Giovanni Zangrando Biography
Giovanni Zangrando (Trieste, 1867 – 15 September 1941) was an Italian painter. His father was a carpenter and his mother a midwife. With a small stipend from the Italian Charity Association, starting in 1883 he studied for five years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, led by Pompeo Marino Molmenti, working during his studies as a draftsman for an architect. From 1888 he moved to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, with Nikolaos Gysis. Returning to Trieste, he worked as a portrait painter and, together with the painter Guido Grimani, opened a painting school. In the period 1902–1904 he visited Vienna, Prague, Paris, Brussels and London. In 1906 he married his model, Miete Schmidt. He exhibited in Venice, Florence, Arezzo, Vicenza, Turin, at the Bauer Gallery in Munich in an exhibition organized by Gino Parin and in several European cities. Among the paintings he painted also a portrait of Duchess Sophie Hohenber, wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Empire of Austria-Hungary. To paint the work, Zangrando traveled several times to Bohemia to Konopiště Castle. Being an Italian citizen, at the outbreak of the First World War he had to flee with his wife and son Tullio to Tuscany. From 1922, almost continuously until 1938 he exhibited his works in a permanent gallery in Trieste and lived in his villa in the Scorcola district of Trieste. He exhibited at almost all the trade unions and was present more than once at the Biennale. Trieste dedicated a posthumous exhibition to him at the Michelazzi Gallery in 1942. His works are preserved in Trieste at the Revoltella Museum and other municipal museums in Gorizia at the Provincial Museums, which dedicated a solo exhibition to him in 2015.
