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Luigi
Cima

Italia • 1860−1944
Luigi Cima was born in Villa di Villa, now the municipality of Mel (Belluno), on January 5, 1860. After completing his technical studies in Feltre, he moved to Venice to enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts, where he took Eugenio De Blaas' courses. He devoted himself with preference to scenes of working life in the countryside and mountains of the Feltre area, animated landscapes with figures of acute verism, scenes of Venetian life and portraits.
Having completed his artistic studies, he embarked from the early 1880s on a series of dense participations in major national painting exhibitions; in 1881 he made his debut at the Permanente in Venice with Casa rustica, Un rivo a Venezia, Al mercato, gaining numerous acclaims. The painting Il ritorno dal pascolo (Return from the Pasture), featured in the 1884 Turin exhibition, was purchased by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. In the same year he also participated in the Permanente in Milan and in the exhibition of the Società di Belle Arti in Verona, with Rio dei secchi and Cortile rustico.
Cima, working as a draftsman in the studio of the sculptor Dal Lotto and at the same time participating in Venetian artistic life, got to know, by frequenting them, a group of artists of whom he became friends such as Giacomo Favretto, Guglielmo Ciardi, Luigi Nono, Bartolomeo Bezzi, and Alessandro Milesi.
In 1886 he exhibited three works at the first Permanente exhibition in Milan, of which Interior of St. Mark's in Venice (Preghiera a San Marco) was purchased by Commendator Federico Milyus. This was followed by the Venice exhibitions of 1887, where Cima exhibited Beniamino and Angoscie materne, Estate and Aprile, with an obvious debt to the painting of Luigi Nono; the 1891 exhibition in Munich with Il lavoro dei campi and Il ritorno dal mercato, descriptions of daily life in his hometown; the 1895 Venice Biennale with Nevicata and Vacche alla pozza; and the 1897 exhibition with I fabbri. In the same year in Verona he presented La capraia; at the 1898 Turin National Exhibition Alla sagra del villaggio; in Milan in 1900 In primavera. After the 1902 Verona Exposition, with Last Days of Autumn and The Vigil of the Poor, Cima, embittered by his exclusion from the 1903 Venetian Biennale, exhibited there again in 1905 (The Winter) but then retired to his hometown and never participated in exhibitions again. Cima also tackled animal subjects, still lifes and religious compositions.
Among his exhibitions are the one from April 7 to June 30, 1990, in the Palazzo delle Contesse in Mel, entitled "Luigi Cima 1860-1944": the one from Dec. 22, 2000, to Jan. 28, 2001, in the same venue on the theme: "Luigi Cima and his pupils"; and the one on the 150th anniversary of the painter's birth, in the exhibition halls also in Mel-Palazzo delle Contesse, from Oct. 8, 2010, to Jan. 6, 2011, entitled: "Luigi Cima and the Venetian 1800s."
Cima passed away in Belluno on New Year's Day 1944, four days shy of his 84th birthday.
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