The Art Gallery
In April 2006 Laura Pasinetti, astrophysicist and scientist from Milan, donated to the Municipality of Montichiari over four hundred works, including pastel paintings and drawings, by the painter Antonio Pasinetti (1863-1940), who was born in Montichiari and worked in Milan for most of his life. In the same year, following the death of Professor Pasinetti, the project of creating a civic art gallery took shape to remember the memory of the artist. His granddaughter Laura wanted to set it up in the elegant neoclassical building that already housed the Giovanni Treccani Municipal Library, with which nowadays it shares space.
The Pasinetti Art Gallery develops its organization in two parts. The first presents a thematic selection dedicated to portrait, landscape and social painting, in the second one the relationship between sketch and finished work is highlighted for didactic purposes. Pasinetti immediately distinguished himself as a portraitist among the Milanese bourgeoisie, but just as intense although less known was his inclination towards landscapes, faced with pictorial “impressions” painted by daily life inspiration on small tablets, in Venice, the Alpine Valleys and the Lombard lakes. Following in the wake of contemporary artists, he also faced without hesitation a more committed production, one of social denunciation, dedicated in particular to the condition of women in the Lombard countryside. His is a painting with a strong and lively colorism, with a taste for generous brushwork alternated with the usage of the palette knife. During his career, the artist appeared sensitive and curious to the various artistic tendencies, from Scapigliatura to Symbolism, from Divisionism to the Italian twentieth century. The usage of photography also attracted Pasinetti’s interests as well as the most up-to-date artists of his time. The archive of the Art Gallery, along with letters and drawings, also contains a nucleus of shots taken by the painter in order to analyze them and use them as subjects in his numerous paintings.
The cataloguing data of each object can be viewed on the web portal Lombardia Beni Culturali at the link below:
OPENING TIME
Open at the same times as the Municipal Library
Last entry 30 minutes before closing
Throughout the Museum
ADDRESS
Via Trieste, 56
25018 Montichiari BS
Tel. +39 030 9650455
Free of charge
The artist
Antonio Pasinetti was born in Montichiari on the 2nd of August 1863. Since he was a child he showed a keen interest in drawing and, despite the humble conditions of his parents, he entered the world of art with a first apprenticeship with the painter Luigi Campini (1816-1890).
At the age of twelve he attended the Moretto School in Brescia, then in 1880 he enrolled at the Brera Academy. Having obtained his diploma in drawing, Pasinetti renounced completing his studies to move to Verona (1882-83) to the school of the painter Napoleone Nani.
From 1884 to 1886 he was a teacher at the Salò School of Drawing, and here he founded a School of Arts and Crafts. In 1887 he moved to Padua; in the meantime he stayed in Genoa, Verona, Trento, Mantua, Venice and on Lake Garda, always painting portraits and landscapes inspired by daily life.
From 1889 he lived permanently in Milan and came into contact with the main artists of the city (Mosè Bianchi, Cesare Tallone, Giovanni Segantini, Antonio Mancini, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo), he shared his studio in via Solferino with the sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy.
He became a friend of Giuseppe Zanardelli and frequented his villa in Maderno (1890-94). At this time the painter’s activity focused mainly on portraits for the wealthy Lombard bourgeoisie.
The meeting with Teresina Marchetto from Treviso, whom the painter married in 1901, dates back to 1896. The young woman died two years later of typhus, leaving Pasinetti in despair with two sons (Lauro and Leone).
Later he intensified his activity as a portraitist in his studio in via Carroccio in Milan, as well as the production of landscapes and compositions of an idyllic rural character.
In 1910 he married Tina Cini (1886-1938), the best man was the painter Arturo Tosi; Ernesto, the third son, was born in 1914.
Increasingly interested in naturalistic painting, Pasinetti drew inspiration from frequent trips and stayed outside Milan (in Caprera, in the Alps, in Val Camonica, on the Adriatic, in Sicily); but it is above all Venice, with its light and its monuments, to welcome him in the 1920-30s.
Around 1925, his friendship with Gian Emilio Malerba, Margherita Sarfatti and Arturo Tosi brought him closer to the Novecento Italiano, the artistic movement born in Milan in 1922. In 1933 he travelled to Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden.
Antonio Pasinetti passed away on May 13, 1940. His work was celebrated in Milan in 1942 with an exhibition sponsored by the fellow citizen Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri.
