DOI issue:
No. 381 (December 1924)
DOI article:[Notes: one hundred and ninety-three illustrations]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21400#0373
"CHILDREN WRITING"
BY ARMANDO SPADINI
(Colin, of Comm. Aw. Fiano)
overpowering. Even The Finding of Moses
partakes of the same character, with the
artist's wife (we recognise her from the
admirable portrait—No. 43—almost Goy-
esque in its brilliant technique) about to
pick out of the reeds what was not im-
probably, perhaps, her own baby; and
when we escape from the nursery it is
only to find ourselves plunged into the
kitchen, with lobsters painted with an
evident enjoyment of their colour and a
full brush worthy of Jordaens, so that a
distinguished Italian critic remarked of
the Boy and Lobster here that it was more
lobster than boy. a a a a
Yet the man is a born painter with all
this, and we agree with Sig. Oppo when
he said " Spadini is a producer whose
creative fount is unceasing. For him the
function of painting is like eating or
drinking,—a physical necessity. We see
this from his immense facility in bringing
together colour and chiaroscuro even in
the first systematisation of his work, with a
prodigality of forces which a calculator, a
painter of the brain, would have jealously
kept in reserve for his final effect." Above
all in his children he is spontaneous and
delightful, as may be traced in my plates
of the boy with a cat, of the two children
at lessons, or the little servant maid,
Annetta, reading. His studies of the Villa
Borghese, as well as a landscape which is
in Comm. Fiano's collection, hint at other
possibilities in his art. After all, the
nursery, however truthfully and admirably
rendered, is scarcely inexhaustible; and
we may believe that Armando Spadini
has much else to tell us yet in his chosen
language of form and colour. S. B.
353
BY ARMANDO SPADINI
(Colin, of Comm. Aw. Fiano)
overpowering. Even The Finding of Moses
partakes of the same character, with the
artist's wife (we recognise her from the
admirable portrait—No. 43—almost Goy-
esque in its brilliant technique) about to
pick out of the reeds what was not im-
probably, perhaps, her own baby; and
when we escape from the nursery it is
only to find ourselves plunged into the
kitchen, with lobsters painted with an
evident enjoyment of their colour and a
full brush worthy of Jordaens, so that a
distinguished Italian critic remarked of
the Boy and Lobster here that it was more
lobster than boy. a a a a
Yet the man is a born painter with all
this, and we agree with Sig. Oppo when
he said " Spadini is a producer whose
creative fount is unceasing. For him the
function of painting is like eating or
drinking,—a physical necessity. We see
this from his immense facility in bringing
together colour and chiaroscuro even in
the first systematisation of his work, with a
prodigality of forces which a calculator, a
painter of the brain, would have jealously
kept in reserve for his final effect." Above
all in his children he is spontaneous and
delightful, as may be traced in my plates
of the boy with a cat, of the two children
at lessons, or the little servant maid,
Annetta, reading. His studies of the Villa
Borghese, as well as a landscape which is
in Comm. Fiano's collection, hint at other
possibilities in his art. After all, the
nursery, however truthfully and admirably
rendered, is scarcely inexhaustible; and
we may believe that Armando Spadini
has much else to tell us yet in his chosen
language of form and colour. S. B.
353