Oil On Canvas Depicting A Female Nude, By Armando Spadini (florence 1883 - Rome 1995) -

Oil on canvas - Female Nude - Armando Spadini (Florence 1883 - Rome 1995)
H: 97.00 P: 70.00
This painting has been auctioned twice (at the Brerarte auctions in 1988 and the Pace auctions in 2019). It originally bore a photo certificate. The photo certificate was issued by Gimmi Stefanini, an art expert appointed by the courts of Milan and Lugano, but unfortunately it has been lost.
Armando Spadini was born in Florence at Via della Chiesa 51, in the San Frediano district, in 1883.
He was known for his fiery and stubborn temperament.
In fact, after a four-year apprenticeship in Jafet Torelli's terracotta and artistic majolica factory, he enrolled in the Santa Croce professional school, in the Decoration department. He remained there for three years.
Disregarding the advice of his professors, They wanted to be an engraver, Spadini attended the Scuola Libera di Nudo, where he met Ardengo Soffici.
In 1901, he entered the competition organized by Alinari to illustrate two cantos of the Divine Comedy.
He won second place behind Alberto Zardo.
Thanks to Adolfo De Carolis, professor of Ornamentation at the Academy of Fine Arts, he came into contact with Papini, Prezzolini, and Cecchi. He thus became the illustrator of their magazine Leonardo.
A commitment that not even military service (1904-05) could curtail.
At the end of 1905, he designed the frontispiece of Il Crepuscolo dei Filosofi for Papini.
His participation in the 1907 competition for the National Artistic Pensioner did not win.
However, he did receive a cash prize, which he used for his marriage to Pasqualina Cervone, a student of Giovanni Fattori at the Academy of Fine Arts.
He entered the same competition three years later and His victory allowed him to settle in Rome.
Here, he used his wife as a model for a series of important portraits.
We recall The Girlfriend, 1906; Portrait of his Wife in a Wedding Dress, 1908; Sleeper, 1909; and finally the two canvases of Moses, where each female figure is Pasqualina, portrayed in different positions.
In 1911, thanks to the appointment of his friend Cecchi as editor of La Tribuna, Spadini was able to enter the Roman artistic world centered around the Caffè Aragno.
It was also thanks to Cecchi that he met Senator Olindo Malagodi.
He would become more than just a collector, securing him a monthly pension of three thousand lire in 1921 in exchange for a portion of his artistic production.
This would allow the Florentine artist to recover from many financial hardships, including his resignation from the professorship he had won in 1920 at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Florence, due to intolerance towards the rules of the institute.
In 1922, he exhibited three paintings (Portrait of a Girl, Country, and Oxen in the Stable) at the Primaverile Fiorentina, together with the Valori Plastici group (Carlo Carrà, De Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, etc.).
The following year, he participated in the Italian Exhibition of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires.
In 1924, he took part in the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition held in the Fifth Hall of the Palazzo dell'Esposizione.
During the same period, Spadini collaborated on the first issue of the magazine Galleria (a supplement to the "Corriere Italiano").
Soffici, who was its editor, chose a drawing by Spadini for the cover and published an interview with the painter on the theme of "beautiful women."
Armando Spadini died in Rome in 1925 from nephritis.
He is buried in the cemetery of Poggio a Caiano.