Carlo Fornara Italian, 1871-1968

Carlo Fornara (Prestinone, Italy 1871 - Prestinone, Italy 1968)

Born into humble beginnings in Prestinone, Val Vigezzo (Novara), Fornara was able to access the courses of a local art school thanks to his early abilities. From here, he worked with Cavalli, a local painter who had trained in France and ultimately influenced him to follow the path of painting.

In 1891 he took part in the First Triennale di Brera where he saw divisionist paintings for the first time. In 1894, Fornara went to Lyon and, in 1896, to Paris, where he visited the Louvre, saw verismo and realist paintings and became acquainted with neo-impressionism. The culmination of this experience manifested itself into a work entitled En plein air (unfortunately lost today) which was rejected at the third edition of the Brera Triennale in 1897. Despite this, it did receive the appreciation of Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo and Giovanni Segantini, two of the greatest members of the divisionist movement.

The exclusion from the Triennale gave Fornara an unexpected notoriety. Soon after, he made the acquaintance of Alberto Grubicy de Dragon, owner of the Grubicy Gallery and brother of the promoter of divisionism in Europe, the art dealer Vittore Grubicy de Dragon, himself a painter, and impressed them both. He also met Segantini, who he assisted in the Paris Exposition of 1900

Thanks to the patronage of the Grubicys, Fornara’s work was presented at all the national and international painting exhibitions of any importance in those years, but his adherence to the divisionist school gradually began to wane until it finally petered out altogether during the 1920s, when the artist began his own painting research and trialled his new, radical style at the time.

He died in 1968 in his hometown, Prestinone, where he had decided to return before his death.

 Photo UniCredit Group (Sebastiano Pellion di Persano)