Cesare Mainella Biography
Cesare Mainella (Venice, 9 June 1885 – Venice, 1975) was an Italian painter. He was born into a family of artists: his father, Raffaele, was a watercolorist and architect, known in Venice and France, while his mother Fanny was the daughter of Giulio Carlini, a famous nineteenth-century portraitist, and one of the first women to graduate from Academy of Venice. Godfather at baptism was the painter Giacomo Favretto. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. He is a fellow student of Amedeo Modigliani at the Free Academy of Nude. In 1906 he obtained the "Abilitation to teach drawing in technical and normal schools" together with eight other candidates including Guido Marussig and Mario Crepet. The teaching staff during Mainella's years of study was made up of prominent names such as Ettore Tito for figure drawing, Guglielmo Ciardi and Luigi Nono for country and sea painting, Antonio Zotto for anatomy and Pietro Paoletti for history of art. He perfected his study of the figure and composition under the guidance of the portraitist Laurenti and in Positano he enriched his pictorial qualities with the Neapolitan landscape painter Vincenzo Caprile. There he experimented with a particular tempera painting technique similar to oil which Mainella would remember with the name of Caprile tempera. He finally completed his studies at the Grand Chaumier Academy in Paris where he enrolled in the painting and engraving section in 1911, thus perfecting his knowledge of graphic techniques (etching and lithography). With Semeghini and Gino Rossi he is one of the first exhibitors at Cà Pesaro and with Italico Brass he is among the major animators of the Artistic Circle in the Palazzo delle Prigioni in Venice. His adventurous spirit took him to Argentina at a very young age where he obtained several prestigious positions. 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 for Peru in 1928, settling in Lima, where he exhibited his works so successfully that he was called to decorate the crypt of the SM Ausiliatrice cathedral. Having returned to Italy, in 1936 he again decided to leave for Abyssinia. In Addis Ababa he executed large wall decorations in the palace of the viceroy Rodolfo Graziani as well as portraits and landscapes. The African period was interrupted by a brief interlude in Naples, where he was called to set up the Ethiopian pavilion at the Overseas Exhibition in 1940. He was then blocked in Africa by the war and, as a civilian prisoner, was transferred to Southern Rhodesia, where he remained for another six years. There he executed numerous portraits, landscapes and studies which he then exhibited in his last exhibition in Venice at the Bevilacqua La Masa in 1968. He spent his last years at the Lido and, from 1960, in Treporti.
