Biagio Mercadante

BIAGIO MERCADANTE
Torraca, 1892 - 1971

For the beauty of its territory, Torraca welcomed distinguished writers and painters, who loved and chosed the site as a resource of mind and heart. Just think of an artist, Mercadante. Almost the entire pictorial work of Mercadante turns around Torraca.

The artist was born in Torraca in 1892. He participates in various national exhibitions since 1920. During this period he establishes a membership with Striccoli, Ciardo, Uva, Lalli, Bresciani, Puchetti and others. With them he creates the artistic village “Latin Quarter” in the area of “Porta Capuana” and organizes various exhibitions. Apart from Italy, he also exhibites in Santiago, Chile, London, Stockholm, Tokyo, Barcelona, Hannover, etc.. Mercadante has been known with a painting that only occasionally adapts to the fashion of the twentieth century, but in his essential values is still heir to the nineteenth century Neapolitan tradition. He recovers this tradition with awareness, but also with a deliberate purpose of renewal in the use of light and clear brush; he researches a range of colours and a set of values and tones until virtuosity: details are white and  black made in their intensity and modulation. His natural tendency is expressed in subjects where he shows his lyricism. When his ties with the fascist organisations grow, he can not escape the temptation of rhetorical topics of the regime’s ideology , for the mirage of public commissions and prizes. In 1964 he was appointed member of Accademia Tiberina in Roma. By the publishing in 1987 of the second monograph (the first one is in 1972 edited by Alfredo Schettini) edited by P.Burali from Arezzo, a retrospective was held in Milano, at the Centro d’Arte, Cultura e Costume.