LINO BIANCHI BARRIVIERA ARTWORKS

Lino Bianchi Barriviera was an important Italian painter, designer and engraver of the twentieth-century panorama, appreciated and admired worldwide and placed by international critics among the best masters in the use of etching, a characteristic technique of his works.
Born in Montebelluna in the province of Treviso in 1906, he was introduced to technical studies by his family, while at the same time cultivating his passion for art, which will lead him to engrave at a very young age and to take part in numerous collective exhibitions which will earn him esteem and admiration from the artistic world.
In the mid-1920s, Lino Bianchi Barriviera made his first engraving, in Florence, at the studio of Raoul Dal Molin Ferenzona, which he frequented assiduously, while at the end of the 1920s he set up his first exhibitions, coinciding with the years of fascism.
In 1927 he undertook his first trip to Libya, commissioned by the Italian government, which sent him to African territory to study the architecture of the monuments and analyze the local culture. Returning to Italy he moved to Venice, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts as a guest, and then settled in Rome together with his family in 1934. From here he began his academic career, being entrusted with the the position of teacher at the School of Fine Arts of Naples, where he will take the chair of engraving.
The world of engravings is undoubtedly what has most characterized the artistic life of Lino Bianchi Barriviera. Consider that from his second trip to Libya, which took place in 1937, a work of thirteen engravings would emerge, and a few years later, during a mission in Ethiopia, where he supported the studies of the archaeologist Monti Della Corte, will develop a cycle of complete engravings dedicated to the reliefs of the twelve churches of Lalibelà. His complete collection of engravings boasts more than 950 plates, for which the painter mainly used the etching technique. It must be said that the artist loved to depict in his works the places he visited or in which he lived. In fact, many of his engravings are dedicated to the places of his childhood, in Veneto, but also to the destinations of his travels and the cities where he later lived.
In the 1930s Lino Bianchi Barriviera participated in several international exhibitions, like those in Munich in 1934, Budapest in '36 and Paris in '37. In these same years he won numerous prizes and tributes and launched a series of personal exhibitions in Italy, such as those in Rome, Trieste and Turin. In the 1940s he participated in the group of "War Painters" and in 1956 he obtained the chair of engravings at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where he remained teaching until 1976 In the last years of his life, the great "master of engravings" dedicated himself to writing a manual to pass on his artistic techniques, entitled "Engraving and original printing" published with the house Neri Pozza publishing house in 1984.
Lino Bianchi Barriviera died in Acilia in 1985, but his works will always keep alive the memory of his great artistic talent in engraving and in various other art forms such as oil painting, decorations, frescoes, wood, glass and ceramic working and even the creation of jewellery.