Attilio Melo Biography
Venetian, but Milanese by adoption, he was born in Padua in 1917 into a Venetian family of artists. He moved to Milan, attended the Brera Academy and began his career as a painter at a very young age under the guidance of his father, an esteemed fresco painter and scholar of Tiepolo and Guardi. At just eighteen years old he began to dedicate himself professionally to the art of portraiture. During his long and brilliant career, among others, the following posed for him: politicians, Alcide De Gasperi, Giovanni Gronchi, the Presidents of the Court of Cassation. In the world of entertainment, music and theater, the names of Ingrid Bergman, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren, Vittorio Gassman, Valentina Cortese, Liliana Cosi, Renzo Arbore stand out among many. The portraits of Giorgio Strelher and Rudolf Nureyev are found at the Scala Theater Museum, the painting of the maestro Arturo Toscanini at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and that of Cardinal Martini in Jerusalem. His portraits of European noble and bourgeois families are countless. His work as a landscape painter led him to visit and paint numerous places and cities in Europe (Britain, Normandy, Spain, London, Paris) and in the United States (New York). He dedicated an important part of his work to the Italian landscape, in particular to Milan and Venice, his land of origin and pictorial inspiration. He was officially invited by Queen Elizabeth II to the annual exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of Portrait. Attilio Melo, a meritorious citizen of Milan, passed away on 6 August 2012.
