Siro Penagini (1885-1952) - Donna e bambino

Biography
Siro Penagini was born in Milan on December 1, 1885. After an educational internship at various seminaries, where he received a notable humanistic education, at eighteen he earned the diploma of surveyor, but his artistic inclinations led him in 1905 to enroll at the Brera Academy where he met Aldo Carpi, with whom he remained friends for life. Penagini, of an independent temperament, not finding himself at ease with one of the professors, Mentessi, between late 1906 and early 1907 decided to leave Brera and attend the Royal Academy of Munich, where he had the opportunity to come into contact with the new European trends. In 1910 he returned to Italy, health compromised, and until 1913 stayed in Milan and in Caravate (VA). In 1914, on medical advice, he moved to Terracina, maintaining relations with the Roman artistic milieu, in particular with Spadini, Oppo, Carena, Socrate, Ferrazzi, Selva, and Zanelli; from Terracina he moved to the Sorrento Peninsula, especially Positano, where he met Maksim Gorky and became his friend.
In 1918 Penagini married Rosalinda Steffenini.
In 1920 he returned to Milan, where he took a studio with Gian Emilio Malerba and, still in the same year, participated in the first Venice Biennale, where he remained present until 1948 (with a solo show in 1938). Also in that year, with the proceeds from the sale of many of his works to the critic and collector Gustavo Botta, he left for Sardinia, where he stayed in Sinnai, Aritzo, Atzara, and Desulo, painting both the landscapes and the people in their antique costumes.
In December 1922 he held his first solo exhibition at the Bottega della Poesia in Milan, on Via Montenapoleone.
In 1923 he retired to Solcio, on Lake Maggiore, where he repaired and expanded a rustic house, building a large studio; he spent a few hours reading Russian novelists and studying the artists of the past, particularly Giotto, Masaccio, Carpaccio, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Goya, and Daumier. He rarely moved about in the town, and in Milan he only went down for some exhibitions, such as in 1924 when he was named an honorary member of the Brera Academy, and in 1926 when he participated in the First Exhibition of the Twentieth Century at the Palace of the Permanente. In 1939 he took part in the second exhibition of the Twentieth Century.
In 1934 he won the gold medal at the International Exhibition in Budapest, and in 1936 he won the prize of the Royal Academy of Rome.
In 1937, at the request of Architect Piacentini, he frescoed at the Milan Palace of Justice a “Moses dictating the laws”; while in 1939 for E42 (EUR) in Rome he received the commission for two mosaics, of which he executed only the sketches because the war forced the project to be suspended.
The war period was extremely painful for Penagini: for a year he had no news of his elder son who had gone to the front; his friend Aldo Carpi and the art critic Raffaello Giolli were imprisoned in the same camp, from which the latter did not return, while at the old Solcio dock, near his home, ten partisans were shot by the Germans. From these circumstances he never recovered, and his work diminished until it stopped altogether. He spent his days in silence, reading and meditating. He died at Solcio on December 8, 1952 at the age of seventy-seven.