Pietro Fragiacomo Italian, 1856-1922

Pietro Fragiacomo (Trieste, Italy 1856 - Venice, Italy 1922)

Born in Trieste in 1856, initially working as a carpenter and blacksmith, he enrolled at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts in 1878.

He abandoned his studies at the Academy after barely one year to devote himself fully to painting.

He exhibited for the first time in Turin in 1880. In 1891, he received the Prince Umberto award for his painting Peace, which the king himself purchased. Another painting, Winter, was purchased by the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. At the Venice Biennale in 1895, he exhibited Greetings and Sadness, which are currently in the Berlin Museum.

He won a bronze medal at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris and took part in the Munich International Exhibition that same year, as well as the later editions.

The romantic titles of his artworks underline an intimate approach to painting as a projection of his state of mind, inspired by the Venetian lagoon and nature.

Towards the end of the century, his landscapes took on symbolic cadences. Fragiacomo exchanges his lighter tones and brushstrokes for the material application of colour.

He regularly participated –from 1895 to 1922 – at the Venice Biennale, where he held a solo exhibition in 1910 and a posthumous retrospective was dedicated to him in 1924, two years after his death.

Photo UniCredit Group (Sebastiano Pellion di Persano)