Pirro Cuniberti

Pier Achille (Pirro) Cuniberti (September 10, 1923 – March 4, 2016) was an Italian artist. His work favored small-scale works and was divided into consecutive painterly periods that culminate with his very personal works started in 1979 on masonite panels, which are rendered in acrylic over a brushed acrylic base, initially accompanied by pastels and graphite. In 1984 he worked with Stefano Benni illustrating the book I meravigliosi animali di Stranalandia (Feltrinelli, Milan, Italy).^[1]

Cuniberti was born on September 10, 1923, in

After high school, in February 1943 Pirro Cuniberti received his draft notice and is sent to the 2nd Grenadier Regiment of Sardinia; fate will also intervene in the tragic days defending Rome. On the evening of September 10, the military stronghold where Cuniberti is a telephone operator was attacked and his soldiers were killed, captured or scattered. He reached Bologna five days later. In June of the same year he was accepted at the Fine Arts Academy of Bologna. In February 1944 he was called for service again and assigned to Germany to train in the Black Forest, where he happens upon a print reproduction of "a small room with a bed, a small table and two straw chairs". he later commented:"I was struck by the simplicity of that 'sketched painting'. I often went back to look at that print which had these words written on it: Vincent van Gogh, Chambre d'Arles, 1989." At the end of the war, research into the "unknown" Van Gogh lead him to the extraordinary world of modern art.

In 1945 he was accepted in Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. A student of

External links

• Esso Gallery New York