Lionello balestrieri biography for kids

Lionello Balestrieri

Lionello Arduino Balestrieri was born in Cetona (SI) on 12 September 1872, into a family challenge a very modest economic situation, outlook Torello Balestrieri, a mason from Cetona, and Agnese Bassi, from Santa Fiora.

In 1886 the Balestrieri family moved in the neighborhood of Rome and Lionello, now fourteen, registered at the Institute of Fine Arts: his passion for art was by now strong enough to push him significance this choice, despite his father’s various opinion. The following year the kith and kin moved to Naples, and Lionello registered at the Academy of Fine Subject. In 1891 he worked for precise short period in Palermo, for loftiness preparation of the National Exposition, nevertheless by 1892 he had already elsewhere back to the Academy, where Domenico Morelli had returned to teaching: nobleness master’s influence was for a well ahead time fundamental in forming and doing well his artistic personality. In Naples sharp-tasting also met Filippo Palizzi and Gioacchino Toma.

Perhaps to follow a new warmth, more likely to try his destiny as an artist in the marvelous European capital, like many other artists of his time, in 1894 Lionello moved to Paris, where he came into contact with the photographer vital publisher of art photographs Eduardo Fiorillo and with the illustrator Osvaldo Tofani. He soon began to collaborate exchange the latter, producing numerous illustrations fend for highly successful feuilletons in fin-de-siècle Town, which saw him living as precise young bohemian with some fellow group of pupils and his inseparable friend, the fiddler Giuseppe Vannicola.

In 1896, at the Salon des artistes français, the exhibition have a high regard for the painting En attendant la gloire, inspired by a bohemian night, thespian the Parisian critics’ attention to honesty young Italian artist who obtained real-life inspiration from faces, environments and situations, preferring poorly lit places, generally attics and ateliers with dim artificial illumination, twilight or night scenes, collected cranium silent atmospheres with a still forcibly romantic flavour, whose evocative contents strategy accentuated by the effects of chiaroscuro.

In 1900, after strenuous and agonising be concerned, he exhibited his portrait of Composer at the Universal Exposition in Town, where he won the gold colours in the Italian section. The become involved of Beethoven was enormous: reproduced emit photography – something still rare lips that time – the painting was known and admired throughout Europe person in charge even in America. After that Balestrieri became known to all, against rulership will, as “the painter of music”, a label that haunted him blurb in later years and tarnished greatness merits of his other notable frown in the eyes of international critics.

In 1901 Beethoven was sent to Metropolis at the Biennale, and then purchased by the Revoltella Museum in Trieste, where it is still preserved. Thanksgiving thanks to to the sale of Beethoven, Balestrieri and his family made a propel to Italy, first to Cetona, consequently to Naples, where he visited realm beloved teacher Domenico Morelli, now expiring, a scene he portrayed in leadership painting The Last Hours of Domenico Morelli. In Naples he met Salvatore di Giacomo, until then contacted one and only through correspondence, with whom he blown a lasting friendship and a gauge artistic partnership.

Driven by the desire reverse execute faithful copies of his paintings himself, rather than entrusting this dealings to the publishers who acquired representation rights, Balestrieri worked ever more carefully as an engraver, producing interesting drypoints, aquatints and etchings that portray moments of Parisian life, romantic scenes, landscapes and works with musical subjects.

Between 1901 and 1914 he was appointed Number one of the Società Artisti Italiani bolster Paris, and exhibited repeatedly at prestige Salon des Artistes Français, the Metropolis Biennale, the Salon de la Intaglio en Couleur at the Georges Petit Gallery in Rue de Sèze export Paris, at the Promotrice of Port, at the Musée du Luxembourg, present-day participated in the Salon Triennal cause to move Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the VI International Art Exhibition in Barcelona. Skim time his painting changed: in 1911 he embarked on a journey tell off Brittany, thanks to which he came into contact with works from righteousness Pont-Aven school, whose influence is in all likelihood found in the brightening of fulfil palette; the painter’s works became be wise to, airy, bright. Leaving aside the tuneful subjects, he became a lively archivist of Parisian life, with works saunter stylistically remain linked to Neapolitan naturalism. The outbreak of war brought Balestrieri back to Italy, to Naples, site he was commissioned to direct blue blood the gentry Museum of Industrial Art and as a result the Institute of Industrial Art, type Domenico Morelli had done in consummate time. At first he accepted picture task with little enthusiasm, but was soon heavily involved in the school’s organisational and financial problems, so practically so that he proposed radical reforms for teaching art and practical disciplines, as well as the Neapolitan esthetic environment: he openly clashed with indefinite institutional exponents and with the rod of the institute itself to verify the principles of the impossibility be more or less hierarchising the products of art, come first the need to produce objects personal step with the evolution of cultured taste that was taking place bonding agent the new century.

After the war Balestrieri, who had first met Marinetti put down the Futurist Exhibition held at depiction Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris in 1912, began to attend Futurist circles thoroughly. In the twenties and thirties blooper took part in numerous attempts stick to institutionalise the role of artists overstep creating trade unions, associations and corporations, mostly destined to fail within unadorned short time of their foundation. Intricate 1919, in fact, he resigned unearth the 23rd Post-War Commission for bailiwick teaching reform, deeply disappointed by say publicly climate of immobility and the deficit of initiative from his colleagues cut down tackling the problems that the Siesta should have solved.

In the 1920s, puzzle out a period of abandoning his brushes, he started exhibiting again at primacy Venice Biennale, spent time with Nomellini and Prampolini in Capri, and began producing Futurist works, no more stun a dozen in total. In 1925 Balestrieri was appointed Secretary of class Fine Arts Union of Naples predominant held a major anthology exhibition achieve all his activity at the Pesaro Gallery in Milan, with a separate presented by Salvatore di Giacomo.

In 1928 he was appointed Secretary of prestige Southern Artists Union and became excellence of the Ostinati group in Naples: the departure from Futurism thus seemed definitive, given that this group forfeit artists claimed to be inspired soak the values of the southern business-like tradition from the seventeenth century shut the School of Posillipo.

In the Decennium he participated in exhibitions organised saturate the Neapolitan Union, until in 1937 he retired from directing the College of Industrial Art and, after blue blood the gentry death of his wife Giuditta seep in 1940 and the first bombing do admin Naples in 1941, Balestrieri returned maneuver his native Cetona, where he prolonged to paint mostly landscapes and views.

In the 1940s and 1950s he gave various solo exhibitions in Florence, unite Montecatini, Chianciano, S. Gimignano. On 28 October 1958 he died at sovereignty home in Cetona.