Antonio Possenti

Artist: Antonio Possenti (1933-2016)

Born Lucca in 1933, Antonio Possenti spent his first years of life in Livorno and then moved to Lucca following the bombings of the Second World War. He spent a good part of his adolescence dedicating himself to reading all kinds of books, which contributed to the artist's discovery of the expressive qualities of drawing. He received great help in his intellectual and cultural education from his family. His father was a high school principal, his mother was a teacher and his grandfather was the Rector of the University of Pisa and member of Parliament Augusto Mancini. Having completed his classical studies, he graduated in Law and taught law in secondary schools in the province of Lucca. During his teaching period he began working as a satirical cartoonist, succeeding the cartoonist Mino Maccari on the pages of the weekly "Il Mondo" and illustrated some volumes of the "Il Ponte" series of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. The meeting with the Russian painter Marc Chagall on the French Riviera in 1957 was fundamental. From that meeting Possenti decided to dedicate body and soul to "pictorial professionalism". Since 1960 he has received numerous awards and has exhibited in the main Italian and foreign galleries. It was also reported for the Bolaffi catalog in 1972 by Dino Buzzati and in 1982 by Pier Carlo Santini. In his career, Possenti traveled a lot, but every time he returns to Lucca where he lives and has his studio in Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, in the heart of the city, where he died in 12016.

Age: Contemporary

Contemporary