Romano Gazzera Biography
Romano Gazzero was born in 1906 in Ciriè. After obtaining a law degree at the behest of his father, the war minister, he cultivated his passion for art from the age of thirteen. In 1941, thanks to painting, he achieved national success through an exhibition held in Milan, in which he presented a series of fables, portraits and still lifes that recalled the Italian tradition, using a pictorial material full of romantic inspiration. This exhibition contrasted it with the official currents of the "twentieth century".
After World War II, Romano began painting monkeys in costume, an iconographic theme that was intended to criticize the idea of uniformity. In 1950 he participated in the first Antibiennale in Venice with Giorgio de Chirico, exhibiting oriental characters and battles. From that moment, he abandoned the dark palette in favor of an oily, transparent and luminous tempera, used to paint giant floral and vegetal elements with a clear design, clear colors and flat brushwork. This technique allowed him to become the leader of Neo-floral painting.
Romano spent the most fruitful years of his career taking refuge in the Canavese area and then on the French Riviera. In this period, he created numerous portraits of well-known figures between 1945 and the early 1980s, including Pope Paul VI, Chancellor Erhard, Virginia Mondadori, Cesare Zavattini, Paolo Stoppa, Sergio Pininfarina, Herbert Marcuse and above all Giorgio de Chirico, with whom he had a personal and artistic exchange.
