Franco Marzilli (Rome, December 14, 1934 – Poggio Mirteto, March 22, 2010)

Roman Landscape

Oil on canvas with textured medium

Signed bottom left: Marzilli

Second half of the 20th century

Painting dimensions: 50.0 x 40.0 cm
Frame dimensions: 78.5 x 68.5 cm

The painting is in excellent condition; the frame, very handsome, shows slight flaws and the color of the lower crossbar has faded (see photos)


Franco Marzilli (Rome, December 14, 1934 – Poggio Mirteto, March 22, 2010) was an Italian ceramist, sculptor and painter, figurative painter.

Franco Marzilli was born into a Roman family and spent his youth in Trastevere.

From a young age he began art studies, attending the "Scuola preparatoria alle arti ornamentali" in Rome. He began his artistic production and exhibition activity in the early sixties, always staying outside trends, groups, and fashions.

Between the late sixties and early seventies, after early exhibition experiences in Florence and Venice, Marzilli moved first to New York, then to London and finally to Paris, where he briefly stayed, painting and studying.

In the seventies he moved to the Sabina countryside, first in the medieval town of Casperia, then in a farmstead in Poggio Mirteto, where he continued his artistic production undisturbed.

He passed away in March 2010 at the age of 75.

Artistic activity
The artistic production of Franco Marzilli is extremely varied, ranging from Roman landscapes to those of the Lazio countryside, from still lifes to fascinating abstract subjects. Marzilli felt at ease among landscape, still life, and figure. His famous Roman landscapes demonstrate a solidity of architecture enhanced by the softness and extreme refinement of color. Castel Sant’Angelo, the bridges on the Tiber, the Colosseum evolve figuratively over time from a more uniform and detailed figure to an image defined in emotional terms by swift brushstrokes and rapid color changes. His dancers, of whom his first wife was an inspirer, burst onto the scene of Roman landscapes and accompanied two decades of the Maestro’s painting production. In still lifes, the vivid colors, always wonderfully juxtaposed, render lemons, grapes, apples, and flowers with the solidity of his ceramic sculptures, promising the fragrance and scent of reality. Marzilli was meticulous in the choice of materials, canvases, paper, and colors. Eternally dissatisfied in his quest for what he considered perfection and beauty, which he pursued from the beginning and which, in the eyes of his admirers, he embodied with rare mastery. Some catalogs note that Franco Marzilli would have absorbed the lessons of the Roman masters, managing to develop a refined and highly personal painting language that expresses itself in works of “naturalist-abstract” taste, typically Italian. In the last decade his brushes managed to paint the emotion of the Sabina countryside, with some brief allusions to Roman landscapes, as in the cases of paintings inspired by Venice and Tivoli, where he held one of his last solo exhibitions. Still in the town on the Tiber, the Maestro perhaps left the last testament to the composition of a great mosaic, on the theme of horses and horsemen, in the main square. Doves, Horses, and Horsemen are the main themes that his canvases exchanged with ceramic sculptures, rich in emotion. Over the years his work has been studied by art critics Carmine Benincasa, Toni Bonavita, Carlo Fabrizio Carli, Costanzo Costantini, Floriano De Santi, Carlo Giacomozzi, Sebastiano Grasso, Michelangelo Masciotta, Ruggero Martines, Carlo Melloni, Dario Micacchi, Terence Mullaly, Edith Schloss, Guglielmo Petroni, Marcello Venturoli, Max Wykes-Joice.