Emilio Sommariva (8 December 1883 – 12 September 1956) was an Italian painter and photographer.

Biography

Sommariva was born in Lodi, Italy. His father, Luigi, was an amateur painter and photographer himself. The Sommariva family moved to Milan while Emilio was an infant. In 1897, age 14, he began to attend Angelo Comolli’s School of Decoration classes at the

Brera Academy The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan, Italy. It shares its history, and its main building, with the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan's main public mu ...

. In 1899, due to financial difficulties, he had to drop out of school. He was then employed as a photographer by the Compagnia Continentale Brunt & C. Foundry and subsequently by the Ganzini photographic studio. A few months later, in 1902 he opened his own studio in Viale Monforte (now Viale Pavia) with a wide terrace intended for portraiture photography. In the following years he relocated his studio to Via Paolo and Via Montenapoleone. After a few difficult years, Sommariva eventually established himself as a portraitist as well as an able documentator of other artists's work, including

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and Futurists like

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and

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. Text was copied from this source, which is available under
Attribution 3.0 Italia (CC BY 3.0 IT)
license. Sommariva also specialized in industrial, architectural and landscape photographs. His work was acknowledged at the 1911 Esposizione Internazionale di Fotografia Artistica e Scientifica di Roma (where he won a gold medal) and the Turin Esposizione e Concorso Internazionale di Fotografia (where he received a diploma of honour). In 1922 he won the first prize at the International Exhibition of Professional Artistic Photography at the

Royal Photographic Society The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, commonly known as the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), is the world's oldest photographic society having been in continuous existence since 1853. It was founded in London, England, in 1853 as th ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. In the 1920s he also began to exhibit as a painter: he participated in the Brera Biennale in 1925, in the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

in 1926 and in the exhibitions held at the Societá della Permanente in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

. During this period he painted numerous landscapes inspired by the foothills of the Alps in Lombardy and Piedmont where he spent many summers in a house in

Lanzo d'Intelvi Lanzo d'Intelvi () is a village in Italy and a former (municipality) in the Province of Como in the Italy, Italian region Lombardy, located about north of Milan and about north of Como, on the border with Switzerland. It has been frazione of Al ...

. In 1938, after refusing to become a Fascist Party carrying-card member, he had his photographer license withdrawn. In 1943, during an air raid over Milan, Sommariva's house and study were bombed. dEspite suffering significant damage, the majority of his original prints and plates were left intact. In 1950 Sommariva's work was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at Galleria Ranzini in Milan. Sommariva's archives, documents and photographs were purchased from his heirs in 1979 and are now part of the Braidense Library at

Palazzo Brera Palazzo Brera or Palazzo di Brera is a monumental palace in Milan, in Lombardy in northern Italy. It was a Jesuit college for two hundred years. It now houses several cultural institutions including the Accademia di Brera, the art academy of t ...

. The collection includes 2,814 prints and about 50,000 negatives mostly on glass, as well as ten manuscripts, inventory papers, address books and other documents.

References

Sources

* Laura Casone
Emilio Sommariva
online catalogu
Artgate
by

Fondazione Cariplo Fondazione Cariplo is a charitable foundation in Milan, Italy. It was created in December 1991 when the Amato law, Law no. 218 of 30 July 1990, came into force. Under this law, saving banks were required to separate into a not-for-profit foun ...

, 2010, CC BY-SA (source for the first revision of this article).

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sommariva, Emilio 19th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Italian photographers Brera Academy alumni 20th-century Italian painters Painters from Milan Italian landscape painters 1883 births 1956 deaths 19th-century Italian male artists 20th-century Italian male artists