Leonardo Cremonini Italian, 1925-2010

Leonardo Cremonini was the son of a railway worker who taught him the basics of painting. In 1935, his father had to relocate to Calabria for professional reasons. The Tyrrhenian coast where Cremonini would grow up would have a profound impact on his later work. Supported by a grant from the Collegio Venturoli he studied from 1932 to 1936 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, and then at the Brera Academy in Milan. In 1948 he had his first exhibition in Verona. In Bologna he met Giorgio Morandi. Through him he received another scholarship, which in 1951 enabled him to stay in Paris.

In 1960 an exhibition of his works at the Parisian 'Galerie du Dragon' brought him to the attention of the French public. During the 1960s he joined the ranks of the Figuration Narrative movement in French art. His art was well received and gained critical appreciation by a number of known French and Italian writers and literary figures such as Louis Althusser, Michel Butor, Italo Calvino, Régis Debray and Marc Le Bot. The latter gave him a book and an entire lecture schedule in his course about the history of contemporary art at the University of Paris I. Cemonini exhibited the Venice Biennale in 1964.

In 1974, he married fellow painter Roberta Crocioni. They had a son named Pietro. From 1983 to 1992 Cremonini served as director of the studio at the École des beaux-arts in Paris.