Alfredo Chighine Italian, 1914-1974

Works

Biography

Alfredo Chighine was an Italian painter, born in Milan in 1914. In 1945, he studied engraving at the School of Decorative Arts in Monza, and later sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan. During this period, he met Giacomo Manzù and he became his pupil. Chighine’s career is linked to the history of Italian Art Informel, of which he represented the naturalistic northern aspect. In his paintings, he was particularly focused on creating a sensation of substance and light. In the early period of Art Informel this tendency was expressed in tangles and clots of colour applied with a spatula and infused with light, comparable to the work of Ennio Morlotti. These landscapes expressed the continuous variations of nature according to time, days or seasons. His art developed from the early scratched lines to the bright and vibrant precision of his 1960s paintings. In the final years this evolved into a subtle balance of Chighine’s major concerns: luminosity, surface texture and flowing line. He died in 1974 in Pisa.