Self-Portrait

Pio Semeghini (1878-1964) attended the academies of Florence and Modena, devoting himself to painting and occasionally to sculpture. His artistic turning point came in Paris in 1904, where he attended the Julian Academy, exhibited at the Clovis Sagot Gallery, and came into contact with Medardo Rosso and the artists of the Avant-Gardes, inlcuding the young Pablo Picasso, the Fauves (especially Henri Matisse) and Amedeo Modigliani. He also came close to the last figures of the Impressionist season, such as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Many drawings, pastels, tempera, and etchings executed in those years, as well as oil paintings such as "Self-Portrait" of 1905, remain lofty and eloquent testimonies to the personal and original research of Semeghini's youthful period.