Alberto Helios Gagliardo, “The War”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas
Alberto Helios Gagliardo was an Italian painter and engraver who was born in 1893. He attended the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa. In 1925 Gagliardo exhibited his work at the International Exhibition of the Grand Palais in Paris.
Since 1931, when he participated in the exhibition in Athens, Gagliardo was present in numerous and important exhibitions abroad: Riga, Lima, Caracas, Guatemala City, Shged, Vittoria, Budapest, Stockholm, and in Buenos Aires, where he exhibited at the First Exhibition of Contemporary Ligurian Painters and Sculptors in Argentina.
Gagliardo was close to the Ligurian engraving group of the “Tarasca” and was a holder of the Chair of Engraving at the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts, and was also listed among the “Engravers of Italy”. He was also a follower of the Symbolist and Neo-Impressionist painter Goetano Previati, later joining the Theosophical Society in Genova, Italy.
Gagliardo’s work is linked between 1919 and 1921 to Symbolism and is reminiscent of the dreamlike atmospheres and the soft brushstrokes of the Pre-Raphaelites and French Puvis De Chavannes movements. In later works, his focus was on social themes, translated into harder and more essential forms with strong tonal and luministic contrasts.