Painter / Architect 1890-1956

House Museum Francesco Arata

Francesco Arata (1890–1956), a pupil of Cesare Tallone at the “Accademia di Brera”, worked with Vittorio Rota, set designer at Teatro alla Scala, and above all with the architect Giovanni Greppi.
At the end of the 1920s he frequented the “Bagutta” circle, where he formed intense and decisive friendships with writers and artists such as Orio Vergani, Riccardo Bacchelli, Giovanni Comisso, Anselmo Bucci, Arturo Martini, Arturo Tosi, Raffaele De Grada, Cesare Monti, Aldo Carpi, and Donato Frisia.
From 1930 to 1940, together with his painter friends Mario Vellani-Marchi and Giuseppe Novello, he maintained close relations with Pio Semeghini and the Venetian painters of the “Burano School.”
He exhibited at three Venice Biennales (1930, 1936, 1940), two Rome Quadriennials (1931 and 1939), at the Royal Society of British Artists in London in 1916, at the Naples Biennale in 1922, and at the International Watercolour Exhibition in 1923, and he was awarded the “Fornara Prize” in 1936.
After the Second World War, he withdrew to his hometown of Castelleone, where he died in March 1956.
The following authors have written about his work: Raffaele Calzini, Orio Vergani, Mario Vellani-Marchi, Giuseppe Novello, Carlo Carrà, Raffaele Carrieri, Elda Fezzi, Giorgio Mascherpa, Luciano Budigna, Mario Monteverdi, Mario Ghilardi, Claudio Toscani, Fernando Rea, Alberico Sala, and Paolo Rizzi.
A direct understanding of Francesco Arata’s artistic career can be gained by visiting his birthplace, on the street bearing his name, the house in which the painter lived throughout his life.