FRANCO MAZZACCHERINI (1940 - 1999) Member of the Gruppo Labronico Born on 28th May 1940, Franco Mazzaccherini began his artistic career at the age of twenty, stimulated by his undoubted and natural sensitivity towards pictorial art. Self-taught, he grew up artistically with other painter friends, who loved to try their hand from life in the Tuscan countryside. In the interview given in April 1998 for the magazine ‘Pittura livornese’ he loved to emphasise that family union useful to his artistic rise. He moved to Fauglia, far from the hustle and bustle of the city, and he found the necessary peace and quiet, and that contact with nature, useful for the creation of many important paintings. In 1973 he held his first solo exhibition at Bottega d’Arte in Livorno, and here he received great success from critics and the public. A lover of everything around him, he devoted much of his painting to churches, bell towers, vaults, alleys of Tuscan towns, but also suggestive views of his old Livorno. By painting from real life, he was able to capture the right moments of the day, transferring lights and colours to the canvas in a very personal way. The ‘promenades’ on the seafront of Livorno are suggestive, rich in colourful figures, the historical ‘Baracchina Rossa’, the coastal storms in ‘San Jacopo’ or the historical boats of the ‘Fossi Medicei’, no longer existing.