Guglielmo Ciardi (Italian painter) 1842 - 1917
He was born in Venice, the son of an official of the Austrian government. Ciardi enrolled in 1861 at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied perspective with Federico Moja and landscape and seascape with Domenico Bresolin, taking over the latter’s teaching post in 1894. He went to Florence in 1868 and formed friendships with Giovanni Costa and the Macchiaioli painters. After spending some time in the countryside around Rome, he then arrived in Naples and came into contact with Filippo Palizzi and the artists of the Resina School. On his return to Venice the following year, he resumed his regular participation in the exhibitions of the Academy and the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti. Works were also sent to exhibitions in Milan, Turin, Genoa, Florence and Naples in the 1870s and 1880s. The following decade saw participation in the Milan Triennale, the Turin Exhibition of 1898 and the Venice Biennale from 1895 to 1914, with a solo show in 1909. Views of the Venetian lagoon and the countryside around Treviso were accompanied by mountain landscapes painted during his numerous stays in towns in Veneto, Trentino and Lombardy. Awarded a gold medal in 1915 at the San Francisco Exhibition, where the participants included his children Beppe and Emma, he was struck down by paralysis and died two years later. Source: WIkipedia * * * Emma Ciardi (Italian painter) 1879 - 1933 Emma Ciardi was born in Venice. Following in the footsteps of her father Guglielmo and brother Beppe, Emma Ciardi began painting as an adolescent and exhibited for the first time in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, and at the Promotrice in Turin; in 1903 she participated in the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia and took part in it almost every year after that until 1932. In addition to her landscapes and views of Venice, she also soon made a name for herself with neo-18th-century subjects which were particularly well received by the English and American public. In 1910 she organised her first solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London, followed by a second in 1913; she also had other exhibitions mounted in London by the Fine Art Society in 1928 and 1933. In the USA market she received acclaim from 1923 onwards, when she exhibited at the Howard Young Gallery in New York, which obtained exclusive rights to selling her work.She died in Venice in 1933. Two years after her death, Emma Ciardi’s painting was celebrated in a retrospective on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Venice Biennale. Source: Wikipedia * * * Beppe Ciardi (Italian painter) 1875 - 1932 Born in Venice, he was the son of the painter Guglielmo and the brother of Emma, who also became a notable artist. Beppe Ciardi studied under his father at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts from 1896. He graduated in 1899 and his participation in the Venice Biennale began the same year with the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, where his work continued to be exhibited in later years and was featured in a solo show in 1912. The author of landscapes characterised by a symbolic interpretation of nature that won the esteem of critics, he was awarded the Fumagalli Prize in Milan (1900), a gold medal in Munich (1901) and a silver medal in San Francisco (1904). His work drew inspiration in later decades from everyday life in Venice and the countryside around Treviso. He died in the family villa at Quinto di Treviso in 1932.
