Piero Dalle Ceste biography

Piero Dalle Ceste was an Italian painter and is considered by critics to be one of the greatest representatives of sacred art of the 20th century. He was born in 1912 in Refrontolo in the province of Treviso. The premature death of his father, which occurred in 1918, forced him, at just six years old, into an odyssey in institutions for orphans, first in the Veneto and then in Turin. In Turin, while still very young, he demonstrated that he possessed a very precocious spontaneous talent in drawing and painting.
In 1933, at just 21 years old, his old parish priest commissioned him to paint a painting capable of replacing the Madonna del Rosario of Palma il Giovane, ruined by bombing. From that day on, curiae, congregations and convents of many Italian cities, both in Europe and in the Americas, entrusted themselves to him for large celebratory cycles, apses, domes, altarpieces, stained glass windows and mosaics.
Among the most important we remember the frescoes of the Chiesa S.S. Annunziata in Turin, the frescoes of the Sanctuary of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, the cycle of frescoes in the presbytery and in the apse basin of the Parish Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary of Caramagna Piedmont in the province of Cuneo, the fresco of the Church S.M. della Valle in Cunico in the province of Asti, the interior of the Sanctuary of Santa Rita in Turin, the altarpieces of the Sanctuary of San Giuseppe Marello in Asti and of Santa Chiara in Bra in the province of Cuneo, the paintings of the Cholera of 1855 and Madonna of the Rosary in the Parish Church of Refrontolo, the frescoes in the apses of the Parish of Maria Regina della Pace of Turin. Following the growth of his fame, he was entrusted with the chair of painting at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.
Piero Dalle Ceste alternates sacred subjects with easel painting inspired by post-impressionist realism. His favorite subjects are female portraits, children, landscapes, still lifes characterized by golden luminosity and tonal softness typical of Venetian artistic production Piero Dalle Ceste died in Turin in 1974.