Biography - updated [24/08/11 ]
(ill.
1).
Pio Santini was born on April 17th,
1908 close to Rome, in Tivoli, the "Tibur Superbum" of the ancient
Romans, a sublime little town with lots of cascades and cascatellas
hanging on to the foot hills of Apennin and doted with artistic
treasures from the Antiquity and Renaissance such as the Adriana Villa
or the Villa d’Este. Everybody was filled with joy in the family
house which overhangs the old "cittadella", at number 26 via Sibilla.(ill. 1).
(ill. 2)
"E nato l’erede !" his uncle
Bernardino wrote in his diary, expressing the happiness that was
overwhelming the whole family, with the birth of the heir to the name
so expected after his eldest sisters Elvira and Gilda (ill. 2)!
He also noted that on this same April 17th, the she-cat of the house
gave birth to a litter, a coincidence which was to delight Pio Santini,
seeing there the augur of his passion for the cats.
(ill. 3)
Pio shared his childhood and his youth between Tivoli and the seaside family villa of the in Grottammare, by the Adriatic Sea (ill.3).
(ill. 4)
He showed a precocious and pronounced
artistic taste and gifts, to begin with drawing and painting. From his
childhood drawings, as early as 5 or 6 years old, he showed a gift and
a technique above the average. Once, he discovered his
grand-father’s colours and brushes in a nook of the house (ill. 4)
and he began his own training, then he benefited from his
friend’s advice, the Tiburtine painter Edoardo Tani, thanks to
whom Pio quickly acquired sound basic techniques and a good control of
his art. The first sculpture he made at the age of 16 was a head of
Dante Alighieri. Count Colonna, a friend of the family’s,
astounded by the quality of his work, ordered his own bust from the
young Pio.
(ill. 5)
(ill.
6)
The result was surprisingly powerful (ill. 5).
Very impressed, the Count made him meet the great sculptor Carlo
Fontana (1865-1956) -author of one of the quadrigae looking down the
Victor-Emmanuel II monument in Rome- Fontana advised him to practise
draughtsmanship to the extreme, whatever way he would choose
later. Theatre appeared very early too, among Pio Santini’s
passions, and remained so for a very long time. Besides, he transmitted
this passion to his sons, and two of them became professional actors.
Nevertheless, his family imposed higher education on him, and he
graduated as an electrotechnician engineer. Once he had answered his
family’s expectations and done his military service as a cavalry
officier, Pio Santini could attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome,
the place where he would teach a few years later (ill. 6). Pio Santini lived in Tivoli until 1934.
(ill. 7)
(ill.
8)
In 1933 in Grottammare, by the Adriatic Sea (ill. 7),
he met Yolande Croci, daughter of the wellknown Milanese journalist
Pierre Croci who, after having managed the “Corriere della
Sera” in Milan for a time, settled in Paris with his family. Pio
married Yolande in 1934 in Saint-Mammès, a nice village near
Paris long frequented by the impressionist painter, and where the Croci
family owned a beautiful property on the bank the Seine (ill. 8).
(ill. 9)
But before, as early as 1933, Pio
Santini moved to Paris, in Montparnasse, the artists area, in the
picturesque Daguerre street, there he settled in his first Parisian
studio (ill. 9). Because of that, he can be
considered as belonging to the Academy of Paris, a significant artistic
movement of the first half of the 20th century in which, besides Amedeo
Modigliani, other Italian artists such as Massimo Campigli, Filippo de
Pisis, Gino Severini, Gino Gregori or Luigi Corbellini also took part.
For a while, the young couple lives either in Paris or in Tivoli.
(ill. 10)
While attending the classes of the
Estienne School for a further training in plastic art, Pio Santini
started to attract attention in various Parisian Salons (particularly
the Winter Salon (ill. 10), the
Independents’ Salon and the French Artists’one) and to find
a place in the Parisian universe of painting, as is shown in the press
of the time. A first child, Pierre, was born in 1938 in Paris.
Unfortunately the war broke out in 1939 and stopped a very promising
career for a long time. However, the family settled in Paris, where
finally Pio Santini lived and practised his art until the end of his
life.
(ill.11)
(ill. 11a)
The conflict between his native and
his adopted country upset him a lot. It was certainly during this
period that the rooted idea of a united and reconciled Europe was born
in his mind, an idea now passed down to his three sons. In a way, he
played a part in the resuming cultural exchanges between France and
Italy, by founding, the association "the Romans in Paris" after the
war, and especially by creating and animating the Villa d’Este
Prize for about ten years, rewarding each year a French artist or
writer by offering him or her a one month stay at the Villa, in Tivoli.
Later, the “Montparnasse Prize” would reward Italian
artists in Paris in the same way. A second son, Claude, was born in
1941, then a third, Mario, in 1945. Times were hard and Pio,
definitively settled in his large studio of the Malakoff Villa, near
theTrocadéro (ill.11), could not run his painter career the way he wanted.
(ill. 12)
(ill.
13)
(ill. 12 - 13)
While devoting himself to painting, he worked as an art illustrator for
edition and press, and left us a rich but unrecognized work from this
period. In the early of the 1960’s, Pio Santini decided,
imperiousely and bravely, to live on his painting. A member of the
Society of the Independent Artists since 1934, he then took an active
part in many group exhibitions in France and abroad.
(ill.
14)
(ill. 14) He
regularly exhibited in Parisian salons most of which he was a member:
the Independents’ Salon, the Autumn and Winter Salons, the
National Salon of the Fine Arts, the Comparison Salon.
(ill. 15)
(ill. 15) As an
assiduous participant in the prestigious Salon of the French Artists,
he was often rewarded there: Great Price of the Salon in 1970, then in
1974 (ill. 15), gold Medal in 1971, Prizewinner of the Ernest
Marché Prize in 1974 (ill. 16),
(ill.
16)
of the Finez-Planard Prize (Taylor
Foundation) in 1981 J M. Avy Prize (Taylor Foundation) in 1983, and
Roger Deverin Prize in 1984. II was also selected for the
Paul-Louis Weiller Portrait Prize, then in 1975 in a selection of the
French Artists’ Salon for exhibitions in the Soviet Union
(Pouchkine museum in Moscow, the Hermitage Museum in
Saint-Petersburg). In Italy, he regularly took part in the
Quadrennial of Rome and Biennial exhibition in Milan (of which he was
also a member. Besides, he organized many personal exhibitions, among
them:
Gallery Barbizon (Paris, 1955), Gallery La Fontanella (Rome, 1959),
Villa d'Este (Tivoli, 1959), Gallery Boissière (Paris, 1960),
Gallery d'Atri (Paris, 1962), Gallery La Verritrè (Milan, 1963),
Gregory Art Gallery (New York, 1966), Gallery Ror Volmar (Paris, 1966),
Gallery Okada, (Tokyo, 1975) and Gallery Bernheim-Jeune (Paris, 1980).
In 1979, in the twilight of his life, for the 7th Tiburtine Week of Art
and Culture, Pio Santini was elected "Tiburtino dell' anno" and thus
became freeman of his city, sharing this honour with other
personalities from Tivoli like Professor Emilio Segrè, Nobel
Prize of Physics. He was also elected member of the Academy of the Five
hundreds of Rome and several other of Italian art academies. Pio
Santini lived his last years in his house of Garches, near Paris. He
worked there until the last moment and died of illness at the age of 78
some time after his wife, Yolande.