Lerici Cinque Terre Painting

Elio Bargagni was born in Dicomano, Florence - Italy on 8 May 1930. He completed his artistic studies in the Tuscan capital under the guidance of maestro Campeggi. He dedicated himself to watercolor at a very young age, meeting the painters Scortecci, Ospitali and Ortino in the streets of Florence. Most of the paintings from that period were sent abroad, mainly to Austria and the United States. In 1962 he moved to the Veneto, where he was able to take picturesque views of Venice, the hills of Conegliano and Vittorio Veneto. In 1967 he moved to Lucca. In May 1977, after joining the Italian Watercolorists Association, he took part in the association's first major exhibition, held at the Palazzo del Turismo (ex Arengario) in Milan, together with the great artists: Raimondi, Zecca, Falzoni. They wrote about Elio Bargagni (Antonino De Bono, L'Acquerello in Italia, Milan): «He studied the lesson of the Macchiaioli in depth, giving life with his water painting to a personal interpretation structured in energetic juxtaposed patches that materialize with vigor the synthesis of form and color en plein air". Mario Marzocchi, attentive interpreter of the pictorial anxiety of the Tuscan masters: «The layout of a landscape or a still life is always rigorous, nothing is left to improvisation; in each of Bargagni's watercolors the synthesis is achieved through the sieve of meditation and the selecting work of emotions. Each painting is a story in itself, written and rewritten until the spirit finds serene rest in front of the page full of lights, until the search for language ends in style." Therefore, Elio Bargagni's style makes use of a particularly evocative substance, immersed in a warm and exuberant typically Tuscan atmosphere: the scrub exalts, opens up, seduces, penetrates the farmhouses, gives impetus to the biche, reinvigorates the suggestive corners among the old villages and the old houses enchanted in the brilliance of the tone. He has held personal and collective exhibitions: from Bagni di Lucca to Lucca city, from Martignana (Empoli) to Villa Olmo (Como), from Milan (Selene Gallery) to Monza (Modern Art Gallery), to Villa Maria di Grante (Como ) to Borgo a Mozzano (Lucca), from Fucecchio to Milan (L'Acquerello art center of the Minardi brothers), etc.