Alfredo Romagnoli

Alberto Romagnoli was born in 1915 in Genzano di Roma. He would spend his entire life in the area, devoting himself to painting and art. He attended the Scuola d'Arte Sacra di Roma, then the Liceo Artistico, and completed his studies at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, the Scuola della Medaglia and the Facoltà di Architettura. He then began working as an art education teacher, but he also published several volumes on both art history and practical introductions to the artistic disciplines. In the 1970s he hosted a television programme in which he presented the historical and artistic aspects of various cities renowned for their painting schools, such as Venice, Bologna, Rome, Florence and so on. Throughout his artistic career he exhibited his works in group and solo exhibitions at national and international level. In 1999 he was awarded the honour of Cavaliere, Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, by President Scalfaro. He died in Rome on 21 March 2008.

Romagnoli's art is distinguished by its figuration and its use of colour. Over the course of his career he developed a distinctive chromatic range, warm, soft and sensitive, playing with light colours such as yellow, orange, ochre and red. He mixes his own colours using ancient recipes, avoiding black, which does not exist in nature. He chooses landscapes, figures and scenes of profound significance to communicate his vision of the world to the viewer. The application of colour is dense and impasto, and as Pietro Prini writes, 'the value of his paintings lies, in my view, in the transfiguration of a scene into a symbolic event through the fusion of drawing and colour, so that we are always drawn into a human story, of which we become at once spectators and actors.' To date, his works can be found in museums and galleries around the world.