Eugenio Sartorio

Eugenio Sartorio was born in Somma Lombardo, in the province of Varese, in 1932. At just 17 he began to paint under the guidance of the masters Broggi, Zanella and Guenzani, attending their studio for about five years. His skills, however, were not limited to painting: he also studied decorative art, working with plaster and stucco, in order to work as an interior decorator. After school, as he himself recalled, he continued to paint under the spiritual guidance of Caravaggio, a constant source of inspiration, from whom he learnt a great deal about painting, lessons that remained with him even as he developed a style of his own. Indeed, however attentive he was to the teachings of the great masters, he always sought in them the lessons he needed to advance his own poetics, without slipping into copying, and he remained strongly individualistic. He spent six months in Sweden, where he also held his first solo exhibition; it met with great success and he managed to sell every work on display. On returning to Italy he pursued further training that also allowed him to work as a restorer, dealing with frescoes and antique canvases painted in oil. Over the years he arrived at a Surrealist style, more congenial to his personal instinct. His paintings, which also grow out of his observation of society and the political situation, thus become critical analyses of the contemporary world, which can be read by the attentive eye able to perceive small details and hidden meanings. In 2017 a posthumous exhibition was held, presented by his wife Maria Rosa Baretta, herself a painter, and the rooms showed the pairing of the works of husband and wife.