Project Description
Raffaello Celommi (Florence 1881 – 1976), The fishing
Oil on panel cm 22 x 40 signed (R. Celommi) lower left.
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The themes of Raphael’s art are linked to the fundamental elements of his existence, the sea, the hills, the fishermen, who become living subjects of his artistic world, as he had been for his father Pasquale. When the latter died, in 1928, the fear of the inevitable comparison that would have arisen with the much-appreciated father became more pressing in Raphael.
According to a legendary episode narrated by some scholars of the painter, after a period of inactivity he returned to painting and, resting a virgin canvas on the easel that had always been used by his father, he started the second phase of his artistic life, proving himself a great prosecutor of artistic dynasty of the Celommi.
The art of Raphael therefore suffers from the influence exerted on him by his predecessor. The critic Dino Satolli wrote about it: “He kept the light and the motives dear to his father in his canvases, also acquiring something soft, perhaps to the detriment of an autonomy or, if you want, of a dispute that would have appeared sterile then. controversy. His painting appeared straightforward, without artifice of chromatic violence, harsh tones and crudities of sign “.
His paintings never stray from the motifs linked to the traditions of the people of Abruzzo, to the world of peasants and fishermen; on the other hand, however, Raphael progressively refined his technique through which he was able to recreate suggestive sets, such as the one created in the painting presented here, an affectionate homage to the sea workers of his land.
The return from fishing, in our canvas, becomes a pretext to immortalize, not without a refined representation of the motion of affects, a pretty family picture, inserted in a poetic sunset on the beach, a gift of nature after a hard day’s work.
Three important paintings by Raffaello Celommi are kept in the Civic Museum of Teramo, other works can be found in the Civic Art Collection of Roseto and in a gallery in Chicago.
