Ernesto Alcide Campestrini

Alcide Ernesto Campestrini was born in Milan, where the family had moved in 1897.

After the first rudiments of art with his father, from 1914 he was a student at the Brera Academy in Milan, under the guidance of Ambrogio Antonio Alciati.

In 1919 he resumed his painting studies in Brera, interrupted by enlistment. He concluded them in 1922, the year in which he obtained his teaching qualification.

He lived in Milan and in 1923 he exhibited Smiles of other times at the Palazzo della Società per le Belle Arti and Permanent Exhibition: the so-called Brera Biennale, at the following one in 1925, presented with Ultime note and El disperados.

In 1926 he exhibited Porta Volta, at the First Art Exhibition of Milanese Artists organized by the Meneghina family, the contemporary Self-Portrait is one of the first works by him that we know so far today.

He devoted himself to still life, figure painting and the alpine landscape, the Trentino one in particular, with a technique linked to his father's school and to the late nineteenth-century tradition.

He held several personal exhibitions in Milan. The Campestrini family spends their holidays in Valsugana several times, sometimes as guests of Emma Campestrini's relatives.

The painter falls in love with Lake Caldonazzo, depicted several times in his canvases, such as in the 1949 painting.

Few buildings, much quiet, a play of colors between the green and ocher of the vegetation and the earth, the purple and blue of the mountains and the sky which are reflected in the calm water of the lake.

He died in Milan in 1983.