ANTONIO DONGHI - Italian Painter

Antonio Donghi was born on March 16, 1897. He was an Italian painter, known for his original bond with Magic Realism. Antonio Donghi’s art provides a balanced chromatic and compositional blend between figures in the foreground and their surroundings. He was born in Rome and studied painting at the Instituto di Belle Arti from 1908 to 1916. After military service in the World War, he studied art in Florence and Venice, soon establishing himself as one of Italy’s leading figures in the neoclassical movement that arose in the 1920s. Possessed of an extremely refined technique, Donghi favored strong composition, spatial clarity, and populist subject matter. His figures possess a gravity and an archaic stiffness reminiscent of Piero Della Francesca. Critics likened his work to that of Henri Rousseau and Georges Seurat, whose scenes of contemporary life are similarly touched with subtle humor.