Eliodoro Coccoli - Brescia 1880 - 1974 - "Dancer", circa 1920

Charcoal, pastel, and white lead on squared paper 60 x 37 cm Inventory number 44 Study for the fresco decoration of Villa Benvenuti in Fasano (Brescia), home of the renowned musician and musicologist Giacomo Benvenuti, who commissioned Coccoli to decorate the entrance hall and music room. The work is currently on display at the gallery in the exhibition: "Eliodoro Coccoli (Brescia 1880-1974) Magnificent Draftsman" The work, like all our other items, will be sold with a certificate of authenticity. We personally handle and organize the packaging and shipping of our artworks, with insurance, worldwide. ELIODORO COCCOLI He was born in Brescia, in the municipality of San Bartolomeo, on July 1, 1880, to unknown parents. After passing through the hospital's abandoned children's ward, he was placed in foster care with a peasant couple from Tignale (a village on Lake Garda). He remained there until 1885, when the foster family, unable to support themselves, had to emigrate to the United States, and Eliodoro was returned to the hospital. That same year, he was placed back in the care of Giuseppe Spalenza, a greengrocer, a resident of the Carmine neighborhood of Brescia. Eliodoro attended regular school for a few years and then began working as an apprentice in a carriage workshop and then in a luggage-making shop, but with little interest or success. Even then, he loved scribbling on walls or copying images found on the printed paper his adoptive father used to wrap fruit and vegetables. He thus displayed a strong inclination for drawing, which convinced Giuseppe Spalenza to enroll him, in 1895, in the Moretto evening school, a drawing school in Brescia, open to both those who wanted to learn the trade and those who wanted to refine their technique. He attended the school for five years and, in addition to honorable mentions, received a bronze and a silver medal in 1898 and 1899, respectively. He later became a teacher. A further turning point in Coccoli's career came in 1925, when he was contacted by the Beato Angelico School, which offered him a teaching position and gave him the opportunity to secure a large number of commissions for frescoes in churches and palaces. His works are visible in Italy (Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Tuscany) and abroad (Malta and Switzerland), and range from religious to profane themes. Analyzing the material found in his studio reveals the figure of a technically skilled painter with an excellent figurative culture that allowed him to move between Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, Neo-Romanticism, Art Nouveau, and the declinations of Novecentismo that would characterize the 1930s and later. These notions and skills were undoubtedly acquired and deepened through his participation in the Brescia artistic and cultural community, which recognized itself in the "Arte in famiglia" society (1876-1928) and in the art workshop of the eclectic Dante Bravo. This technical and stylistic skill enabled him to create works with a remarkable variety of themes and meanings and to resolve, with functional results, any technical or symbolic problem. Eliodoro Coccoli died in 1974