Pierangelo Tronconi Biography
Pierangelo Tronconi was born on 23 March 1921 in Rovescala (Oltrepò Pavese). At the age of twelve he received his first "revolutionary" lessons from Oswaldo Bot, a futurist painter from Piacenza. As a teenager he frequented the studio of Uberto Rognoni, a very sensitive post-impressionist Milanese painter, close to Bonnard. In reality you can say he was self-taught. In the immediate post-war period, between 1945 and 1946, his friend Alberto Cavallari, journalist and writer, who later became director of the "Corriere della Sera", introduced him to the artists who gravitated around the magazines "NUMERO" and "il 45" with whom he experienced the exciting moments of the cultural life then in full explosion in Milan. Tronconi will also be with Cavallari in Jamaica and at the Sciura Titta bar, then famous cenacles, where he meets Mario De Micheli, the sculptor Giovanni Paganin and the painter Bruno Pippa with whom he becomes friends. Meanwhile, Dino del Bo, who runs the magazine "UOMO" with Mario Apollonio and Gustavo Contadini, welcomes him among his collaborators with writings on artistic topics. With which he manages, at a very young age, not to disfigure himself among the giants of culture. In the early fifties he found work as a graphic designer and illustrator at CPV, then a renowned international advertising agency, and later (1957) at Arnoldo Mondatori Editore at a time when it was necessary to invent from scratch the modern women's magazine in Italy . Here Tronconi established himself as one of the protagonists of the success of the magazine "GRAZIA" which became a leader in the world of women's magazines. Only in 1962 with a "personal" exhibition at the "Galleria Vinciana" of Dagoberto Pavia, then the prince of Milanese gallery owners, did he receive his first recognition by exhibiting "his world" in that historical-cultural context aimed at giving "a new image of man" as it was said then from the title of a successful American book. From this moment Tronconi was invited to many of the major national and international exhibitions, indicated by some critics as one of the most stimulating artists of the new figuration. In fact, he was awarded some prizes of undoubted prestige such as third in the Scalarini National Prize for political-satirical drawing (Reggio Emilia, 1965), third prize in the XI Ramazzotti Prize (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 1966), first prize in the Internazionale Mitam (Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, 1968), first prize at the Vasto National Prize for Contemporary Painting (1970).
