The Pescara city council gave Basilio a piece of land to build a chromolithographic laboratory and art studio.

Among the collaborators to these publications were some of the most important literary figures of the times, such as Gabriele d'Annunzio, Luigi Pirandello, Umberto Saba, Gennaro Finamore, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Sibilla Aleramo, Matilde Serao, Grazia Deledda, Ada Negri, Guido Gozzano and Giovanni Pascoli.

Michele Cascella left school early, owing to bad results, and began to work in his father's chromolithographic laboratory in Pescara.

Soon Basilio would send Michele and Tommaso alone, at dawn, to the shores of the Pescara River and the surrounding hills or to the Majella to study the scenery from close by and interpret the language of nature.

When Basilio felt his sons were ready to show their work, he shifted his role from shop master to organizer and promoter of their art.

Since 1910, he frequented the cultural circles of Milan, where he became friends with Clemente Rebora, Antonio Banfi, and the writer Sibilla Aleramo, who in her turn introduced him to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Margherita Sarfatti.

That same year, three watercolors were exhibited at the Venice Biennale for the first time and one of them, Mattutino, was bought by King Vittorio Emanuele III.

That same year he exhibited at the Toison d'Or Gallery in Brussels; in June, the Belgian Minister of The Sciences and Arts stated that it had acquired his painting Evening at Montecatini.

In 1933 the director of Corriere della Sera, Aldo Borelli, invited Cascella to collaborate with a series of sketches of important Italian places.

In 1934 Cascella went to Libya for a few months and shortly after he received a commission from Maria-José, Princess of Piedmont for a series of paintings dedicated to southern Italian landscapes.

At the cultural institution "La permanente" in Milan Cascella exhibited Roma, sport esultanza, inspired by the 1933 Primo Carnera – Paulino Uzcudun boxing match held in Rome's Piazza di Spagna in the presence of Benito Mussolini.

In 1942 Cascella had a room at the Biennale of Venice, and he exhibited works made at the request of the Ministers of the Navy and the Air Force.

From 1969 he spent much of his time in the countryside of Colle di Val d'Elsa (province of Siena) with his second wife, Isabel Lane Cascella.

His most frequent subjects were the landscapes of Abruzzi, locations all over Italy, Portofino, Paris, London, New York, California, Mexico, Hawaii, Tuscany; he also painted flowers, portraits and still life.

Cascella himself said that Henri Rousseau and Picasso had the greatest impact on the art world, while Van Gogh, Utrillo and Raoul Dufy most influenced his own work.