Ubaldo Oppi (Bologna 1889 - Vicenza 1942)

Ubaldo Oppi (Bologna 1889 – Vicenza 1942) moved to Vienna in his teens and there received his artistic training. He met Gustav Klimt, a dean of the Art Nouveau school, which Oppi joined under the influence of the British pre-Raphaelites and the French symbolists, notably Gustave Moreau. From Vienna, Oppi travelled in Germany, Bohemia, Russia, Hungary and Romania, coming into contact with branches of modern painting quite distant from the dominant ideas of Paris. He then stayed in Paris, returning to Italy on the outbreak of World War I.
He was among the founders, in 1922, of the Novecento group and an active artistic organizer, serving in fact as president of the Venice Biennale in 1926. In his late years he turned to religious subjects, abandoning the themes that had engaged him during his artistic maturity – a period that is now coming in for critical reappraisal after protracted disparagement.