Villarotta di Luzzara (RE), 1912 - Bologna, 2006
Mandelli attended the art school and Academy of Art in Bologna, following Virgilio Guidi's painting classes and Giorgio Morandi's engraving course. He meets the young art critic Francesco Arcangeli in 1939, with whom he collaborates on the magazine "Architrave", where he was in charge of the section on figurative arts, and begins to exibit in the Roman Quadriennali.
From 1940-42 and then in the period following the war he becomes Virgilio Guidi's assistant at the Bologna Academy of Art. He also goes to Paris after the war where he comes into contact with impressionist and post-cubist painting. In those years he paints landscapes and figures which are a prelude to the poetics of Informalism.
Mandelli, together with Morlotti and Moreni, in among the protagonist of the last/ultimate Naturalism, promoted by Franco Arcengeli in 1954. He becomes professor of art at the Academy of Art in Bologna from 1961 to 1978 and due to his activity in this field he is awarded two medals, one silver, one gold, by the President of the Italian Republic. The artist continues painting assiduously all his life making a return to figures in the nineties.
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