Marcel Poggioli

(1882-1969)

Marcel Poggioli was born in Marseille where his father, originally from Carbuccia, had moved to be a sailor. The young Poggioli studied at the Beaux-Arts (university of fine arts) in Marseille and then completed his artistic education with a trip to Florence and Rome. Subsequently, he studied briefly at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris before moving back to his hometown, Marseille. He participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions in the city while his work is regularly shown in Parisian salons. Poggioli received an important commission based both in Marseille and Corsica, for which he produced decorative works. He also frequently illustrated in magazines and books.  He was elegant and refined, and an almost pointillist touch full of sensitivity in his paintings.

He was a landscape painter and used a pastel palette with great sensitivity. He became a member of the Salon des Artistes Français from 1921.

In 1921 he was appointed Professor at the School of Fine Arts in Marseille where he taught drawing and decorative art until 1948.  Poggioli never denied either his Corsican origins (he painted his island with passion) or his participation in the Proletarian Artists movement (Art et Travail, Maison de la Culture de Marseille in 1936). Indeed, Vice-President of the Union of Artists of Provence, he never ceased to take an active part in the professional life of visual artists and in the organization of various Salons.

Today, Marcel Poggioli is recognised as a Mediterranean painter, led by the southern light.
The Cantini Museum in Marseille preserves “the Maquis and the sea”