His portraits of dogs conquered the public. Telemaco Signorini, who by Eugenio Cecconi was a friend and
Estimator, he observed: “There are people in Cecconi dogs”, adding that “when Cecconi paints a dog makes the moral portrait and makes it clear what he has already done and what he is about to do”. The important retrospective dedicated from 31 May to 9 November 2025 to the painter friend of the Macchiaioli and promoted to Forte Leopold I by the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi and by the company of Fine Arts, With the curatorship of Elisabetta Matteucci, however, it is not reserved exclusively for the faithful friend of man. Through a significant selection of paintings of different periods and genres divided into seven sections ordered according to a thematic criterion, it gives an account of the majestic views, the scenes of life and to 
Hunt in Maremma and the humble, proud everyday life of its inhabitants. Cecconi loved to depict as well as butteri and hunters especially the “women’s fairs” engaged in housework and in
Fields or dedicated to offering the gifts of the earth such as Fienaiole and, more generally, collectors, washerwomen, ferrymen, sellers of oranges and chickens. Thanks to its brush and the profound ability of psychological penetration, each face is ennobled by the typical features of an Etruscan beauty and animated by an austere dignity, thus acquiring the value of a social document of an era. An emphasis proximity of the artist is felt as well as in the execution of the portraits, in facing choral scenes depicting the activities related to the slow success of the seasons, such as haymaking or hunting practices. With antiretoric spirit, the painter fixes on the canvas tiring moments of peasant life and, thanks to his pictorial ability, even when they raise pitchfork full of huge fencing bundles, the peasants seem committed to performing a sort of bucolic choreography. As for the hunting scenes, they have little to do with those of the official English painting coeval; more
That a documentary need, in them the participation of those who, in those same situations have been among the protagonists are revealed, returning all the excitement and vitality of an atavistic shared social ritual. “In Cecconi – underlines the curator of the exhibition, Elisabetta Matteucci – an intimate link with nature and in particular with the genius loci, a generator spirit of the creative starting point is evident”. It is the atmospheric moment that feeds the first sections of the exhibition: “light of Etruria” whose ancient rhythms of peasant life, appreciated in particular in the areas neighboring the estate of Diego Martelli in Castiglioncello or Ceppato di Lari, where the artist dedicates himself to the landscape together with his friend Francesco Gioli, are carefully recorded and poured into lyrics
Compositions such as the return of the Fienaiole and the hunt for the coat. Following, “Fatal and fairy Maremma”, an unspoiled land of Primigenie forces, assiduously frequented by the artist in hunting. TO 
Try again of the union between painting and life, in the sections “chasing the prey” and “giving the way to the boots” the hunting emerges not only as a simple private and shared passion, but as the main source, does not choose of epic echo, of both figurative and literary poetics of Cecconi. Among the most appreciated pictorial leitmotiv by the refined client, it is variously declined, by the most harsh scenes that photograph the struggle for life and definitive defeat of the prey, to the sequences of heated dynamism in which the change of dogs is fled in the impetus of the research and pursuit, up to the placid choral compositions in which the human figure merges with the landscape study, social cohesion, illustrating the different moments of more extensive participation such as preparations, waiting, travel and return. The quality of Cecconi’s painting, as well as expressive independence, emerge further in the portrait, as appreciated in the section “The women’s fairs”, a real gallery of effigies dedicated to these extraordinary “Madonne delle Messi”. The skill in the management of formal peculiarities of this kind and in camouflage quality reaches the peak in the canine portrait; Thus in the core “The faithful friend” follow the snapshots of the beloved companions of life and hunting, caught in the tension of the tip or in the slow and patient awaited.
The exhibition intends to highlight aspects of a complex personality: painter, writer, poet and hunter but “above all a sensitive and operating soul” as his friend Guido Biagi remembered him.
Carlo Franza