Ambrogio Antonio Alciati
Born in Vercelli in 1878, he moved with his mother and his sister to Milan in 1897 to attend the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Vespasiano Bignami, Giuseppe Mentessi and Cesare Tallone. Tallone helped him to perfect his portrait painting technique, and introduced him into wealthy Milan middle class society.
Between 1902 and 1910 he painted a series of pictures inspired by romantic and family subjects, while also working on the decoration of churches and villas in Lombardy. In the ten years from 1910 his style underwent an evolution as he abandoned the use of shaded tones and a dull, almost monochromatic range of colours, gradually acquiring greater constructive vigour and a variety of bright colours.
During the first world war he worked only sporadically as an artist, but in 1920 he was appointed teacher of painting and life drawing at the Brera Academy, the Chair once held by Tallone. He was by this time a well-established portrait painter, his work much sought-after particularly by the Lombard upper middle-class.
His last personal exhibition was in Vercelli in 1922, on the occasion of the Exhibition of Vercelli Artists.
He died in Milan in 1929 after a short illness.
