Giovanni Abondio Biography
ABONDIO GIOVANNI. Darfo, 17 January 1875 - 20 March 1934. Son of Andrea and Giacomina Minini, the reacquisition of this artist's merits occurred very late. His attendance at the Carrara Academy and the training he received first from Cesare Tallone and then from Ponziano Loverini are well known. If the judgment of the first master who called Abondio "a genius" foreshadowed a bright future, the reality was very different. Having returned to his native place in 1906, he combined his pictorial activity with his musical one, supported by an appreciable tenor voice which led him to be a singer at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The two expressions gave him a certain notoriety among his fellow countrymen, of whom he painted numerous portraits (around 180 and from those figures it is possible to identify his creative path in which, alongside significant results, there are works of manner, imposed both by taste of the client, and by the contingent difficulties that then led him to take comfort in a few too many glasses. Even the illness that led to his early death contributed significantly to distancing him from brushes and canvases, relegating him to a long period of For the most significant paintings, the youthful "Roman at the well" dating back to 1899 should be considered, the portrait of Maddalena Figaroli Alberzoni with evident expressive and chromatic liveliness, from 1917-18, which seems to exhaust the production of the most fruitful years to which the face of Caterina Colombo also seems to belong to the Art Nouveau style. There are also numerous virile portraits well represented by the features of Don Domenico Tarsia (1904), Martino Filippi (1906), Pietro Cenini and Battista Pendoli (1907), to whom the singular bust of Francesco Abondio, perhaps the artist's grandfather.
