Lionello balestrieri biography
- (Italian, 1874–1958) Born on September 12, 1872 in Cetona, Italy, Balestrieri studied first at the Institute of Fine Arts in Rome before attending the Institute of Fine Arts of Naples under Filippo Palizzi, and later took private lessons from Domenico Morelli.
- Lionello Balestrieri (12 September 1872–24 October 1958) was an Italian painter and engraver, active in various styles mainly in Paris and Naples.
- Lionello Balestrieri was an Italian painter and engraver, active in various styles mainly in Paris and Naples.
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Lionello Balestrieri
Lionello Arduino Balestrieri was born in Cetona (SI) on 12 September 1872, into a family with a very modest economic situation, to Torello Balestrieri, a mason from Cetona, and Agnese Bassi, from Santa Fiora.
In 1886 the Balestrieri family moved to Rome and Lionello, now fourteen, enrolled at the Institute of Fine Arts: his passion for art was already strong enough to push him towards this choice, despite his father’s differing opinion. The following year the family moved to Naples, and Lionello enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1891 he worked for a short period in Palermo, for the preparation of the National Exposition, but by 1892 he had already gone back to the Academy, where Domenico Morelli had returned to teaching: the master’s influence was for a long time fundamental in forming and developing his artistic personality. In Naples he also met Filippo Palizzi and Gioacchino Toma.
Perhaps to follow a new love, more likely to try his luck as an artist in the great European capital, like many other artists of his time, in 1894 Lionello
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Lionello BALESTRIERI
Born in Cetona, in central Italy, to a family of humble means, Lionello Balestrieri (1872-1958) doesn’t seem to have been held back by his family. At a young age, Lionello was allowed to move to Rome first, then Naples, in order to enroll in fine art classes. While he needed to support himself doing commercial work, the young artist quickly developed, and left Italy for Paris by age 20. Under the tutelage of Osvaldo Tofani, an Italian compatriot, Balestrieri quickly improved as a painter and learned printmaking. By 1899 he had painted his masterpiece, titled Beethoven (Kreutzer Sonata), which won him a prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and in Venice a year later. His career was launched. And Balestrieri’s predilection for depicting musicians became a constant. His compositions tend to favor renditions of pathos, with emotions easily read on his subjects’ faces, or translated by strong compositional structure. As such he has sometimes been called a Romantic. At the onset of World War I, Balestrieri returned to Naples where his artistic life had begu
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LIONELLO BALESTRIERI
Italian, 1874–1952
Balestrieri began his studies in Sienna and then entered the studio of Domenico Morelli in Naples where he became one of that artist’s favorite students. He exhibited at the Paris Salon beginning in 1887 and won a medal in 1900 for his most celebrated picture, a portrait of Beethoven that was exhibited in various locations in Europe and the United States and which now hangs in the Revoltella Museum in Ravenna.
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