Pompilio Mandelli Biography
Pompilio Mandelli (Luzzara, 14 June 1912 – Bologna, 28 May 2006) was an Italian painter belonging to the "informal" movement. He was also a teacher and president of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Pompilio Mandelli moved to Bologna in 1928 to study, where he would have Giorgio Morandi and Virgilio Guidi as teachers. He began his exhibition activity within the inter-provincial fascist exhibitions. His debut took place in 1935, in a Littoriali exhibition in Venice, where he won first prize and the right to exhibit in the following year's Biennale (an exhibition in which he participated nine times). In 1940 he began his partnership with Francesco Arcangeli, which he would join for the rest of his life. At the end of the Second World War, together with Carlo Corsi, Borgonzoni and Minguzzi he founded the "Cronache" gallery. In 1945 Arcangeli defined his painting as "Last naturalism". In 1948 and 1950 he participated in the Venice Biennale with works still somehow linked to the figurative. He returned there in 1952 for the third time, exhibiting nine "informal" works, in a personal room, with the presentation of Francesco Arcangeli, who, during the spring of the same year, had the opportunity to underline the painter's definitive detachment from formal currents of his contemporaries. The last work still vaguely linked to the field of the figure is Pittrice from 1952, part of the Agostini collection. In 1953 and 1958 he won a Purchase Prize at the first and sixth editions of the Spoleto Prize. He took part again in the XXXVI Venice Art Biennale in 1972.
